Panopticism

INSTITUTIONS AND INSTITUTIONAL POWER

‘Literature, art and their respective producers do not exist independently of a complex institutional framework which authorises, enables, empowers and legitimises them. This framework must be incorporated into any analysis that pretends to provide a thorough understanding of cultural goods and practices.’  Randal Johnson in Walker & Chaplin (1999) (we as producers, we don't act in a vacuum, we don't just pluck ideas. The surrounding social context makes us think certain things)

The Panopticon design model. Jeramy Bentham 1971.

Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

- Madness and Civilisation - the rise of the concept of madness

- Disipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison - the ways society uses discipline throughout the ages to control us.

THE GREAT CONFINEMENT (late 1600s)

Madmen were part of society. The village idiot, the happy fool. As society starts to get more advanced there becomes a changing moral social attitude. To those who are deemed to be socially use less, or unproductive. 

'Houses of correction' to curb unemployment and idleness. Locked up and made to be productive for society with the threat of physical punishment. Anyone who was deemed not useful, even single mothers, lazy people etc.

This was a big mistake. Deviants and normal people who were accidentally put in their corrupted each other. Now clinically insane people had to be put in asylums that were separate to the prisons. In these asylums people were treated like children. They were given rewards to encourage good behaviour. 


Foucault says this is a shift in disciplinary techniques from the physical control to the subtle mental control. The asylum also means that madness is no longer visable.


The rise of new forms of knowledge, and knowledge specialists. The emergence of forms of knowledge – biology, psychiatry, medicine, etc. Legitimise the practices of hospitals, doctors, psychiatrists. Why is qualified to say what is right and what is wrong? Binary division.


Foucault aims to show how these forms of knowledge and rationalising institutions like the prison, the asylum, the hospital, the school, now affect human beings in such a way that they alter our consciousness and that they internalise our responsibility.

Older Forms of social control- institutional power, were less subtle, public humiliation. You are a lesson to all.

GUY FAWKES- is a great example.

This is the statement against him.

"That you be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution where you shall be hanged by the neck and being alive cut down, your privy members (genitals) shall be cut off and your bowels taken out and burned before you, your head severed from your body and your body divided into four quarters to be disposed of at the King's please." The kings ultimate power over your body.

DISCIPLINARY SOCIETY and DISCIPLINARY POWER

Discipline is a ‘technology’ [aimed at] ‘how to keep someone under surveillance, how to control his conduct, his behavior, his aptitudes, how to improve his performance, multiply his capacities, how to put him where he is most useful: this is discipline in my sence’ (Foucault, 1981 in O’Farrell 2005:102)

The Panoptican- individual cells, backlight with guards, scruntinisers in the central viewing tower. Has a peculiar affect on those who are incarcerated. Central tower is in darkness, and often had venetian blinds so you couldn’t see in. So the prisoner is always being watched, and is aware that they are always being watched. This means that they never do anything wrong, so the guards didn’t actually need to be there. The prisoners incarcerated themselves, from the fear that someone could theoretically be watching them. The inmate would willingly submit to power.

‘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.’ (Foucault, 1975)

Bentham wasn’t an evil man; he thought these buildings could also be used for hospitals, schools or laboratories. Disease wouldn’t spread and people wouldn’t gossip. A Panoptic asylum means you can draw conclusions and data without cross contamination.

This is the exact opposite of the dungeon where it is dark and people are forgotten.

Aims to be productive.

What Foucault is describing is a transformation in Western Society from a form of power imposed by a ‘ruler’ or ‘sovereign’ to… A NEW MODE OF POWER CALLED ‘PANOPTISICM’

Examples in modern society- the open plan office

-’The office’ great example of panoptisim because he’s being filmed. Put under surveillance, not acting in the way you would normally freely act.

-art galleries, how different people act in a gallery. No one tells you to act like that, it is the space automatically conditioning your behavior.

- Open plan bars. Apposed to old pubs with comfortable cubbyholes to sit in.

- Google maps!

- cctv

- Registers, personal info, panoptically make you attend lectures.

- TV

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POWER, KNOWEDGE AND THE BODY.

Disciplinary society’s produces what Foucault calls ‘docile bodies’. – Someone who is controllable, trainable, the docile bodies are better because it is more willing to be obedient. Train and watch themselves.

‘power relations have an immediate hold upon it [the body]; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs’ (Foucault 1975) – modern disciplinary societies.

DISCIPLINARY TECHNIQUES

“That the techniques of discipline and ‘gentle punishment’ have crossed the threshold form work to play shows how pervasive they have become within modern western societies” (Danaher, Schirato & Webb 2000)

The cult of health and the cult of the gym. We’ve been made to be health conscious by the government. Visible reminders of health. Why? The government wants a healthy and productive work force. Meaning less NHS bills and more work done! The fact that they are raising the retirement age because we are all now living longer, they are making us live longer to save them money. They’re not saying ‘well done on being healthy and have a long and easy retirement’.

We are becoming more productive citizens but not for ourselves. This is what the Nazi’s did.

The exercise of power relies on there being the capacity for power to be resisted.

For Foucault, ‘Where there is power there is resistance.’

-‘1984’- George Orwell (book) John Hurt, Richard Burton (dvd)

Vito Acconi ‘Following piece’ (1969)

-followed someone for a whole day. Stalking. Because we are living the illusion that we are independent and control ourselves. We think we make decisions, but we are the object of scrutiny.

Vito Acconi ‘Seedbed’ (1972)

- Made a platform in a gallery and masterbated under it while people walked over the top of him. At the same time his thoughts were projected through speakers so the public could hear him. I don’t like this much, he is weird!

Chris Burden ‘Samsung’ (1985)

- piece attached to the lever as people entered the gallery, forcing the walls apart.