Power of Panopticism Essays - Michel Foucault, Philosophy

Power of Panopticism In his essay "Panopticism," Michel Foucault introduces the Panopticon structure as proof of modern society tending toward efficient disciplinary mechanisms. Starting with his example of the strict, intensely organized measures that are taken in a typical 17th-century plague-stricken town, Foucault describes how the town employed constant surveillance techniques, centralized a hierarchy of authorities to survey households, partitioned individual structures to impose certain behavior, and record current information about each individual. As society has progressed, Foucault explains, these practices have expanded into other institutions such as hospitals, schools, prisons and asylums. Bentham's Panopticon embodies such disciplinary techniques. Inside a tall, central tower amidst the many cells, a surveyor can see all the inhabitants "without ever being seen" (Foucault 376). The individuals are aware they that may be observed at the moment, but cannot ever be sure. This implementation of power is thus greatly effective because it reduces the amount of people needed to operate the system, while maximizing the number of people it can watch over. Power becomes more economic to maintain. Intervention, and even better, prevention, can be exercised. Panopticism is not the link between power and function, says Foucault, but rather "it is a way of making power relations function in a function" (381); that is, power and function do not operate discretely, but within each other. More importantly, since the spectator inside t he tower is not unique but open to the general public, people have license to conduct experiments in spying on others. "The Panopticon functions as a kind of laboratory of power," Foucault declares; indeed, much knowledge can be ascertained by "penetra[ting] into men's behavior" (379). Foucault introduces the modern police force as an example of Panopticism. He explains that the development of a more centralized police force in the late eighteenth century stemmed from the need of sovereigns to maintain a sort of surveillance over all miniature details. With a mobilized, invisible force stretched from even the most "extreme limits", it becomes possible to extend constant supervision "to reach the most elementary particle" (Foucault 386). The organization of the police became the vehicle in which political power could keep a "permanent, exhaustive, omnipresent" gaze on the entire population; a regular Panopticon for the city. Beyond duties of surveillance, the police would also pursue and punish criminals, plotters, and opposition movements as a way to demonstrate the consequences of bad conduct; fear would then keep the population as pure as possible and "accustomed to order and obedience" (Foucault 387). As Foucault remarked, many disciplinary mechanisms and practices are still kept alive in today's modern institutions. The Patriot Act is one example; one highly controversial provision of the act allows the FBI to acquire personal records (such as email, documents, library records) for the purposes of gathering intelligence of possible terrorist activities. Like Foucault's example of the police force, the Patriot Act is enables government agencies (operating in a fashion invisible to the general public) to seize personal information, to enhance their knowledge of each individual and his or her own behavior. As these actions cannot be anticipated, the government maintains a piercing "gaze" on the population, who more and more exhibit disciplined behavior, with the knowledge that the government is watching them at any given moment in time. The punishment for terrorist activities, whether suspected or misunderstood, makes the people fearful of their actions and therefore more on thei r guard. Although we cannot be fully aware of the extent of the government's activities, we can be sure their collection of intelligence enables them to have an colossal knowledge of the population, to use at their own disposal - whether for other activities, or experiments - just as in the Panopticon, government officials are working from "a privileged place for analyzing with complete certainty the transformations that may be obtained from them" (Foucault 379). Today's society demonstrates how these disciplinary techniques are being increasingly implemented in order to fashion a more obedient and efficient people. It is becoming more and more easy for leaders to use undesirable situations (like pandemics, or a criminal population, or international terrorism) as a pretext to establish invisible hierarchical surveillance forces, use "regulation into even the smallest details of everyday life"