Mirror

For those intrepid QR code hunters: welcome to the Waterloo Watchmen surveillance blog! Waterloo Watchmen is dedicated to researching, exposing, and discussing the prevalence of surveillance across UW. Below you will find a brief description of the surveillance technology in your immediate environment as well as a theoretical inquiry to get you thinking! To the right of your screen, you will find an archive menu of previous posts discussing a broad range of campus locations and theoretical perspectives. We invite you to explore this website and join the conversation!



If you glance to your left, and peek around the pillar, you'll notice that you are being surveyed by at least 3 mirrors. The use of mirrors (both convex and flat) in surveillance systems is nearly as old as surveillance itself. However, these mirrors do more than extend the gaze of shop owners and security personnel, they also affect you--the citizen--in a variety of psychological ways. Now that you're aware that your presence is being broadcast across these mirrors, has your behavior changed? Scroll down for a discussion of the psychological and symbolic implications of the seemingly meaningless mirror.

Lacan's Mirror Stage and the Development of the Psyche and the Self

Although the most common contemporary tool used for public surveillance is, undoubtedly, the video camera, a brief survey of the systems used across our campus revealed that a second tool is also often used—that of the mirror. Both convex and plane mirrors are used in a number of locations across campus. The use of these mirrors presents a number of interesting sociological and psychological questions.

Mirrors serve to remind any given subject that they are “visible”—that is, that their reflection is being projected publicly to the surrounding audience. But how, and why, is this effective? A recently published psychological study conducted at the University of British Columbia, entitled “Mirrors in the Head: Cultural Variation in Objective Self-Awareness,” investigates the effect of mirrored surfaces on deindividuation (the loss of one’s sense of personal accountability and control). Put simply, this study confirmed what a number of previous studies had suggested, that a subject’s sense of accountability and identity is dramatically increased when presented with their own reflection. This implies that one is decidedly less likely to engage in anti-normative behaviour (such as criminal acts) if the surrounding environment is highly reflective. Interestingly, this study dramatically complicated deindividuation studies by suggesting that this “mirror effect” is unique to so-called “Western” subjects. The researchers found that in cultures in which “saving face” or “guarding ones image” is not as socially relevant, such as Japanese societies, the “mirror" did not reduce anti-normative behaviour. In other words, it takes a grave concern for one’s own image in order to be affected by one’s reflection.

Yet the idea that a mirror can provide a sense of “individuality” or “unity of the self”, that a mirror’s reflection is powerful enough to subvert delinquent behaviour, is complicated by the philosophical, psychoanalytic, and surrealist qualities of image reflection. The images we see in mirrors are artifices, modified or distorted versions of “reality” that also serve to divide and fragment the self (the inverted nature of a mirrored image is a constant reminder of its removal from “reality”). A mirrored image is a substitution, a juxtaposition of separated alternatives, and is by nature divisive. How is it, then, that a mirror can at once divide and unite the psyche and the self?

That human’s are particularly vulnerable to the coercion of the image can be highlighted efficiently by calling on Lacan’s discussion of the mirror stage. In one sense, the mirror stage acts to unite elements of the psyche, particularly with regard to ego development. For Lacan, the ego forms when one first witnesses one’s image in reflection and perceives an illusion of wholeness, an illusion that counters both the fragmentary state of the body and the divided sense of self. Thus, the ego is an image-based imaginary other that is loved and taken by the infant as a representative “I.” The fantasy of wholeness provided by the ego creates enjoyment, opening the subject to the concept of visualized images of enjoyment, by obscuring both the lack of the subject and the lack originating in the Other (the objet a). As the mirror stage implies, by our very nature humans are susceptible to seeing images as constitutive of convenient truths, failing to realize that images are established in the Symbolic Order and do not escape the lack intrinsic to that order; as a whole, humans refuse to realize that no image can provide the totality that its form seems to guarantee. Obviously, the reflective mirrored surfaces used in surveillance, like the reflective process of the mirror stage, are beleaguered by an incompleteness that their appearance denies.

Yet in the same instance, Lacan recognizes that the mirror stage is also a moment of terrifying deindividuation; as the child subject ponders his or her reflection a crushing reality sets in—the child is independent and isolated, despite a great yearning to be united with the mother. In this way the mirror stage is also a process of division, of fragmentation, and of alienation. It is fundamental in the child subject’s social development, as he or she realizes that certain realities are beyond individual control. This realization grooms the subject for submission to the Law of the Father, and prepares the subject for a life forever removed from successfully gratifying desire.

Thus, Lacan’s mirror stage, as an investigation into the social and psychic development of the self, does provide insight into the hitherto neglected emotional and affective dimensions of mirrored monitoring systems.