The “Vigilante Spirit”: Surveillance and Racial Violence in 1980s New York

Abstract

This article details the "vigilante spirit," a term used by New York Governor Mario Cuomo to describe the seizure and execution of state power by Bernhard Goetz in his attack on four black teenagers in December of 1984. It argues that the vigilante spirit is an expression of thoughts, feelings, and practices that produce threats and then assemble the tools it deems necessary to combat them. It further argues that the vigilante spirit, expressed by Goetz in his attack, was also encoded in various cultural texts produced in the 1980s and uses Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns as an example. By reading these two case studies together, it seeks to explain the cultural politics that underpinned racial violence in the 1980s.

Repeated failure: time, dressage and thingness in Joker (2019)

“…Indeed, The Dark Knight (2008) provides a clear touchstone for Joker, and Arthur can be fitted into a sequence of anarchic nihilists for young alienated men to emulate (Kellner 2013,166). This threat is implicit in Joker's reception, and in the context of a resurgent Right (Nagel 2017) and increasing white male terrorism (Gentry 2020) this trajectory also echoes the bleak 'security imaginary' of white anti-state vigilantism in Miller's 1986 The Dark Knight Returns (Mann, 2017). Joker's many incarnations have even been tied similarly to a deeper history of clowns performing "virtuoso killing acts" (Jurgens 2014, 450), but this concept of agentic 'virtuosity' is something Joker textually challenges.…”

Surveillance Studies and the History of Artificial Intelligence: A Missed Opportunity?

“… See Sperling (2011);Fonio (2011);Thompson (2014);McCoy (2015);Lauritsen and Feuerbach (2015);Kamali (2017);Mann (2017);Skouvig (2017);Fair (2017); MacWillie (2018);Richterova (2018);Morris (2018); Oduro-Marfo (2018);Miranda (2020);Szpunar (2020);Anderson (2022);Brackett (2022).…”