Discipline & Punish – Panopticism – Michael Foucault
Theory of Panopticon was for a prison, factory, school or hospital with a central watchtower from which all the prisoners/patients/pupils/workers could be seen. They however could not see inside the watchtower and so could not tell at which point they were being watched. As they could be watched at any time without being aware of it, the thought was that they would always comply with the rules and not attempt anything that was not allowed. The theory was that it would ‘induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.’
This reading relates to the book 1984 (Orwell, 1949) as the theme of constant surveillance is prevalent in the book.However, it is also a concern in the present day. Our personal data is made available for companies to buy and sell online for the purpose of advertising and nuisance phone calls. Although there is no physical being watching us online, discoveries such as GCHQ’s global mass surveillance has made us aware that even in our own homes on our own computers, we are not in the private environment we may believe.
This reading has also made me consider the effectiveness of panopticism when being used in workplaces or schools. While in prisons and hospitals, there are simple rules of what you can and cannot do, schools and factories require productivity and working towards goals. Although this may be an effective method for ensuring no rules are broken, the constant feeling of being watched would surely be counter-productive when doing schoolwork or working in a factory. The only actual example the Panopticon was the Presidio Modelo complex in Cuba which was open from 1928-1966, when it was closed due to riots and hunger strikes. But had the design been followed for a school or workplace, I wonder if it would have been found to be effective.
Although is a hopefully less ominous way, out event allowed our audience to see everything at once. From the space of one room, they had access to all performances, interviews and background information about the cultures. We were able to view an array of content from a range of cultural backgrounds.
Although not a prison, school or hospital as outlined by Foucault, our event allowed our audience to watch any of our content simultaneously. This allowed the event to be more interactive than just displaying the videos on a screen for our audience to watch (although we did have the interviews on loop in one part of the room). As they used their own phones, they had complete control over how much of each performer they watched, and the extent to which they interacted.
Bibliography
• Atlas Obscura (2019) Presidio Modelo [online] available from <https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/presidio-modelo> [07 December 2019]
• Bowcott, O. (2018) ‘GCHQ data collection regime violated human rights, court rules’. The Guardian[online] 13 September 2018. Available from <https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/13/gchq-data-collection-violated-human-rights-strasbourg-court-rules> [07 December 2019]
• Foucault, M. (1995) ‘Panopticism’. in Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. France: Gallimard