8/11/10

Panopticism

Surveillance and monitoring

Control and power

Disciplinary

Self regulation

Power/knowledge/the body

Panoptic structures/panopticism

power

Foucauldian terminology

Disciplinary power

- using discipline to gain obedience

Disciplinary society led to a change from physical coercion to mental coercion

- became a more efficient form of control

Foucault saw the Panopticon as a metaphor for surveillance in contemporary society. But society isn’t a pure

form of Panopticon as society is a collective, not isolated individuals

Power/knowledge/body

- institutional gaze

- physical: asylums, prisons

- social: any institution with hierarchy, eg family, marriage, army, work, schools

- system of control is mental but a physical effect, ie changes in appearance or behaviour to suit the idea of

the control

Panoptic society

- initial control is the fear of punishment

- eventually becomes ‘natural’ behaviour that would seem strange to question and no threat is needed.

Power is a relationship.

- other theories (Marxism, Feminism) consider the power of one group over another.

- but Foucault says power is a relationship between 2 parties

- power only exists if 1 party “agrees” or “accepts” to be subservient

- but the power isn’t there if either party, especially the subservient one, doesn’t engage with the

relationship.

- power introduces the possibility of resistance, ie not accepting the subservience.

Knowledge

- Foucault charted the rise of the concept of madness, ie what is normal/abnormal.

- the concept of madness only arose when people started to be classified as useful to society or not.

- a socio-historic moment

- new status was given to those who can judge “usefulness”, eg psychiatrists

Docile bodies

- a ‘body’ that’s easily controlled, a person that takes instruction/is controlled

- more productive than a ‘normal’ person, eg a soldier

- less individual, eg the population under Nazism.

Randal Johnson quote:

- independence can only be judges within the rules and boundaries of the institution or society framework

we are in, eg within an educational framework, within white, Western society.

Jeremy Bentham

-devised the Panopticon but never saw it realised

- interested in perfect functioning building, something that ideally suited its purpose