Dark Matters

CTL-E-6361 · Work · book · 2015–present

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07547 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6361.

Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness is a 2015 book by Simone Browne, published by Duke University Press on September 7, 2015. Browne argues that blackness functions as a key site through which surveillance is practiced, narrated, and resisted, and that contemporary surveillance technologies cannot be understood apart from the historical policing of Black life. The book moves across slavery-era practices — branding, runaway slave notices, and lantern laws — the slave ship Brooks, Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, the Book of Negroes, and present-day biometrics and post-9/11 airport security. Against racializing surveillance, Browne sets 'dark sousveillance,' her term for the tactics and imaginaries by which those under watch turn the tools and techniques of surveillance toward their own ends and refusals.

The record

• Also known as: Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness

Notes

STAGING: temp id EB-17. Prize claims are CV-only in this pass and are deliberately kept out of the description (see the CV source citation) — upgrade path is the awarding bodies' own pages. Duke University Press has no live record — released_by edge is target-absent (see blocked edges). CURATOR'S JUDGMENT (DRAFT): The surveillance counterpart to Algorithms of Oppression: Noble on the search box, Browne on the watched body.

Relationships

• Simone Browne — authored by
  Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (Duke University Press, 2015) is by Simone Browne, per the publisher's book page.

Sources

• Duke University Press, Books Gateway (accessed 2026-10-29): Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, Duke University Press, published 2015-09-07; blackness as a key site of surveillance, from slavery-era policing (branding, runaway slave notices, lantern laws) through the slave ship Brooks, Bentham's Panopticon, the Book of Negroes, and biometrics to post-9/11 airport security; 'dark sousveillance' as the resistance pairing. (primary source · build store)
• Duke University Press (accessed 2026-10-29): publisher page and reviews for Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (2015). (primary source · build store)
• Browne CV, UT Austin (accessed 2026-10-29): Winner, 2016 Best Book Prize, Surveillance Studies Network; Winner, 2016 Lora Romero First Book Prize, American Studies Association; Winner, 2015 Donald McGannon Award. FLAG: these prize claims rest on the author's own CV in this pass — the ASA's own page was not retrieved — so the prizes are carried in this source citation and the packet memo, NOT asserted in the description. (primary source · build store)

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Record CTL-E-6361 · Combined Graph record U-07547 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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