Technologies of Truth: Cultural Citizenship and the Popular Media

Visible Evidence

by Toby Miller

In a world ever more complex and media-saturated, what is the value of the truth? In Technologies of Truth, Toby Miller provides a pithy and clear-sighted examination of how television, magazines, film, and museums influence the way our society conceptualizes such issues as citizenship, democracy, nationhood, globalization, truth, and fiction. Along the way, he explicates surprising connections between cultural objects and discourses, producing a new meeting ground for cultural, social, and political theory. Miller examines a remarkable range of sources and topics, including naked footballers and the male sporting body, the cultural imperialism of television, Rodney King, the television series Mission: Impossible, Superman and Lois Lane, Harvey Milk, and Frederick Wiseman's Titicut Follies. The book covers a variety of genres and technologies that alter our understanding of the real versus the invented, fact versus fiction.

Central to Miller's argument is his concept of "cultural citizenship". Based in part on Michel Foucault's idea of governmentality, cultural citizenship is made up of the seemingly indirect public processes -- sports, radio, film, and arts policies -- by which members of society are drawn into postindustrial state structures. Miller also proposes a program through which intellectuals might play a more active role in studying, criticizing, and participating in the formation of governmental cultural policy, implementing his vision of what cultural citizenship should be.

In Technologies of Truth, cultural studies meet the social sciences with a unique combination of rigor and politics. In a writing style that is spicy, personal, and full of incident, Miller turns the ephemera of everyday life into an entertaining and necessary critique of our times.

Genres: Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Chair of the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at University of California, Riverside. His research interests include film and TV, radio, new media, class, gender, race, sport, cultural theory, citizenship, social theory, cultural studies, political theory, cultural labor, and cultural policy. He is editor of Television & New Media and Social Identities, editor of the book series Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Lang); he has also been chair of the International Communication Association Philosophy of Communication Division; editor of Journal of Sport & Social Issues; and co-editor of Social Text, the Blackwell Cultural Theory Resource Centre, and the book series Sport and Culture (Minnesota) Film Guidebooks (Routledge) and Cultural Politics (Minnesota). Miller has taught media and cultural studies across the humanities and social sciences at the following schools: University of New South Wales, Griffith University, Murdoch University, and NYU.