Essay on Foucault Panopticism

In order to understand the power structures present in her description of life as a low-wage worker in Nickel and Dimed, we need to first understand Michael Foucault’s philosophy regarding discipline and surveillance. Rather than perceive power and discipline as strictly political and authoritative, Foucault believes that society is structured in a way in which constant observation disciplines us to abide by social norms and expectations. This constant surveillance is omnipresent in the sense that observation occurs in all realms of society, from education to sexuality. To further explain this idea of disciplining through constant inspection, Foucault describes Jeremy Bentham’s panoptican, a type of prison in which

Foucault suggests that the “panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately” which uses reverse techniques of a prison by using visibility as a trap. (286) The Panopticon revolved around this separation of individuals which in turn allowed it to function effectively. This is so because the separated individuals no longer had identities and their whole time within the panopticon was focused on behaving as if they were being watched even if they weren’t. This is how the space made it “possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately” which is what Foucault is suggesting in the quote.

Postmodernism makes the most absurd ideas come to life, and, in my opinion, the concept of the Panopticon is one of them. Started as an architectural design, it found its way to evolve as a framework for social control and surveillance. Humans strongly believe that we live in the times when the individual has more freedom than ever. In fact, our society is becoming more resembling of a prison, the Panopticon to be more precise, than it was before.

In Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, he argues that Surveillance is an integral part of disciplinary practices. He explains that through a form of discourse prisoners are institutionalized into a way of thinking and behaving while incarcerated. He describes several institutions which organize their space in order to exercise power over their targets. In this case, Foucault ties in Bentham’s famous Panopticon Theory and vividly explains his power and knowledge theory. He says that it is the ultimate form of power and that it can be achieved by rearranging space through architecture, “To induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic function of power” (322). He explains Bentham’s power principles as being both visible and unverifiable. The first one being, “Visible: the inmate will always have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon” (323). “Unverifiable: the inmate will never know whether he is being looked at any one moment, but he must be sure that he may always be so (Pg. 323.)” Meaning that the tower before them has a one way mirror, he can see the reflections of the actions that

A Panopticon is a structure designed to where subjects can be observed from a central viewpoint, but cannot view each other. Why can the Central tower supervise the inmates while the inmates cannot supervise others? Simply because the central tower has the power, for the inmates to be able to observe each other in the same manner would either be inconsequential, or unjust. Foucault says that knowledge and power are deeply intertwined and that both can be used to produce the other via observation, or control. One of the issues that arise from having a society similar to the Panopticon is that not all of those who serve as a central tower can be regarded to as virtuous.

In his view, the very architecture of school buildings, hospitals, prisons, and state buildings were designed to depict power (Foucault 1984, 190). To Foucault, power employed the “mechanism of panopticism” to observe and control (Foucault 1984, 206). The idea of panopticism here is being used to denote a system where institutions use open spaces as a means of exercising power. For example, Foucault saw great similarities in the spatial design of the military camp and high schools, hospitals, and prisons. In Foucault’s words, “this infinitely scrupulous concern with surveillance is expressed in the architecture by innumerable petty mechanisms” (Foucault 1984, 191). These ‘mechanisms’ Foucault refers to here include the unending tests, documentation and paper work that is carried out on students, patients, and military personnel, and it was through this that conclusions were made on whether a person conformed to societal expectations or not. Furthermore, conclusions can then be made on a person’s mental state, guilt, educational level, military competence, and so on. This led Foucault to ask if “the disciplines have now become the new law of modern society”? (Foucault 1984, 196). It is important to mention here that although Foucault viewed knowledge as controlling and stifling, he also saw it as productive and useful, and thus he insists that “we must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it “excludes”, it “represses”, it “censors”, it “abstracts”, it “masks”, it “conceals”. In fact, power produces reality, domains of objects, and rituals of truth” (Foucault 1984, 204-205). What this means is that although power can be used as a tool by institutions as discussed above, it can also be used by individuals to

Michel Foucault looks at the design of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon and talks about how it can be utilized to suite almost any purpose. “The Panopticon is a marvelous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power.” (Foucault 202). A Panopticon is a circular building with a tower that goes from the ground to the top directly in the center. From that center building a minimal amount of people can watch over the entire building because the rooms are designed to be seen into, but not seen out of. So the occupant will never know if they are being watched. Foucault takes it further to go into detail in its uses. Starting with the obvious use, a prison, a

(Foucault 145). As the quote illustrates, the panoptic model of surveillance suggests a kind of hierarchal observation that both evaluates and elevates the individuals’ performances in this social system. Bearing on the datum that this hierarchal observation is provocative. It endows subjects with the illusion of an everlasting eye-watch. As a result, the illusion is constituted as an inner reality that leads the masses to self-policy as the only logical option to avoid chastisement.

In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault (1977) asserts that the “panopticon” as an architectural composition began as a component to keep prisoners under surveillance that prospered as the modern mechanism of discipline, surveillance and control. This mechanism targeted to manipulate the bodies’ “elements, its gestures, its behaviour”, terminating an era of public punishment that directly contacted the bodies of the citizens by the sovereign power (Foucault, 1977: 200). Instead, this shift in

In Michel Foucault’s essay, Panopticism, the effects of making a person visible and isolated are explained. Before Foucault addresses his theory, Panopticism, he first explains Jeremy Bentham’s architectural structure, the Panopticon. Foucault explains the Panopticon structure is “at the periphery, an annular building; at the center, a tower” (184). Essentially, this means that there is a larger tower in the center, which is completed surrounded by individual cells. These cells have both a window facing the tower and one facing away; this allows light to shine through the windows making the prisoner completely visible. Combined with making a prisoner visible, some type of superior must be in the tower periodically to ensure the feeling of

According to Wikepedia, a panopticon is a type of prison where the observer is able to watch the prisoners without the prisoner knowing when they are being watched. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners thereby conveying what one architect has called the "sentiment of an invisible omnisciece. The panopticon was invented by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1785. Bentham himself described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.” Michel Foucault, a French philosopher and historian of ideas uses this term in his book Discipline and Punish the Birth of the Prison as a metaphor

Michel Foucault’s “Panopticism” in Discipline and Punish considers the Panopticon a metaphor for the function of power in modern society. The Panopticon is an architectural concept for a prison that was published in the late 18th century by an English philosopher named Jeremy Bentham. The Panopticon consists of hundreds of prison cells in a circle around one central guard tower. This design allows prison guards to observe every prisoner without the prisoners knowing when they are being watched. This creates a system of discipline by instilling fear and paranoia, therefore keeping the prisoners in check. Foucault applied the philosophy of the Panopticon to explain how discipline and punishment works, thereby affecting the way people behave in modern society. According to Foucault: “He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection” (202-203).

In the late 18th century, Jeremy Bentham designed the panopticon – a prison system which was designed in a manner that the jailer or guard can view all the inmates in their cells without being seen himself. Ideally, inmates were given the psychological impression that they were watched at all times from the inspection house situated at the center of the prison. In the late 20th century, Michel Foucault elaborate on this idea, with the advancement in technology which informs how the state seeks to provide `security’ to its citizens through surveillance. More recently, with the formation of various intercontinental and transnational organizations, the world has now witnessed the rise of the surveillance as accompanied by globalization. This paper describes the rise of the surveillant state in the era of globalization and its implications for individual and collective human right and freedoms, with particular reference to Western societies.

An initial design of Jeremy Bentham, White and Haine noted how the panopticon for Foucault was a metaphor for the architectural figure of the disciplinary composition identified in the plague.15 In summary, the panopticon is a circular architectural structure where the cells are arranged around a central viewing tower in a manner that ensures permanent visibility.16 Resisting any reliance on physical instruments of control (other than the architectural structure and geometrics of the building), the panopticon “installs a repressive system based on a principle of permanent surveillance which ensures the functioning of power”.17 Semple reinforced this point, noting that Foucault elevated the panopticon because it was the instrument of transformation; it becoming the emblem of modern disciplinary power.18 It automised and disindividualised power, with a real subjection born mechanically from a fictitious relation.19 For Foucault, the panopticon was also a mechanism that created an environment that could be used to experiment, alter behaviour and to train/correct individuals. An observer in the panopticon allowed one to carry out experiments on its subjects, study behaviour and analyse actions. The plague stricken town undoubtedly conveyed an exceptional disciplinary model: violently perfect, the effective exercise of the right of the sword.20 It was an image of ‘discipline-blockade’, the enclosed institution established on the fringe of society.21 The panopticon however, was

According to Foucault, what’s the intended impact of the panopticon on individuals? The intended impact of the panopticon is to create a sense of vigilance on individuals that would make them think twice before committing a crime like they would be under a state of mind that they are always being watched.