26
Panopticon. 46 Its design consists of a circular building with prison cells around the periphery that surround a main central tower, within which an unseen supervisor can observe every cell, though not simultaneously. Since the observed within the cells cannot determine precisely when they are being watched, they exist under the constant threat of possible surveillance – the conditions of which suffice in inducing them to self-regulate their behaviour in accordance with the supervisor’ s expectations.
Yet, despite its origination as an architectural design, in his 1975 monograph, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, French philosopher Michel Foucault insists that Bentham’ s Panopticon must not be understood as merely‘ a dream building’; rather, he argues that it serves as‘ the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form’. 47 In Foucault’ s analysis, the physical structure of the Panopticon actually functions as a tangible representation of panopticism – a broader social surveillance system within which individuals internalise the awareness of being watched. This system operates, Foucault asserts, through both‘ the vigilance of intersecting gazes’ 48 and the knowledge that, framed by the construct of the Panopticon,‘[ a ] ny individual […] can operate the machine: in the absence of the director, his family, his friends, his visitors, even his servants’. 49 Put simply, it is the pervasive nature of panopticism in conjunction with the impossibility of determining who, exactly, is fulfilling the role of the observer that coerces individuals into selfpolicing their public conduct. For, according to Foucault, modern power no longer relies on‘ spectacle’ 50 – such as public executions – to encourage civil obedience, but instead resides in its establishment of‘ surveillance’, 51 under which individuals are‘ carefully fabricated in […] the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power, which we bring to ourselves since we are part of its mechanism’. 52 In essence, Foucault suggests that modern disciplinary power is more insidious than older forms of sovereignty. It operates efficiently and pervasively by embedding itself into the fabric of everyday life so that individuals effectively participate in their own subjugation.
46
Jeremy Bentham, Jeremy Bentham: The Panopticon Writings( Verso, 1995).
47
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison( Vintage Books, 1995), 205.
48
Ibid., 217.
49
Ibid., 202.
50
Ibid., 216.
51
Ibid.
52
Ibid.