A Note on Panopticism

Foucault begins Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by explaining the sense of order instilled by fear in the seventeenth century due to the plague. No one wanted to get sick, and with that in mind, the only sense of protection and well-being one had was to stay inside the comfort of their own home. He uses this tragedy in history to present us with his personal ideology on Bentham's panopticon model. He goes on to with a brief explanation of how the structure actually is in theory: "at the periphery, an annular building; at the center, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheral building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building" (225). With this architectural model, we understand that "the surveillance is permanent in its effects even if it is discontinuous in its action" (288). This "permanent effect" is possible because the watchmen in the tower are invisible to the quarantined. Reversely, the inmates are split in separated into individual cells, unable to have any communication or contact with any other inmates. More importantly, the inmates have no notion of who is watching, and when. For this reason, they are to remain in their best behavior. Foucault then moves on by comparing the panopticon to other institutions in our society today by stating: "Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?" (309). It actually comes as no surprise that governments and societal systems move and work in an invisible fashion, almost as if instilling a fear that we are uncertain and uninformed about. For this reason, we as members of society have to abide to our disciplines and basically play by the rules so no punishment is necessary, what ever it may be.