The Aesthetics of Stealth

How performances of tactical imperceptibility—or “stealth”—have become a key political practice in digital culture as a means of escaping surveillance and tracking technologies.

In The Aesthetics of Stealth, Toni Pape proposes the first aesthetic and cultural theory of stealth, a mode of political action. The primary goal of stealth is to act efficiently while remaining imperceptible. Pape begins with the observation that the desire for stealth is a sociocultural response to digital media culture, due to digital technologies’ unprecedented ability to track individual behavior. He argues that stealth operates as a cross-media aesthetic that can be observed in video games, television, and video art alike, particularly in so-called stealth video games, a genre that requires players to accomplish missions without being detected by in-game enemies.

Drawing on theories of perception, digital aesthetics, and video game studies, Pape proposes an analytical map of different modes of stealth such as “sneaking stealth,” “social stealth,” or “magical stealth.” The author’s findings are brought into dialogue with research in the fields of software studies, surveillance studies, and political theory to establish the political importance of stealth. While stealth is a resistance to pervasive sensing and tracking, Pape also shows that the principles of stealth politics are closely connected to urgent concerns like (cyber)warfare and other digital practices of targeting and surveillance that operate to entrench cultural values like heteronormativity and white supremacy.Acknowledgments
1   Stealth Parade: Introduction, Overview, Problematization
2   Digital Prehensions: Two Brief Genealogies of Stealth
3   Stealth: A Co-evolution of Technology and Culture
4   Technostealth: A Baroque Disposition
5   The Politicality of Imperceptibility, Now and Then: An Interlude
6   Sneaking Stealth: The Tracking Shot and Relational Imperceptibility
7   Surveillance Stealth 1: Conspiracy Thinking and Ubiquitous War
8   Surveillance Stealth 2: Overcoding World History and the World as Blackbox
9   Magical Stealth: Queering Sourcery and Relational Ethics in Dishonored
10   Social Stealth: Camp Aesthetic, Whiteness, and Artificial Stupidity in Hitman
11   Stealthy Together: Coda on Insistent Belonging
Notes
Works Cited
Index“Pape’s in-depth analysis of video games and television shows maps the ways an aesthetic of stealth reveals techniques that offer freedom from the security apparatus.”
—Choice

“A cogent account of the algorithmic, aesthetic, and technopolitical fantasies of stealth, the perils of (im)perception and (mis)recognition, and the strategies for survival under these regimes of surveillance and subterfuge.”
—Edmond Y. Chang, Associate Professor of English, Ohio University

“The Aesthetics of Stealth offers a unique and compelling perspective on our contemporary culture. Through subtle close readings, the author shows how stealth is a defining aesthetic quality of media today.”
—Jay David Bolter, Wesley Professor of New Media, Georgia Institute of Technology

“In this spectacular book, Toni Pape shines a light on stealth as a style or mode of existence: a way of relating to the conditions of our high-tech world. This is a vital and provocative account.”
—Colin Milburn, Gary Snyder Chair in Science and the Humanities, University of California, Davis; author of Respawn: Gamers, Hackers, and Technogenic LifeToni Pape is a cultural theorist and media scholar at the University of Amsterdam. His previous books include Figures of Time and the coauthored Nocturnal Fabulations. He is a member of the editorial boards of NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies and the Immediations book series at Punctum Press.