Structure And Principles Of The Panopticon

From the concrete walls, the schematics of Architecture and even the way that we are taught, school can remind us of a type of prison. We are taught by repetition and to regurgitate information rather than actually go in depth to understand the topic. We are ready to absorb information and not question said info. We are like fishes swimming in a bowl, unable to comprehend what exists outside of our own sphere of learning. In an essay written by Foucault, he talks about the idea of the Panopticon. When reading his essay, it becomes clear there are striking similarities between the Panopticon and the schooling system. It is my intent to show how both the schooling system and the Panopticon strip Individuality away because of mechanical teaching. This will be conveyed by showing the comparisons of the Panopticon and the schooling system through the topics of how describing the similarity of the two locations and lead into the course of Surveillance on both subjects. I will then lead into the topic of Discipline shaping behavior and will finalize with discussing how the general architecture of schools and the Panopticon are similar.

For example in the setting of a workplace the power does not pass from the top down; instead it circulates through their organizational practices. Such practices act like a grid, provoking and inciting certain courses of action and denying others. Foucault considers this as no straightforward matter and believes that it rests on how far individuals interpret what is being laid down as "obvious" or "self evident", institutional power works best when all parties accept it willingly. Foucault's notion of power is a difficult notion to grasp principally because it is never entirely clear on who has the power in the first place, once the idea is removed that power must be vested in someone at the top of the ladder, it becomes much more difficult to identify what power is or where and whom it lies with. Foucault believes that we are used to thinking about power as an identifiable and overt force and that this view is simply not the case, because it is taken for granted that the above statement is true then it is much more complicated to comprehend power as a guiding force that does not show itself in an obvious manner.

It is used all around the world in many institutions in the hope that perfect order can be achieved within its population. In the 1800’s, an English philosopher by the name of Jeremy Bentham, developed the theory of the “Panopticon”. The theory was initially developed in a hope to resolve an issue brought in by the industrial age where institutions were becoming so large and systematic, that they were no longer able to monitor, and therefore control each one of their individual members. The theory was originally developed to be implemented in penitentiaries due to the rampant behaviour of the inmates. The underlying attribute of the theory left a large tower being built in the centre of the institution that allowed the guards to monitor any one of the inmates at any given time. The crucial philosophy of Bentham’s theory was that the inmates were unable to see back through the tower so essentially they never knew when or if they were being watched. Due to human nature, the prisoners would then have to constantly be under the assumption that they were being watched so therefore their behaviour would reflect on this and would produce both obedient and compliant inmates. It was then further realised by the French philosopher, Michel Foucault, that this theory could be used in any form of institution seeking to regulate human behaviour such as schools and

“Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and

As the Panopticon is established, a system of normalizing judgements is also at play. With this system, power does not need to actively enslave its people anymore. Instead, social norms are all subjected upon society passively. This is achievable through “micro-penalties” that Panoptic institutions -military, schools, and hospitals- construct (Foucault 178). All of these disciplines affect the “politeness...behavior...and speech” of society (Foucault 178). It is a system of punishment that makes everyone accountable, while rewarding and punishing individuals as a whole. This equality creates a minimum of how people should actively behave. Through the creation of this behavior minimum people become normalized and those who are

The Panopticon was designed to be a circular building with a tower in the very center. The tower had big windows in order for the guard to be able to see everything that the inmates were doing. The cells were similar to a dungeon. They were very small and isolated. There was no communication between each other nor could the inmates see or communicate with the guard. As Foucault asserted,” Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and

“The Panopticon functions as a kind of laboratory of power,” Foucault declares; indeed, much knowledge can be ascertained by “penetra[ting] into men’s behavior” (379).

Foucault himself uses the example of the watchtower in prisons when he describes what the panopticon is. From the tower, you can see all of the prison cells, but the prisoners cannot see the guards, and hence cannot see if they are being watched at any given time. They do know that there is a possibility, and therefore, they self-monitor and restrict their behaviors accordingly. This way, the power becomes as much of an internal factor in the prisoners as it is an external factor from the guards.

The final sentence reveals the Panopticon’s true purpose: a political tool. The previous sentences break down the previously configured definition of the Panopticon and with this final piece, Foucault finishes redefining the term. Understanding that limiting the definition of the Panopticon would eliminate its functionality, Foucault chooses to interpret it loosely without assigning a set meaning to it. Thus, allowing the concept of the Panopticon to be used in other subject areas and not just as a tool for prisons. John Berger also addresses a similar issue through the example of artwork in his text, “Ways of Seeing”. Berger’s description of present day reproductions of images from the past explains how past processes can find use in the present through interpreting the essence of its meaning. More specifically, Berger believes that we can assign several different uses to objects of the past because the information that they provide remains the same even if the actual, physical object does not. “It is not a question of reproduction failing to reproduce certain aspects of an image faithfully; it is a question of reproduction making it possible, even inevitable, that an image will be used for many different purposes and that the reproduced image,

According to Foucault, power does not belong to the individual, but to the system, to the institution. In his essay on Discipline and Punish, Foucault presents his idea of the panopticon mechanism, a mechanism in which visibility is a trap. With little importance over the actual individual in the role of the observer or of the observed, the object of the system is total power over the observed. Due to the unique shape of the panopticon, there are no corners and thus no blind spots for the observed to hide in. The private space is replaced by the public one. Furthermore, as final evidence of total control, the observed never knows for sure if they are being watched or not, as they can’t see the observer (Foucault 200-205). Foucault further argues that this system is followed by any government institution, placing the society under permanent observation. Individuals might try to evade the system, but achieving liberation and freedom is not something that anyone could do. Dostoevsky’s famous novel, Crime and

Panopticism is the main element of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it shows the dystopian life where the government, or the Party has all the power, and they carefully monitor their citizens 24/7 with the use of telescreens, which is a television and a security camera (Orwell 5). The Party monitors the inner party and outer party only because they are what is important, unlike the proles whom the Party does not monitor at all. Winston mentions numerous times “If there is hope it lies in the proles” (Orwell 80). The proles take up 85% of the population of Oceania, therefore if there were to be a revolution the proles could destroy the Party.

The author of the essay “Panopticism”, Michel Foucault gives his opinion on power and discipline in Panopticism. He describes Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon”, a tower in the centre of a room which has vision to every cell, generalized for prisoners. In simple words, it functioned in maintaining discipline throughout the jail. It’s most distinctive feature was that; prisoners could be seen without ever seeing. Prisoners would never really know when they are watched and when not. They are always under the impression that someone is keeping an eye on them continuously and if anything goes wrong, or they make mistake, they would be punished severely. Since, a prisoner would never know when he/she is watched, they have to be at their best. In a

     The Panopticon, a prison described by Foucault, “is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing” (321, Foucault). This literally means that in the formation of the panopticon those who are being seen can not see one another and the one who sees everything can never be seen. That is the most important tool of the panopticon. Foucault makes this assumption about today’s society by saying that we are always being watched whether we know it or not. One always keeps an eye over their shoulder as a

Originally derived from the measures to control “abnormal beings” against the spreading of a plague, the Panopticon is an architecture designed to induce power with a permanent sense of visibility. With a tower in the center, surrounded by cells, the prisoners can be monitored and watched at any given time from the central tower. The goal of this architectural plan was to strip away any privacy and therefore create fear induced self-regulation amongst the prisoners, with an unverifiable gaze - The prisoners can never

"Theories of the gaze and spectatorship are theories of address, rather than theories of reception in which methods are used to understand how actual viewers respond to a cultural text" (p-102). On the other hand human subject is not universal, it is historically and culturally dependent. The concept of interpellation is quite significant to understand the gaze, which is not just individual's act of looking, moreover it is in between the spectator's sustained looking practice in the field of rational meaning making. The authors also explain gaze by the notion of discourse and power, "discourse is helpful to understanding how power systems work to define how things are understood and spoken about (and, by implication, represented in images) in a given society" (p-105). According to Foucault, discourse is a body of knowledge that both defines and limits what can be said about something, but in the broad social domains particular form of knowledge can change the form any particular time period and in different social context. For example, Gene is also integrated with the system of power and ideas about knowledge. To describe this authors introduces Foucault's panopticon concept, where subject are seeing without being seen. In contemporary world camera surveillance, whatever it is turned on or off we are responding