My essay review response to the first lecture of the year- about Panopticism, Foucault's texts and how panopticism still plays a great role in contemporary cultures.
PANOPTICISM//HOW SURVEILLANCE REFLECTS HISTORICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURES.
The social theory of Panopticism was
born through two stages- one of design, and one of philosophy. An architectural
concept originally conceived in 1791 by Jeremy Bentham- an architectural form,
the Panopticon, was a building designed to retain social order- “an annual
building; at the center, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that
open onto the inner side of the ring…divided into cells, each of which extends
the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside,
corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows
the light to cross the cell from one to the other. All that is needed, then, is
to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up each cell a madman, a
patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy… one can observe from the
tower” ('Panopticism' in Thomas, J. (2000) 'Reading Images', NY, Palgrave
McMillan).
Despite the original Panopticon
conception never reaching it’s final stages of constructural growth and build, Panopticism,
has developed, in theory and philosophy by Michel Foucault, and is still found relentlessly in today’s contemporary societies.
One such, and perhaps most evident
example of this can be found in surveillance- particularly in Britain- the
country which boasts the largest amount of closed-circuit television
surveillance cameras in the world- an approximate 4.2 million cameras alone in
the country- approximately one for every fourteen people (BBC NEWS | UK |
Britain is 'surveillance society'. 2011). Despite the obvious benefits of CCTV
surveillance- it’s safety benefits, crime prevention etc- it is an fundamental
panoptic device- the psychological control they bear, and the awareness they
bring- producing “the utopia of a
perfectly governed city” ('Panopticism' in Thomas, J. (2000) 'Reading Images',
NY, Palgrave McMillan)- a society of self-regulating, docile bodies in fear of
exposure- of themselves or of their deviant actions. Visibility is a trap
('Panopticism' in Thomas, J. (2000) 'Reading Images', NY, Palgrave McMillan).
However, the panoptic power of such
surveillance, much like the concept of the architectural building itself, is
not in the function, but in it’s visibility- the awareness of the device. It is
commonly known, along with devices such as traffic speed-monitoring
surveillance, that such devices are not always functioning, not always in
order, but it’s the visual representation that creates the aforementioned
docile bodies. The communication of surveillance, that we are being watched,
anaylsed, surveyed ourselves; slowly but surely emerging as an Orwellian state, one of totalitarianism, the dictator and the dictated, of constant paranoia and
regulation. No real surveillance is needed, our minds, this paranoia is our
regulator, a panoptic force is instill within us. A real subjection is born
mechanically from a fictitious relation. So it is not necessary to use force to
constrain… good behavior… He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who
knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power… he becomes the
principle of his own subjection” ('Panopticism' in Thomas, J. (2000) 'Reading
Images', NY, Palgrave McMillan).
Originally conceived over three hundred
years ago, as Bentham, Foucault, and Orwell could foresee, our society is, undoubtedly
panoptic. Society the Panopticon, we the docile bodies.
BILBIOGRAPHY
- 'Panopticism' in Thomas, J. (2000)
'Reading Images', NY, Palgrave McMillan
- BBC NEWS | UK | Britain is
'surveillance society'. 2011. BBC NEWS | UK | Britain is
'surveillance society'. [ONLINE] Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6108496.stm.
[Accessed 06 November 2011].
Notes translated from Foucault’s
original texts.
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