Eddie, Foucault

Foucault speaks of the Panopticom and its unseen supervisor watching over the many isolated cells – the miniature theatres – with no end to their display. He describes it as a ferocious vision of enslavement and a nightmare of extreme subjugation. Sad to say, Foucault’s vision of horror has become our bizarre reality today.

Is it possible that the kind of prison cell described by Foucault actually exist? One where prisoners are without doubt in their monitoring, yet are completely unaware of when or in what fashion they are being watched? Not only does such a sadistic place of entrapment exist today, imagine the reaction of Foucault if he were to learn that people are increasingly eager to subjugate themselves into it. We call the cells “blogs.”

At the risk of sounding zealously hostile against the modern internet, I believe that blogs are voluntary enslavement. It makes abut as much sense as delivering yourself to the doors of the prison in question. It is surrendering yourself to a perverse public exhibit where any and all of the faceless mass may come and view whatever you have to show. The writer never knows when they visit or how many eyes are present at any given moment. The best guess here is to simply assume that someone is watching through the shadows.

That assumption of someone always watching then changes the prisoner: we expect a fair bit of casual lying from the author of any personal blog. The person on display is not always the pure and honest representation of him or herself simply because he or she is aware of the audience. The alerted writer would make effort to lines him or herself with the expectations and tastes of the viewers. In the same sense, a prisoner of the Panopticon would also refuse to be a natural and pure subject of observation. Whether the prisoners ever see the supervisor or not is irrelevant since they know such a character exists, so the action is simply to refrain from activities that may draw attention and keep actions as unassuming as possible. If a prisoner does not know when to pretend and when not to, he or she will likely pretend every waking moment just in case. We know from the wisdom of sociologists that the mere knowledge of an observer or a monitor is enough to alter the behavior of the subject, so a component that should be added and considered in Foucault’s theory is the prisoner manipulation of the supervisor. What constitutes the prisoners’ choices and what they masquerade themselves as are of great interest, but is beyond the scope of this discussion.

What is relevant, I would add, is that blogs add a new form of isolation to the mix. The supervisors here are free to step in, comment and contribute to the performance. That is , the supervisors are free to step in and engage with the prisoner as much or as little as they like. Should they want to, they could disappear back into the anonymous shadows and severing further engagement. The blog writer’s responses would then be like casting stones into the darkness and praying for the sound of its landing. As an author and writer, bloggers are isolated in their own islands, but with people free to enter. The catch is that the blogger is completely stripped of control in the length and intimacy of each engagement from the unseen supervisors – or unseen editors.