- Project - The great confinement 'houses of correction'
- beggars, disabled - physically and mentally, criminals, drunks etc.
- Project failed: They just corrupted each other more
- Project - The asylum - treated like children, monitored 24/7
Panopticon
- Designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1785
- Originally intended as a prison
- Bentham says "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind"
- Institutional gaze - guards can monitor prisoners without being seen themselves.
- Shift from lower society being hidden away, they are now under constant surveillance
- Idea of the assylum (17th century)
- Discipline through surveillance and monitoring
- Shift from physical to psychological discipline.
- still exists today, legitimised by knowledge and institution
- Paranoia increases productivity,
- this feeling is INTERNALISED and thus encourages SELF REGULATION after leaving the panopticon.
Michel Foucault - French philosopher
- Wrote Discipline and Punish
- uses the panopticon as a model to be used in other areas of modern society.
- Panopticism.
- Transformation in western society from a power imposed by a ruler to - panopticism.
- a similar shift to that of physical to physiological discipline
- The DOCILE BODY created by panopticism
- obedient, malleable
- 'visibility is a trap'
Modern Examples
- Gym craze - live longer, be healthier
- live longer, more productive.
- Nazi Germany - social hierarchy, everyone watching and listening
- T.V
- CCTV (dummy ones especially)
- Bars, clubs
- Police support officer
- Newspapers
My question: Is panopticism false power or actual power?
- "power is a relationship", "where there is power there is resistance"
- i.e. If you don't let it control you then it cannot.
