Although written several decades ago, Michel Foucault’s theory of ‘panopticism’ still has relevance and currency within visual culture discourse. Go to the student website and read Foucault’s essay ‘Panopticism’ (reproduced in Evans & Hall (1999) Visual Culture: The Reader,London: Sage, pp.61–71. (PH5DIC_Visual Culture_ Panopticism) Write a short summary of Foucault’s arguments, and comment on the relevance of his theory to digital culture.
I am not sure that I would agree that this is Foucault’s theory of ‘panopticism.’ The idea was Benthams. He was the one that defined the building in which people who were not considered ‘normal’ or who stepped outside the law or who were unfortunate enough to be orphaned could be ‘incarcerated’. Foucault considered this a more sophisticated version of what had happened in plagues. He described how, in times of plague, there was a person who surveyed the people and made sure they were locked up in their houses at night. The surveyor kept the keys. I had never heard of this version when I studied La Mur de la Paste (the wall of the plague) for an earlier assignment. North of where I live in France the plague was arrested by building walls and using the terrain to keep people inside boundaries. Here in Ireland the next island to mine was used as a leper colony. This idea of isolation of disease or wrongdoers goes back forever. My house here on the island was built so that the grandmother could be isolated from the rest of the family because she had TB.
Benthams building with it’s interior tower is deeply disturbing. Those in the cells are continually surveyed without being able to see the surveyor. This is a form of torture but is it any worse that the CCTV survailance cameras which are present everywhere in our daily lives. We are free to move about but should we do something wrong the forces of the law will be able to replay our movements from these surveillance cameras. Just recently here in Ireland a terrible case of two young teenagers were accused of murdering another teen. Both boys lied continually in their interrogations but the police were able to trace their movements on CCTV in the park. They were convicted on this and other circumstantial evidence.
Where the panopticon was taken to extremes was the suggestions that it could be used to give medicines to inmates and observe the results. Or the staff right up to the Director could be ‘spied on’ by the occupant of the tower. All of this is horrific because it could be seen. Today all the surveillance is carried out surreptitiously both with hidden cameras and online trackers. Artificial Intelligence is continually being improved so that we will probably have our thoughts tracked before long.
Digital Image & Culture 