Lecture 1, Panopticism, contemporary society and surveillance

• 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.