Sally, Foucault

Never did I think reading about prisons and quarantines would be so interesting! I found Foucault's essay, Discipline and Punish, to be engrossing and applicable to the world in which we live. I can now add to the phrase "big brother is watching", the term "panopticon." The term originated in the 1700's and was first used by Bentham. "The Panopticon is a marvellous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power."(99) Whether it is a surveillance camera mounted at an intersection or the architectural design of a prison employing the features that ensure "separated individualities." (98)

Elimination of the crowd - that compact mass - that can cause so much disruption is the desired benefit of panopticonism. If we speed through an intersection or run a red light, we are not one of the many cars on the street- we are isolated and become "the individual" who committed a traffic offense. That individual has no excuse, can't hide in the crowd employing the "going with the flow of traffic" excuse, but is required to take responsibility for his actions alone and pay the required fine, etc. Traffic violators are on a level playing field as a result of panopticonism.

Particularly fascinating is the concept ushered in by Bentham that "power should be visible and unverifiable."(98) Is that camera actually recording? Is the guard in the central tower or not? Is he watching or asleep? The result of such unverifiability is restraint within any society - an intentional by-product of such permanent visibility and unverifiability. In the acceptance of such measures, are the citizens of a free society giving up any rights of privacy? That's a complex issue, but my first reaction is yes, we are. However, Foucault presents the need and effect of panopticanism in such a non-sinister, matter-of-fact manner that it sounds reasonable. "Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes..." speaks of automation of power and that's rather disturbing on some level. For prisons it works, but in society, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the concept. The individual "becomes the principle of his own subjection." True, our behavior as a society may improve because we think we're being watched, but it is at the price of perverting the concept of free-will in a free society. To behave because we HAVE to do so is not the same as behaving because we WANT to do so. There is a certain pride – American pride - in the latter. Fascinating concept - this Panopticon.