dmariel, Foucault

When reading through Foucault, I was startled by the way he discusses such serious and depressing matters. The sentence that I found to be most powerful is “The plague-stricken town, traversed throughout hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies-this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city”. He states that rulers dreamt for this type of plague-like condition in which to exercise their disciplinary power. I cannot imagine any place functioning properly in the way that he describes. The amount of power that he discusses seems sickening and unrealistic to me.
I remember learning about the panopticon in my International Media class last semester. One thing that I do recall is that many prisons used this exact design to keep their prisoners in line. “The panopticon mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately”. Foucault states that in the case of the panopticon, visibility is a trap. I believe that the fact that each prisoner knows that he is constantly being watched is the most effective part. The older concept, the dungeon, would hide the prisoner and deprive them of light. But, “Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness”..The prisoner can be seen, but he cannot see himself what is watching him. “He is the object of information, never a subject in communication”. All in all, the panopticon functions to “induce the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power”.
The panopticon design reminds me of the new idea in the 20th century that with so much technology, we are constantly being watched. At any time or place, we may think that we are alone, making a private phone call or watching TV, but someone or something always knows exactly what you are doing. Are all of these new technologies being invented to watch over humanity like a panopticon? “The panopticon...must be understood as a generalizable model of functioning; a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday life of men..”. Foucault states that the panopticon is not necessarily a building, but a political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use. Therefore, I would agree that our society is no longer one of spectacle, but one of surveillance.