Foucault Panopticism

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.

The United States has emerged into a disciplinary society where power is not only in certain institutions or is undivided in a particular social class, but power is dispersed through the people. The oppression by abiding people to discipline helps portray the diffusion of power. In order to analyze and fully comprehend how the United States consists of a disciplinary society it is best if we look through a Foucault lens. One of the reasons why its best to look at it through Foucault’s lenses is because he has always been interested in the way that knowledge and power increase knowledge. Also, according to Foucault, people ae dominated by surveillance, knowledge and discipline.

Michel Foucault wrote a book called History of Sexuality. In Part five of the book Right of Death and Power over Life, he discusses about the historical “Sovereign Power” where one is allowed to decide who has the right to live and who has the right to die. The sovereign uses his power over life through the deaths that he can command and uses his authority to announce death by the lives he can spare. Foucault then moves on to Disciplinary Power where he came up with the “Panopticon” where one is to believe they were under surveillance at all times. Such surveillance is still used in our everyday life such as schools, prisons, offices, hospitals, and mental institutes. Later in his life, Foucault discovered Bio-power. This bio-power

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.

Foucault sees discipline moving from the body to the soul or mind. Through a lengthy introduction that illustrates the torture and killing of a man in public, we see how punishment and discipline was exerted by physical means and in front of a populace. That discipline and punish is now evolved into a form of confining those to a small space behind walls where the public cannot see them. The punishment is not of the body but of the mind and soul, as Foucault calls it. Foucault argues that a new relationship has been formed between the body and punishment by saying: “from being an art of unbearable sensations, punishment has become an economy of suspended rights.”

Foucault in theorizing the relationship between power and knowledge basically focused on how power operated in the institutions and in its techniques. The point is how power was supported by knowledge in the functioning of institutions of punishment. “He places the body at the centre of the struggles between different formations of power/knowledge. The techniques of regulation are applied to the body” (Wheterell et al., 2001: 78)

     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

sense of being watched. This method of monitoring, according to Foucault, was popular and most

dealing simply with subjects, or even with a “people,” but with a “population,” with its specific phenomena and its peculiar variables." (298/25) This is where we begin to see Foucault's concept of Biopower come into play. One of the central themes of Foucault's writing, he defines biopower as "[T]he forms of power, the channels it takes, and the discourses it permeates in order to reach the most tenuous and individual modes of behavior, the paths that give it access to the rare or scarcely perceivable forms of desire, how it penetrates and controls everyday pleasure—all this entailing effects that may be those of refusal, blockage, and invalidation, but also incitement and intensification: in short, the 'polymorphous techniques of power.'” (292/11 For Foucault, Biopower relates to the government's concern with fostering the life of the population, but is also a form of complete control of that population through surveillance or perceived surveillance. Foucault believed that Biopower permeates through the

Foucault is the author behind Panopticism. While reading his article, for starters it was very hard to comprehend what he was trying to say, I found this article very confusing and irritating! However, this article does provide different types of elements that can be used to agree to his theory. In this article, he uses Ethos to persuade people that he knows what he’s talking about. He used Logos to persuade other about the effects discipline. He uses Kairos, to address different points about discipline. He lastly uses Pathos to connect to the audience emotionally to prove his theory about discipline.

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

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

Foucault believed that knowledge is a form of power, and that ultimately, through observation you gain power. This main idea allowed for him to realize that, once applied to the real world, knowledge is the most powerful tool one can have. It is evident that Foucault essentially believed that with knowledge, one can control everything around them. Furthermore, having the power to discipline and society. The concept of panopticism developed from the idea of disciplining society. The panopticon was an architectural design with the main purpose of being able to have visibility on everyone that was incarcerated. Prisoners were held in cells, which surrounded a main tower controlled by either a general guard, or the person who upholds the power.

Sandra Bartky begins her piece by explaining Michel Foucault’s ideas about modern power dynamics. Unlike in the past, power in modern society focuses not only on controlling the products of the body but, rather, on governing all its activities. In order for this power to continue, people are disciplined into becoming “docile bodies” which are subjected and practiced (Bartky, 63). This discipline is imposed through constant surveillance in a manner similar to the Panopticon. Inmates in said prison are always visible to a guard in the central tower, so they mentally coerced into monitoring their own behavior. In the same way, individuals become their own jailers and subject themselves to the society’s whim due to being in a “state of conscious and permanent visibility” to its all-seeing eye (65). Bartky, however, breaks from Foucault’s theory by claiming that there is a clear difference in the disciplines imposed on men and women that are ignored in the latter’s writings.

Foucault's "Panopticism" (1979) is a careful piece that talks about how a panoptic framework would impact culture, society, the political, and individuals. Foucault describes panopticon is to “induce the inmate a state of conscious and visibility that assures the automatic function of power.” Foucault mentions, surveillance has a lasting effects, regardless of the fact that it is discontinuous in its activity; that the perfection of power ought to render its real unneeded practice. The Inmates are in a dominating circumstance that they are them-selves the bearers. Foucault (201, 202–3) also mentions that "He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and knows it, expect responsibility regardless of the constrains of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon