ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that surveillance is a feminist issue and aims to explore the emerging field of feminist surveillance studies and highlights research within feminist media studies that may contribute to this field but is not necessarily recognized as surveillance studies. It discusses the top-down theorizations of surveillance in order to open up questions about peer surveillance and self-surveillance and describes a conceptual architecture to show the connections between postfeminist culture and surveillance. The chapter also explores the links between neoliberalism and new practices of looking, which Mark Hayward dubs a “neoliberal optics.” It also argues that digital and media cultures and post-feminist modalities of subjecthood are coming together to produce a novel and extraordinarily powerful regulatory gaze on women. The chapter offers a brief introduction to the study of surveillance, including emerging work in feminist surveillance studies, and will then introduce contemporary understandings of neoliberalism and postfeminism.
