Social Surveillance: The return of
Panoptisicm
The use of surveillance has been steadily increasing in
modern society. A written report from
the BBC this time last year states that “No-one knows
precisely how many cameras there are in the UK, but the estimates go as high as
4.5 million”. Every moment of everyday life is watched, from walking out
of your house onto a main street where the CCTV cameras can watch you as you
take money from an ATM machine that askes you for your PIN number to verify that
you are still actually you, “making Britons among the world's
most watched people.”
Cctv in London
As citizens we allow this surveillance, we see it so often
that we have almost come to ignore it. D.Lyon states in ‘Surveillance and
Society’ (2002), “Now the means of surveillance flow freely through domestic
spaces”, and we allow it to do this because we believe that it will help us keep
people in order. We believe it will help authorities to pick the bad needle
from the haystack.
Methods of surveillance are constantly increasing and becoming more advanced. Jumps in the creation of watching people may be growing quickly, but there are a few examples from our past, which can be linked to this theme of social control. Jeremy Benthams design of the Panopticon in 1971 is a perfect example of how that state can reform bodies that are not acting as the state would wish.
The
main design behind the Panopticon is that all authority is ‘centralized’. It is
a spherical building made with cells on the outer walls that face into an open
middle with a central tower. All cells are individual, meaning no cross
contamination or conversation. This central tower is backlight with guards, scrutinising
in their separate viewing tower. The building has a peculiar affect on those
who are incarcerated. The central tower is in darkness often with venetian
blinds, allowing no peering eyes to see in, but the cells are all in perfect
light, allowing the guards to watch constantly. This is where the idea of surveillance
comes in, the people in the cell are aware that they are being watched, and so
they behave. Making the central tower impossible to see into means that there
doesn’t actually need to be a guard present, as the patient/prisoner will
assume their presence. 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)
Presidio Modelo Isla De la Juventud, Cuba
This is the design model which French Philosopher Michael
Foucault based his theories of Panopticism. Panopticism to Foucault was the act
of a person regulating him or herself, because of the notion that they are
being watched by a higher power. “He who is
subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility
for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he
inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both
roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection". [Foucault 1995]. Foucault saw the Panopticon as a way of remodelling people
and society, in the image of modernity. Changing our society to be controlled
in the masses through surveillance.
Foucault says this is a shift in disciplinary
techniques from the physical control to the subtle mental control. He 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. ‘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). Foucault writing this in 1975 was relating this form of power
only to institutions, unfortunately for modern day societies the need for power
and control has moved outside the institutions and onto the streets, and into
most parts of everyday life.
Disciplinary society’s produces what Foucault calls ‘docile
bodies’. – Someone who is controllable, trainable, the docile bodies are better
because they are more willing to be obedient. The docile body is supposed to be
more productive, and fitter than normal, they can self-monitor themselves.
Modern disciplinary societies and Panoptisicm create docile bodies, which the
state can control, and use for work as they want. For example the recent cult
of the gym; in the last 30 years the surge to be healthy, eat your 5 a day, and
exercise regularly has been trained into us. The government is filling our
society with reminders to be healthy, for example by putting calorie amounts on
the side of packaging, and showing us what percentage of our ‘daily allowance’
we have eaten into.
They want us to
believe that it is in their best interest to help us be healthy, when really
they want a healthy society. As Foucault says in ‘The subject and power’, ‘Human beings
are made subjects’, they are made controllable.
A society that can be moulded and made productive, in our case, one that creates
a lot of work and doesn’t bring in a huge NHS bill.
John Fiske (b.1941)
is a media scholar who teaches in Popular Culture and Media Studies. He says
the ‘individual is produced by nature; the subject by culture’ expressing
similar opinions to Foucault as the body can be moulded and shaped by society,
even if the mind doesn’t notice.
These techniques can be seen very often
in everyday life, for instance something as routine as driving. When driving
down the M1, the road that notoriously always has road works, you can’t help
but wonder if those average speed cameras are ever actually on. But you don’t
dare test them, just in case.
In other writings Foucault discusses the relationship
between power, knowledge and the body. He states that ‘Where there is power there is resistance.’, and the
two can only coincide, power cannot simply work on it’s own. The exercise of
power relies on there being the capacity for power to be resisted. A good
example of this in action is in the book [George Orwell] and it’s film
adaptation [Michael Radford] ‘1984’, where a character rebels against the
control of the government because he realises how everyone is being controlled.
Far before his time Orwell managed to capture how communication technology can
and will shape the society. He created the ‘telescreen’ and the image of ‘Big
brother’, which is now used often in reality television shows where people are
always being watched. Big Brother is what Orwell describes in his other work as
a ‘brain in a bottle’, a way of controlling people without the controller
actually having to be present. Much like the absence of the guards in Bentham’s
Panopticon.
The idea of power and control is one that many artists
love to play with. B.Nauman created an installation called the ‘corridor piece’
in which he has created a corridor only wide enough to fit the average persons
shoulders through it, with a close circuit television placed at the far end of
the corridor. As the viewer walks towards the screen to find out what or who
they are watching they realise that it is themselves being watched, and the
closer they get to the screen the further away they move from the camera
recording them. Viewers then reasct to this strange and clostraphobic feeling,
and turn and walk the other way, knowing they are being watced, as Foucault
says ‘Power relations have an immediate hold
upon it [the body]’. This is an incredibly claustrophobic idea but it I think it proves a
valid point in making people feel this claustrophobic. If they feel claustrophobic
in a closed and safe environment where they are accepting being filmed, they
should feel even worse to realise that that is how our society is built.
Another
artist who works with the idea of control and monitoring human reactions is
Vito Acconci with his ‘Seedbed’ piece. Personally I am not a fan of this
installation but it defiantly had an affect on a lot of people. The piece is
made in a room where a low wooden ramp has been made to merge into the floor.
The ramp covers the width of the room so that it looks as if the floor is at a
slant. However, underneath this ramp Acconci would lay, waiting for people to walk
over him and then he would masturbate and talk to them. Saying aloud across
loudspeakers to the gallery his fantasies about the visitors. They were able to
hear him but not see him, most people probably didn’t realise what was actually
happening right underneath their feet. I mention this piece because I think the
idea of someone actively watching and affecting another person’s reactions and
movements without them realising they are present, ‘Human beings are made subjects’
ties in with how
society is controlled by a power that we never see.
In conclusion it is
clear to see that surveillance is a huge part of everyday life, and
increasingly so over the last fifty years. George Orwell wrote in 1948 about
how life would change in the future, and although the details may not be
correct, our society has defiantly become the surveyed society that he imaged.
The only problem is that there aren’t enough people that notice it. Since
looking into the Theories of Foucault around Panoptisicm and the relationship
between people and power I have realised how often his theory applies to
everyday life. Whether it’s the shape of our lecture theatres that insure that
we listen and behave, or the speed cameras controlling how we drive, or the
cctv through out shops that stop us from acting out of place. We are being
watched so much now, that it would be near impossible to do anything about it.
Bibliography
http://theinvisibleagent.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/first-edition-book-covers/
Foucault,
Michel (1998) The History of Sexuality Vol.1: The Will to Knowledge.
London: Penguin. p. 140
Foucault,
Michael (1194) essential works of
Foucault 1954 – 1984: volume 3 London: Penguin
Foucault,
Michel. Discipline and Punishment. Vintage Books, New York: 1995.
No comments:
Post a Comment