Panopticon

In 1785, Jeremy Bentham, a philosopher, designed a model for a prison called the Panopticon. The defining feature of the Panopticon was that an observer (prison warden) could watch all prisoners without them knowing that they were being watched. This involved partitions intersecting at the correct angle to eliminate shadows, zigzag openings, pods, modules, 180˚field of views. The intended effect was to produce a round-the-clock surveillance machine. And apparently Bentham explained that it was not just a model of a prison – it could be a school, a hospital, an institution. Basically, it was a mechanism.

In 1975, Michel Foucault, a philosopher, described the implications of “Panopticism” in his work Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison: "Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. 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; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers.”

The prisoners are, in effect, disciplining themselves. Because they will never know whether they are being watched, they will always act like they are being watched. This psychologically changes the behaviour of the prisoners.

‘He who is subject to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontane­ously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relations in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection’ (Foucault again).

Foucault associated “Panopticon” with the birth of disciplinary society and the production of docile bodies. Our mass surveillance society has been equated with this concept. One can find much literature and movies warning of the danger of mass surveillance – Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Minority Report, Enemy of the State. And obviously it is a very controversial topic in politics.

What about us? Are we the docile bodies behaving “well” in fear that we might get caught? And if so, who is at the top of the power structure? The hegemony?

But what I want to know is when did we begin to want so desperately to be watched? Is this at all related?

Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.

Please let me go on crappy reality TV. Let me reveal to the world my dysfunctionalities. Let me become famous for the sake of being famous.

Read my blog.

Look at my profile. Look at my friends. Look at my photos. Look at what I did last weekend. Let me tell you what I am doing every minute of the day. Please. Let me tell you what I am feeling every minute of the day. Please. See how popular I am? See how well travelled? See what kind of a person I am? See how much I am loved? Look at what I have done with my life! This is ME. Now you know! ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME!