Panopticism

"The Panopticon is a marvelous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogenous effects of power."
- By Michel Foucault

Panopticism is the style of controlling an individual; controlling the way in which one should or must behave. It serves as a tool for discipline and power. Today's society is a society of "surveillance". Principally this surveillance,which forms the basis of power, draws the individual to believe that the world one lives in is one that is continually watching over him.

Marcela Aguero
1102 Writing for second language
Trudy Stone

Panopticism in Today’s world
“ He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never the subject in communication. The arrangement of his room, opposite the central tower,imposes on his visibility; but the divisions of the ring, those separated cells, imply a lateral invisibility. And this invisibility is a guarantee of order. If the inmates are convicts, there is no danger of a plot, an attempt at collective escape, the planning of new crimes for the future, bad reciprocal influences; if they are patients, there is no danger of contagion; if they are madmen, there isno risk of their committing violence upon one another …”( 287)

This one paragraph gives the whole idea and concept of panopticism. Panopticism is a power structure applied to someone or a group of people in order to have control over them. Here, it explains how this idea of panopticism has a simple purpose, the purpose of influencing and changing certain groups of people or situations. The coreof the panopticism concept is the Panopticon prison which is a type of institutional building designed by Jeremy Bentham who was an English philosopher and social theorist. The concept of the design of the building is to allow the observer to observe all of the institution’s inmates without them being able to discern whether they are watched or not. The word panopticon, therefore, comes from thetwo latin words; 'pan', which means all, and '-optican', which means to observe.

The design of the prison consists of a circular tower at the center, from which the guards are able to watch the inmates who are situated around the perimeter. The power is visible and the automatic functioning power is assure. A supervisor is placed in the central so that Prisoners are aware that they could, at anypoint, be watched. This means, that they are forced to act positively, and to do what the guards only accepted. The creator, Bentham, was of the opinion that the design was also applicable to other institutions such as schools, hospitals and mental institutions.

Later, the French philosopher Michel Foucault builds on Bentham’s concept of the panopticon in his elaboration of disciplinarymechanisms. The panoptic style may be used in prison and in other institutions for surveillance purposes. In his view, the inmate is ever visible and is always the subject of information but never a subject in communication. This psychological notion of always being watched instills a sense of discipline among the inmates, as they cannot at any one time be sure if they are under surveillance or not.Foucault adds, "if an individual is subjected to a field of visibility, and knows it, then he assumes responsibility for the constraints of power and makes them play spontaneously upon himself...." (290).

Another concept that arises from this design is the idealization of a central source of power. The centrality of the tower implies that the observer is in a way omnipresent and all seeing. Andby this virtue of omnipresence, the observer may exercise the power of surveillance. The anonymity of the observer amplifies this power hence the observer is kept out of sight of the subject.

As predicted by the designer himself, Bentham, the panoptic concept has not only been realized in a prison setting, but also in real life, especially in the 20th and 21st century. The panopticon was...