Summary: Bentham’s “Panopticon” is a ring of totally isolated, totally transparent prison cells arranged around a central opaque point of power: The inmates keep themselves in check. It is a model of disciplinary society: Power is not based on force and security, but it becomes an anonymous, relational machine of certainty, increasing efficiency and economy. While older forms of power were centralised in a single person, panopticism proposes a universal network of generalised surveillance and discipline embedded within and fully penetrating society. The disciplines, and especially the police, create a form of power that seeps into the pores of society, creating generalised, permanent surveillance. With increasing population and commerce, the old forms of power were becoming too costly, inefficient and oppressive; they also relied on deducting value from society. Disciplines order and coordinate individuals, strengthening and better utilising each part, striving towards effiency, creating something more useful than the sum of its part. They are geared towards increasing productivity and profitability.



Source: Michel Foucault (1975) Panopticism. Chapter III.3 of “Discipline and Punish”. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House, 1977.

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