Panopticism2


 * =Title Panopticism= ||  ||
 * =Author Michel Foucault= ||  ||
 * =Date 3 March, 2011= ||  ||
 * =Summary By Eddy!= ||  ||
 * =Summary=

This excerpt from "Discipline and Punish" (1979) discusses Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon [prison were guards can see the prisoners but prisoners cannot see the guards or each other]. Although we read some of this in CRS, the excerpt for SIS 705 is longer. I will focus my summary on the parts we did not read last semester.

Foucault begins with a description of a town's reaction to plague during the late middle ages. This involved imposing a quarantine on the town folk on pain of death. People were physically locked in their houses. While this may seem similar to idea of a prison, Foucault distinguishes from the idea of the Panopticon. The reaction to the plague was an exceptional event. The panopticon, as it is applied to broader society is an all-encompassing conception of discipline. Disciplinary procedures, are spread throughout society, from the prisons to the schools and barracks and everyday life. This way there is no risk of "contagion" by allowing people to collaborate. This also serves to disindividualize power. It does not matter who is watching you, so long that you know that someone is, or at least could be at any time! Now, rather than discipline playing a negative role (i.e. you can not leave your house) it plays a positive role (i.e. you must do this or that). Society has moved from enclosed disciplines (social quarantine) to a indefinitely generalizable mechanism of panopticism.

Foucault draws upon Julius, who states that in antiquity civilization was based on spectacle: the Roman games, Cathedrals, etc. The multitude were to observe something (demonstrations of power?) In modernity, conversely, society is structured to allow one observer to view the entire multitude. For Foucault, this formation of a disciplinary society is connected with a number of broad historical processes: economic, juridico-political, and scientific. ||  ||
 * =Discussion points=

Now that we have read a more complete account of Foucault's Panoticism (as opposed to last semester), has this changed how we view the arguments he puts forward? ||  || = = = = = = = = = = = =

= = = = = = = =

= =