Lecture 1. Panopticism.

Lecture 1

Panopticism

Institution 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)

Lecture Aims

·      Understand the principles of the Panopticon of ‘Disciplinary society’

·      Understanding Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘Disciplinary society

·      Consider the idea that disciplinary society is a way of making individuals productive and useful

·      Understand the Foucault’s idea of techniques of the body and docile bodies

Michel Foucault

(1926-1984)

-       Madness and civilisation  - surveys the rise of asylum and psychiatry

-       Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison – surveys the prison mainly the modern prison

-       The Great Confinement (late 1600’s)

Those who couldn’t of wouldn’t work were stigmisised and thrown into th great confiment, usually mentally ill, single mothers, lazy people etc. in these house people were put to work and forced.

-       ‘Houses of correction’ to curb unemployment and idleness

Houses of protection rather than make people productive corrupted people more insane made the sane people more deviant

Specialist institutions were born and asylums were invented.

The birth of the asylum.

Asylums were different to houses of correction, inside asylums inmates were controlled in different ways, not shackled and beaten to work, instead they were treated like children and rewarded if they did things right.

This was the moment for fuco when they realise there are better ways to control people, with the birth of the asylum there was a shift from controlling people physically to mentally

-       The emergence of forms of knowledge –biology, psychiatry, medicine, etc. – legitimises the practises of hospitals, doctors, and psychiatry’s.

Those who were abnormal, were punished in spectacular ways, in public embarrassment, these weren’t a personal attack on an individual these were to show others what would happen.

Disciplinary SOCIETY

And

Disciplinary POWER

Discipline Is a technology is a technique and its not just about showing your power to the world its about controlling your conduct and behaviour and how to improve your performance and making yourself useful to society.

Jeremy Bentham’s design

the Panopticon

proposed 1791

IMAGE

Multitude of functions, a school an asylum, a prison.

Each cell had a wall with a window in the back so the cell was constantly backlit

A central tower with guards keeping watch over.

‘Millbank Prison’

Institutional ‘gaze’

It is described as the ideal mechanism for the institutional

Each prisoner cannot see each other but there always being watched, but they never know if they in fact are, the central tower wasn’t lit so they didn’t know if there were guards in their.

‘knowing you could be being watched but never knowing if your actually being watched has a peculiar feeling, it makes the person being watched act as the watcher would want them to act.

This automatically makes the building work exactly how they want it to act.

This stopped people from trying to escape, this eventually meant there would be no need for guards to be in the tower.

-       Allows scrutiny

-       Allows supervisor to experiment on subjects

-       Aims to make the productive

The way lectures work, with the tutor sat  observing us all, and us only looking at him and knowing we are being watched then makes us do work more.

-       Reforms prisoners

-       Helps treat patients

-       Helps instruct school children

-       Helps confine but also study the insane

-       Helps supervise workers

-       what Foucault is describing is a transformation in weterns societies from a form of power imposed by a ruler of sovereign to…. A NEW MODE OF POWER CALLED PANOPTICISM

Open plan office isn’t just a trendy design, its efficient for the boss, it allows the boss to see if people are on the internet and not doing work, this makes people realise there being watched there stopping them from not working.