Reading: Marx/Engel’s A Critique of German Ideology (Chapter 1) and Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (section III. Discipline – Panopticism)
Issue: Have we taken surveillance too far?
Marx and Engels are concerned with how the ruling class is able to rule society based on its possession of the tools of production. Foucault explains how Bentham’s Panopticon becomes the architectural explanation of how we rule or in his case “discipline” society. In both pieces the authors are dealing with how we control society. Societies are considered successful or modern if they possess the ability to sustain themselves through commerce or production and if they are civilized, controlled or disciplined. Both writers are correct, they just come to the issue from two different angles.
I was most interested in Foucault’s idea of a society built on surveillance. He creates an idea of an institution that is centered around a building which allows the person in “control” to constantly monitor the “people needing controlling” while separating them from each other and having continual surveillance of them without ever being seen:
Bentham’s Panopticon is the architectural figure of this composition. We know the principle on which it was based: at the periphery, an annular building; at the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other. All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy. By the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery. They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible. The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions – to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide – it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap.
He says that this architectural marvel will “induce the inmate to a state of conscience and permanent viability that assures the automatic functioning of power”. He continues that the “real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation”. The guard may never be looking at the “inmate” however the inmate, unsure of the surveillance, continues to subjected to the guard’s power, his control. The guard has power even if he isn’t there.
It is important to point out that this construct is not only important and for use in prisons, but could be used in hospitals, schools, and any other institution where you have many people who need surveillance. Foucault even suggests this layout could be used in laboratory experiments as well. So that the experiment manager could have constant surveillance of the subjects.
This idea seems to be the seed that grew into our modern need for constant surveillance of our citizens. One only needs to look at how England has grown into a constant-surveillance state all under the premise that video cameras make people safe. You can go to this site to find out more about the history of surveillance in England. In an article written in 2006, the BBC claims that “there are up to 4.2m CCTV cameras in Britain – about one for every 14 people – making it one of the most watched places on earth”. In addition to video surveillance, one has to worry about facial recognition software, internet tracking, telephone surveillance, store loyalty cards, academic records, employment time systems and many other forms of surveillance that the government keeps on its citizens everyday. At some point there has to be a balance between surveillance for protection and the civil rights that are violated by keeping tabs on its citizens. Unfortunately, many citizens seem to think that if it keeps them safe, then it is a price they are willing to pay. However, when you look at the government through the lens of the Panopticon, you have to wonder if all this surveillance isn’t just an extreme way to get its citizens under control. At some point, the government (being corrupt and all), will take advantage of the technology and use it for its own purposes. We have much to fear.
And, in order to be exercised, this power had to be given the instrument of permanent, exhaustive, omnipresent surveillance, capable of making all visible, as long as it could itself remain invisible. It had to be like a faceless gaze that transformed the whole social body into a field of perception: thousands of eyes posted everywhere, mobile attentions ever on the alert, a long, hierarchized network… And this unceasing observation had to be accumulated in a series of reports and registers; throughout the eighteenth century, an immense police text increasingly covered society by means of a complex documentary organization…And, unlike the methods of judicial or administrative writing, what was registered in this way were forms of behaviour, attitudes, possibilities, suspicions – a permanent account of individuals’ behaviour.
foriknow 