1. An area where everything is visible.
2. A prison so constructed that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times, without being seen.
Originally proposed by Jeremy Bentham in 1791. Aims: • Understanding the principles of the Panoptison • Concept of “Discipilanary Society”- Michel Foucault
The idea that discipilanary society is a way of making individuals ‘productive’ and ‘useful’- “Docile Bodies” • The Panopticon bulding – 1790 designed by Jeremy Bentham 1600 – The Great Confinement In the 1600s ‘mad’ men were tolerated by the society, they were weird, stupid and funny but a part of the society. However soon they became a threat because they were seen as a ‘useless’ citizens. They weren’t giving something back to the society therefore these people got treated very differently than the norms. Soon hospital was built for these ‘useless’ people to reform them, they were made to work on a manual labour- if they didn’t then they would be beaten by the warden with a stick.
Contrastingly these institutions didn’t work as all these ‘useless’ people were negetivley influencing each other so the matter was getting worse. Therefore the government built separate insittuions for these ‘useless’ people catergorizing them. • Criminals were thrown in the prison. • Reform school for orphans. • Mental people in an asylum The main goal was to reform specific abnormalities- taking control over specific ‘problems’ and trying to make these people useful to the society.
In this time modern hospital made doctors very powerful because they were almost seen as gods who could treat people and make them well as well as psychologists. They had the unquestionable authority- therefore people just submitted to their authority, people started to control themselves within an institutional reform. In those days punishments were as visible as they could be as if it was a warning to those people who were outside the norm. Showing the outcome in front of everyone was creating authority that these punishers were more powerful than the normal people as they had the power to treat these useless people. Discipline was aimed at how to keep someone under control, his behavior, to multiply capacities, how to put him where he is most useful.
A contemporary example of a Panoptic power structure could be the soon to be implemented National I.D. cards under Labour government. These cards collect the information and photo identities of every British citizen in the country. This is Panoptic in the sense that the Government would take control of these records of us and be able to survey and update these records. The idea that these records exist could force people to inhibit their behaviour accordingly, a process that Foucault refers to as "a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates be caught up in a power situation of which they themselves are the bearers." This I.D. card scheme would also have this impact, creating a nation of 'docile bodies' from which, the Government can develop it's economy and production.
Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, a building with a tower at the centre from which it is possible to see each cell in which a prisoner or schoolboy is incarcerated. Visibility is a trap. Each individual is seen but cannot communicate with the warders or other prisoners. The crowd is abolished. The panopticon induces a sense of permanent visibility that ensures the functioning of power. Bentham decreed that power should be visible yet unverifiable. The prisoner can always see the tower but never knows from where he is being observed. Panopticon is a conscious state that one is always being observed therefore the resistant behavious gets nullified by self mental control which reforms prisoners, allows scrunity and aims to make them productive .
However when this building was designed the aims of the building was rather different than the way Michel Foucault used it. The role of Panopticon was amplification; although it arranges power, although it is intended to make it more economic and more effective, it does so not for power itself, nor for the immediate salvation of a threatened society: its aim is to strengthen the social forces - to increase production, to develop the economy, spread education, raise the level of public morality; to increase and multiply. In many ways, this is the heart of the book.
For Foucault, the panopticon represents the way in which discipline and punishment work in modern society. It is a diagram of power in action because by looking at a plan of the panopticon, one realizes how the processes of observation and examination operate.
The Panopticon is a model of how modern society organises its knowledge, its power, its survelliance of bodies and its ‘training’ of bodies. This is how society mentally reforms us. For example in todays society offices are the space of anxiety because every action is visible and makes the employee aware that they are being watched!
“And beneath the lapses of memory, the illusions, and the lies that would have us believe that there is a ternary order, a pyramid of subordinations, beneath the lies that would have us believe that the social body is governed by either natural necessities or functional demands, we must rediscover the war that is still going on, war with all its accidents and incidents. Why do we have to rediscover war? Well, because this ancient war is a [ . . . ] permanent war. We really do have to become experts on battles, because the war has not ended, because preparations are still being made for the decisive battles, and because we have to win the decisive battle. In other words, the enemies who face us still pose a threat to us, and it is not some reconciliation or pacification that will allow us to bring the war to an end. It will end only to the extent that we really are the victors.”
Michel Foucault; Society Must Be Defended