After the national liberation struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (many still unfinished), the telluric character of partisans is as requisite as ever in the twenty-first century. Perhaps the new partisans will be cryptobionts, whether digital or analog. They will take the side of dormant seeds and that of life itself, veiled in its emergences. Surveillance technologies, including online tracking and monitoring, advanced biometric data collection, CCTV and facial recognition cameras, satellites and drones diminish the prospects of hiddenness for everyone within their reach, even as whoever or whatever does the tracking, spying, or monitoring remains hidden. The complex of micro-power and psycho-power, which Michel Foucault described in his oeuvre, serves a political regime that uncovers everything but stays undercover or, in the shapeless shape of Big Data, is altogether indifferent to the uncovered. The digital panopticon, the confession (often, removed from its religious context, digitally mediated, and so addictive as to encompass every bit of the confessor’s life), and the apparatus of modern science are instrumental for the consolidation of power, notably the power to draw out of hiding, to induce apocalypses, large and small.

In this workshop with Michael Marder, we will discuss the strategies of concealment – of becoming political cryptobionts – that may be one of the keys to resistance in the new global regime now taking shape.

Participation in the workshop is limited. To register, please send a short message to mail@diffrakt.space.