Lecture 1; Panopticism

Lecture 1; Panopticism 14/10/11

The Panopticon; Building built in 1791, designed by Jeremy Bethans, it was designed as a prison. Panopticism creates institutions and institutional power. How do institutions control and influence our actions? We act according to our surroundings/situation we are in; we act how we think we are supposed to. To understand art ourselves we need to understand institutional framework. Panopticon was a success as it had an effect on prisoners, they are always on display and aware that they are being watched. This in turn means that they won’t do anything wrong because if they do they will be caught instantly. The prisoner can’t always see the guard, the institution creates the illusion that they are always there and watching even if they are not; the prisoner never knows so therefore always behaves. They are assumed to be there constantly. The prisoner willingly submits to what they are told. The lightness of the Panopticon allows scrutiny and permanent visibility. This allows supervision and experimentation on subject with the aim to make them productive and reform. The Panopticon is different to the Asylum where people are put in there, left and forgotten. The birth of the Asylum, ‘Insane’ people put into asylums, they received awards for good behaviour, punishment for bad, treated like children. There was then a shift from physical control to mental control in modern societies. The Panopticon creates isolation of the individual and manipulation of behaviour.

The Great Confinement (late 1600s)

‘Houses of Correction’ to curb unemployment and idleness including single Mums, drunks, homeless people, the mentally ill, and criminals. They were made to work under the threat of physical abuse to make them hard working. This caused corruption within the houses.

Crime and Punishment

The Kings power over what happened to your body. Dispose of it how he chooses. This keeps the hierarchy and social order, showing people the king’s power and control, spectacular public punishment in old societies. This shifts in modern societies. Society realises it is better to mentally control people, improve them and make them useful, making someone work the way the people with power thought they should.

The rise of institutions causes a rise in psychiatry and people becoming psychiatrists, forming careers and emerging new jobs and a new form of specialists in biology and medicine.

Micheal Foucalt (1926-1984) campaigned for causes and was a radical thinker. He died from aids.

Books;

‘Madness and Civilisation’

‘Discipline and Punishment, the birth of the prison’

Foucalt takes the design of the Panopticon as a metaphor for modern society. An example of Panopticism in Modern Society is the shift from cellular offices to open plan. In the open plan office employers can be supervised and are visible at all times. The manager can see what employees are doing at all the time so therefore employees will appear to be working and won’t slack. As in the series ‘The Office’ the character acts in the way he thinks he is supposed to and the way he thinks people want to see him as a boss as he is being filmed for a documentary.

We are conditioned to act certain ways in certain places. As in galleries, people act differently to how they would normally in this quiet environment. The student, teacher relationship is another example, both parties take up the role they are labelled with and act according to this. The way a teacher or student acts is not there normal way of acting, there is a different role and relationship we have been informed of. We are conditioned to act in different ways according to the appropriateness in the role we have given ourselves. We act differently in different places. The space we are in creates productivity.

• Professional/Personal; we act in different ways according to way we are and who we are with.
• Google maps; constantly recorded, we can look at people’s lives and homes, personal and private lives on display. 
• CCTV; we are constantly recorded supposedly for our own protection.
• Registers make you attend; we can see history of attendance and are judged on this.
• Web History; work can access this, see if we have been doing everything we are supposed or have been slacking off.
• 1984, an extreme example of Panopticism.
• Facebook; we can edit how we want people to see us. Presents every aspect of our lives and we are revealed to people we are not necessarily friends with.
• Disciplinary techniques like the gym help us to condition ourselves to be production citizens. We stay healthy, less NHS cost; we work longer and have an older retirement age.
• TV Advertising created so we receive instructions.

The relationship between power, knowledge and the body

• Disciplinary societies produces what Foucalt calls ‘docile bodies’
• Self-monitoring
• Self-correcting 
• Obedient bodies

Key Points

• Micheal Foucalt
• Panopticism as a form of discipline
• Techniques of the body
• Docile Bodies