The French philosopher Michel Foucault was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. And one of the things that Foucault is best known for is his analysis of the panopticon, or panopticism. You've maybe heard of the panopticon. It's this ingeniously designed circular prison where prisoners in cells with transparent walls are subject to constant surveillance from a guard who sits at the center of the prison, able to see everyone.
while remaining himself invisible. Foucault believed that the panopticon could help us understand the effects of surveillance on our everyday lives. Because let's face it, in the modern world we are being watched and filmed and tracked more and more all the time.
We might call this the panopticon effect. See what you really need to understand is that for Foucault the panopticon is not a prison. It's not a physical building. For Foucault The Panopticon is a metaphor.
It's an image of a system of surveillance that exists everywhere, all the time. Now, Foucault can be complicated, but don't worry, I'm going to walk you through it. Just stay with me.
First, it's helpful to remember that Foucault is not just a philosopher or a theorist. He's also a kind of historian. What he is doing is explaining how the modern world came to be. Ancient and medieval worlds are quite different from our own, and How did that happen?
So let's begin at the beginning. In Discipline and Punish, before Foucault talks about the Panopticon, he talks about a plague at the end of the 17th century. And specifically, he talks about the measures put in place by government authorities to limit the spread of contagion. First, a strict spatial partitioning. closing of the town and its outlying districts, a prohibition to leave the town on pain of death.
Each street is placed under the authority of a syndic who keeps it under surveillance. Inspection functions ceaselessly. The gaze is alert everywhere. Every day, too, the syndic goes into the street for which he is responsible, stops before each house, gets all the inhabitants to appear at the windows, everyone locked up in his cage, everyone at his window answering to his name and showing himself when asked.
It is the only way to get out of the way. the great review of the living and the dead. Foucault describes this as a system of permanent registration. Through this plague example, Foucault shows us how power can penetrate into even the most private of spaces. Under these conditions, power is able to organize and discipline interactions and behaviors that would typically be beyond its reach.
From the perspective of power, Foucault says the plague town is a utopia. of the perfectly governed city. The point of all this is that Foucault wants to show us the value and the utility of surveillance for power. But as perfect as this expression of power is, Foucault argues it's actually become somewhat antiquated or outmoded. This is not the way that power works in the modern world.
Modern forms of power, Foucault says, more closely resemble the panopticon. So Foucault's idea of the panopticon comes from this English philosopher and social reformer named Jeremy Bentham. He believed very strongly in this panopticon.
prison and he advocated, he lobbied the British government to build one as a prototype. Here's a fun fact, when he died Jeremy Bentham had his body preserved in a glass case and it's now on display at University College London. Originally Bentham's mummified head was still attached to his body but over the years it apparently got kind of unpleasant to look at so they eventually replaced it with a wax replica. Bentham wanted to build this Panopticon prison.
His idea was it would have windows on the outside and the inside but it would have walls on either side so that prisoners could not see each other. other, but they could see outside and they could see this tower at the center. And more importantly, this guard at the center of the prison could see in. He could look in any direction and view a prisoner at any given time.
Bentham believed that the efficiency of this model would save the government money on staffing because you would need a very small number of guards in order to operate this prison. The disquieting genius of this model is that because of the placement of windows and lighting, the prisoners would never know at any given time whether they were being watched. And so they would have to assume that they were being watched all of the time.
The prisoners would never know if the guard was looking in their direction. They only know that at any given moment they might be under surveillance. And for this reason, Bentham theorized, the prisoners will behave as if they are being watched All of the time. Here's Foucault's account of this. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action, that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary, that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it.
Theoretically, this could mean that the prison could temporarily or periodically be unstaffed with no change in prisoner behavior because the prisoners always... have to assume that someone is watching them even if there's no one there at all. And this, this is what Foucault finds especially fascinating about this model. Because of the effectiveness of the surveillance, the prisoners effectively guard themselves.
He who is subjected to a field of visibility and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power. Foucault, I think, is both horrified and fascinated by this idea. He describes the Panopticon as a marvelous machine, this mechanism in which the prisoner is seen without seeing. while guards see without ever being seen.
In Foucault's estimation, this panopticon model could be used in a wide variety of contexts. It's not just for prisoners. It could be used in a factory setting to supervise workers or in a school setting to ensure that students don't cheat on a test. Consider that this was a complaint and point of frustration for a lot of students when online Zoom classes were the norm.
when overzealous teachers and school administrators insisted that cameras be left on so that school authorities could see into students'bedrooms and private spaces? This is just one example of what Foucault was talking about and what we might call the panopticon effect. So the panopticon for Foucault is an historical idea, but maybe more importantly, it's an image, an architectural figure of a certain mode of exercising power.
The panopticon must be understood as a generalizable model. Foucault then argues that this way of exercising power has become the dominant form of power relations in our world, and this has everything to do with the prisoners who guard themselves. Because Foucault argues that by using Bentham's model, the world has figured out how to discipline people. And more importantly, more efficiently, it's taught them to discipline themselves using mass surveillance. Think about information.
How often do you need to register for things, fill out paperwork, disclose medical conditions, times when you have to disclose your sexual history or sexual orientation or clock in and out of work every day. All of these day-to-day disclosure of our movements and private bodily conditions are what we might call panopticism. Power has become increasingly concerned with surveilling us, and you have become increasingly comfortable disclosing private information about yourself.
But crucially, the thing about panopticism is that it does not feel like tyranny. It often feels good to discipline ourselves, like winning the award for perfect attendance or priding ourselves on never being late for work. We take pleasure in our discipline.
Discipline and productivity has become a whole industry. The truly amazing thing is that our world in the 21st century has exceeded Foucault's wildest imaginings or fears. Because now, not only are states and institutions collecting information and data more than ever before, but also our personal data has become a kind of currency. We exchange it with private companies for goods and services. We give out our contact information in order to get discounts, and we let...
apps track us in exchange for entertainment. Your phone knows when you go to bed and when you wake up. Your watch knows how many steps you take in a day. We take pleasure in being subject to constant surveillance.
What Foucault wants us to recognize is that the modern world is not just about the emergence of democracy and the invention of human rights. The story of the modern world is just as much about the emergence of the surveillance state. As Foucault says, the enlightenment which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines. And this whole argument takes place within the broader context of Foucault's Discipline and Punish. And so to better understand that, you should watch this video over here.
I'll see you there. I'll see you there. Talk to you soon.