Foucault on Good Old Fashioned Panoptics

"Pan" meaning "all" and "Optic" meaning "seeing." In our current political climate, its enough to send shivers down my back, but I digress, more on this later.

Foucault, Michel. 1975. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House Publishers.

Foucault's theory on panoptics starts out with a small history on the "plague mentality," that is, what do you do when the plague comes to town?

First, you, the governing body, must establish a strict spatial partitioning of the town. That's a fancy way of saying you must shut the town and its outlying districts down, establish a prohibition on leaving town under the threat of death, kill all stray animals, divide the town into distinct quarters, and place all the streets under surveillance to ensure compliance (p. 195). Here, every family must insure its own provisions, and interaction with others must be curbed completely. If this is not possible, leaving must be worked out to insure that no meeting or exchange takes place with others. Only those in charge are able to move freely. Foucault calls this a "segmented, immobile, frozen space"(p. 195).

Why is this necessary? To prevent the spread of the plague obviously. This seems unfair if you don't have the plague, but you must, as a loyal citizen, give up certain rights at times for the greater good of society right? Ok, fair enough. How very pro-social of you.

Foucault goes on to explain exactly how this system of surveillance and enforcement works. It starts of with a command of "good officers." Next there is a permanent registration of everyone in town; name, age, birth date, etc. There are daily roll calls and a chain of command is established. Lower ranks go door to door doing role call and then report to the higher ranks all deaths, illnesses, complaints and irregularities of the day. These officers have complete backing and authority of the established magistrate. Medical attention lies solely with the magistrate. No physician may treat patients unless they have been appointed by the governing body. In short, there is what Foucault calls "the penetration of regulation into even the smallest details of everyday life through the mediation of the complete hierarchy" (p. 198). Sounds to me like what we now call "martial law" or "operating under emergency powers." But hey, we're humans and our greatest instinct is to survive. From a purely objective point of view, I find it fascinating that we come up with such elaborate schemes! One where we as humans are simultaneously struggling with our need for personal liberty and our need to be a part of the whole. We give up our liberties for the greater good of society. Sometimes, as in the case of the plague, it is necessary. Other times we worry about giving up our liberties for the greater good because we know that the potential for great abuse of power exists. But, that is a horse of a different color.

Foucault said all of that to talk about this: Bentham's "panopticon." This is the original centralized guard tower in prison, that allows a 360 degree level of surveillance of inmates. The guard is in the dark so there exists a certain level of paranoia within the inmates. They know they could be under surveillance at any time. In truth, by this model, the guard doesn't even have to be in the tower. The point is, that because the tower is dark, permitting the guard to see out with perfect clarity and preventing the inmates from seeing in, the inmate never really knows if he is being watched, which means that he must act as if he is at all times. Rather brilliant from a perspective of social control. Foucault even termed this the "perfection of power" (p. 201).

It is perfect. So perfect that it is still in full use today, but on a MASSIVE scale. I keep thinking of the "photo cameras" on the stop lights at intersections. What if due to budget cuts, certain cities could no longer afford to keep them running? The mere fact that they are there causes almost every driver to slow down because the perceived threat of a traffic conviction (read $400 fines, car insurance going up, revocation of licence to drive) exists. The point is that we don't even know if the photo enforcement cameras are in fact running, we do know however, that we don't want to risk it, therefore we are forced to govern ourselves as if we were being watched, weather we are or not becomes immaterial! A perfect and perfected tool for the governing body to exercise social control of the masses by making us govern ourselves; less work and more money for them in the end I suppose. The cherry on top of this little sunday is that we in fact begin to want this order so that we begin to actually govern ourselves and police others to boot. Amazing! This is exactly what Foucault means when he calls this panoptic system a "marvellous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it too, produces homogeneous effects of power" (p.202).

The other part of this chapter that interested me in terms of social control is Foucault's foray into how panoptic techniques are combined and generalized so that they "attain a level at which the formation of knowledge and the increase of power regularly reinforce one another in a circular process" (p. 224) Say what? Now we throw technology into the mix. Technology aids in the formation of knowledge which gives rise to more power.

But how? The time that Foucault is speaking of now is the 19th century. Inventions like the microscope, the steam engine, the blast furnace and other technologies of industry, agriculture, and economics are on the rise. With new technology comes the ability for new investigations in the sciences. This according to Foucault is what gives rise to the more concrete formation of "clinical medicine, psychiatry, child psychology, educational psychology, and the rationalization of labor" as scientific disciplines. When a discipline becomes scientific, it also becomes endowed with authority because it is now "provable." We are no longer operating on leaps of faith here. Just look in the microscope and see for yourself! Investigation into the disciplines gave rise to "great empirical knowledge that covered the things of the world and transcribed them into the ordering of an indefinite discourse that observes, describes, and establishes the 'facts',"(p.226).

So, it follows that, whoever has the privilege of establishing the facts will be endowed with great power because they set the reference point for everybody in society. With the establishment of the facts comes too, the establishment of how to deal with the facts. With the new technology of investigation and the ability to "prove" things scientifically also comes the ability to curb other ways of thinking about things because the disciplines now have the ability to wave their "findings" in everybody's face and quell any question. Of this, Foucault seems a bit paranoid. With good reason! In a "free" society, a "democratic experiment," the need for opposing viewpoints and public discourse is essential! Science provides us many useful facts of course, but as with everything else, the potential for abuse of power is very real. People can always fit their findings to an already set agenda right? I suppose paranoia is a bit contagious. Do I hear H1N1 anybody?