My post is really a follow on from Pauls about the Panoptical society. Foucault's use's the panopticon as 'a diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to it ideal form', Bentham's prison architecture was never really built. It was as theoretical as the Nietzchean Ubermensch, but the reason why Foucualt use's it is because it should be understood as a generalized archetype of modern Power's functioning, it is a way of defining discipline power in the terms of everyday life, that is what is so important.
For Foucault power is never possesses, it is only exercised. It is this 'exercising' of power that is so integral, not whether or not the panoptical society catch’s a wrong doer or criminal out. The point is that this wrong doer knows that they are doing something bad, that they could at any moment be caught and so there is this constant self surveillance. I suppose everybody is guilty of breaking the law, but what the Panopticon does is evades the social conscious, and in still’s a sense of guilt. Bentham’s Panopticon was a reaction to the dilemma of enlightenment thinking, through this simple architecture Bentham wanted to expound social thought. Bentham believed the Panoptical society ‘would mean the greatest happiness to the greatest number’ but it is also can control a greater population. Foucault’s panopticon is an allogary of the modern soul, the prison of the mind. I believe Foucault philosophy of modern power is Nietzsche's nightmare come true.
In Foucault's view the abstract idea of the panoptican illustrated a collection of real institutions that were in the practice of transforming the modern individual, to tame and shape them.
You can see the panoptian at work in culture and the occulant power of television. The body for Foucault is the emblem of disciplinary power. We live in a society where body image and body perfection pervades the media. Self-survaliance of the body is very much at work in the west, for both men and women. All it takes is a quick ‘gaze’ and one can be distinguished as a ‘docile body’ or not. The gaze is very much at work.
Thanks Rebecca. Really good work, and very clearly written. I also really like your examples. I particularly thought your example about advertising was quite interesting. While I always considered advertising to be an ideological tool, I had not thought of it in terms of disciplinary power. I think it provides a good example of how the Panoptican is, as you say, a theoretical abstraction but an effective one. Advertising on face value would suggest that we can attain our optimuum 'capacity' which is to say we can achieve in material terms the mystical and supposed 'body beautiful'. But I think what really is happening is that advertising introduces a whole range of techniques for self-monitoring, which is as you say, taming and shaping the very flesh of the human body. I think that thinking of Foucault in terms of disciplining the very flesh of the body is very good. It would make for a really interesting research project.
ReplyDeleteAlso, explaining how for Foucault not to think of the Panopticon as a literal place is also I think important. The Panopticon is not over there and us here. It should not be thought of in the conspiratorial sense where there are people in charge and pulling the levers. Hence, power is not 'something' or a thing, it is at operation in all of society. While there are certainly rulers and ruled, power operates irrespective of the institutional structure that are in operation. I think what Foucault is doing is much more intricate that saying resistance to power = good and state = bad which is a very liberal way of thinking of things.