Social camouflage: functions, logic, paradoxes. Issue 2 (3rd May 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Brighenti, Andrea Mubi; Castelli, Alessandro
• Is Part Of: Distinktion. Volume 17:Issue 2(2016)
• Page Start: 228
• Page End: 249
• Publication Date: 2016-05-03
• Subjects: Mimicry -- camouflage -- undercover movies -- infiltration -- social logic -- social phenomenology -- inter-subjectivity; Social sciences -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- Philosophy -- Periodicals; Social history -- Periodicals; 300
• DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2016.1217552
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1600-910X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Camouflage is usually understood as a type of deceitful communication strategy in the animal and human domains. In this piece, we invite scholars to consider how the phenomenon of camouflage, while certainly grounded in antagonism and selection, might exceed its strategic meaning. Using the case of undercover agents movies, we attempt to flesh out the inner logic of camouflage and the type of social-existential situations it gives shape to. Exploring the mundane practical problem of 'infiltration' into a social group or social milieu, the article zooms in onto the experience of camouflage and highlights its relatedness to and distinction from imitation. Camouflage is here used not as an overarching interpretive category, rather as an instance that reveals something about the problems inherent in the constitution of inter-subjective life. The article seeks to contribute to a theoretical development in the study of social logic and social teleology, stressing the curious entanglement of deliberate strategic action and irrational desire that contradistinguishes what could be called the 'aberrant conjunction' of the camoufleur and its target. Camouflage, we conclude, is not only about make-believe but also, crucially, about desiring and learning to desire.