In Michel Foucault’s writing from Discipline and Punish, he discusses the concept of Bentham’s Panopticon. The Panopticon is an architectural structure that holds its prisoners in a way that they can all be seen from a central tower. The central tower makes it so fewer individuals are needed to exert power over many prisoners. The prisoners are unable to see each other but the central tower is able to see every one of them. Without the prisoners being able to see each other, that eliminates any possibilities of plotting to escape. The key to the concept is that the prisoners are unable to see if anyone is in the central tower or if they are being looked at. Foucault says, “Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” (98). In this way power is maintained without any violence, but through the notion that you are potentially being watched at all times.
Foucault links the concept of the Panopticon to schools, hospitals and the workplace. He says, “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 is no risk of their committing violence upon one another; if they are school children, there is no copying, no noise, no chatter, no waste of time; if they are workers, there are no disorders, no theft, no coalitions, none of those distractions that slow down the rate of work, make it less perfect or cause accidents” (98). He says that this takes the crowd and breaks it down into manageable individuals that can be supervised. He believes that our society is very concerned with the notion of surveillance.
Video about surveillance:
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