Finding Augusta: Habits of Mobility and Governance in the Digital Era

Introduction: Bodies, Mobilities, Technologies

Introduction Bodies, Mobilities, Technologies Virginia Finding Augusta: Habits of Mobility and Governance in the Digital Era is interested in routine practices that define the mobile present. When digital technologies set places, persons, things, and information in constant motion, habits of navigation assume decisive social and political importance. While most discussions of mobile media treat them as tracking devices, freedom machines, or both, I argue that we should attend to the everyday habits of finding places, persons , and information that mobile media encourage and discourage. In this regard, I make three claims. First, mobile media encourage population managers to think less in terms of surveillance and more in terms of tracking. I suggest that this shift is less a revolutionary change brought about by new technologies than a change in emphasis whereby mobile handheld devices supplement long-standing, even ancient, techniques of governance. Second, I argue that the handheld quality of mobile technologies requires a threefold understanding of human individuals as biological beings, expressive (e.g., cognitive) subjects, and members of populations. Third, I propose that acknowledging how we inhabit bodies tracked through mobile, networked, visual media offers possibilities for intervening in the techniques of governance that define and manage persons within xviii Introduction populations. In this way, I consider how biopolitical modes of governance work as well as how they might change. Once Upon a Traveling Salesman From the 1930s through the 1950s, independent insurance agent and amateur filmmaker Scott Nixon documented the various Augustas he encountered during his travels throughout the United States.1 He filmed towns, streets, and schools called Augusta and subsequently edited the sequences together into a sixteen-and-ahalf -minute compilation film.2 Called The Augustas, the film can be understood as a record of his travels to various Augustas—but this is only one, if perhaps the most common, interpretation. There are no fewer than thirty-six instances edited into a montage of disparate locations and scenes all identified as “Augusta” or some variant thereof, for example, “Augustaville” or “The Augusta.” The Augustas are identified by signage, intertitles, labeled still images, train schedules, or maps. In this way, the film confronts its spectator with the question of how to interpret “Augusta.” For example, the fifth “Augusta” appears in black caps on a simple white rectangular board. The name “Augusta” is underscored by a solidly painted arrow pointing screen left, indicating that Augusta is located in that direction. Presumably one need only turn left and one will find Augusta some distance offscreen, even as one has encountered “Augusta” framed within the shot. If by habit we assume Augusta to be a place so named, the arrow and related strategies in the film also inspire speculation: there may be other options once our attention shifts to the name itself. While the inspiration behind this work may lie in the fact that Nixon himself lived in Augusta, Georgia, the principle or “key” governing his cinematic tour is not known. The assembled film follows neither chronology nor geography. The lack of a readily xix Introduction decodable order prompts us to consider that “Augusta” may be its own key, that one point may be simply to celebrate “Augusta” as a keyword label qua search term. The signifier plays Mobius-like across three registers of interpretation. It may appear painted on a road sign; it may be the indexical trace of a place once visited; it may function symbolically as a word signifying a referent, place, or otherwise. It matters whether one sees a filmed image of a road sign specifying “Augusta” or sees the word in an intertitle; one’s interpretation depends on such differences. For example, the appearance of a road sign calls to mind the social habit of navigating to a place of destination, while the intertitle bespeaks Missouri xx Introduction the filmmaker’s guiding hand in structuring interpretation. Either image, however, can name a place we might be seeing in the surrounding or a subsequent mise-en-scène. Similarly, the inclusion of any image whatsoever in this context suggests that we are looking at an “Augusta” even if we cannot immediately determine which one. By the reel’s conclusion, Augusta is revealed to designate a county in Virginia, a high school and a military academy in Ohio, a fort in Pennsylvania, and streets in both Georgia and South Carolina. The Hardy Phlox Augusta concludes the show. On one hand, the indexical image of...