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--Gilles Deleuze In Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault traces the spread of panopticism from its origin as a closed and segmented physical space used to label and exclude criminals and otherwise "undesirable" elements to its deployment as a generalized disciplinary function within the entire social body. Foucault describes the application of the panoptic schema in the following manner:
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The Panopticon defines power relations in everyday life through
characterization and classification. Once generalized, its function is to
discipline the social body and ensure a certain code of behavior. The
efficacy
of the panoptic mechanism is guaranteed through the omnipresent threat of
irregular and constant inspection of its subjects. In this way, those
being
surveyed are in a state of conscious and permanent visibility that
guarantees
the automatic functioning of the disciplinary power structure. While the
panoptic schema is capable of making everything (and everyone) visible
and
surveyable, it remains virtually invisible--a sort of "faceless gaze"
which
sees everything without being seen--while the subject is totally seen
without
ever seeing.
According to Foucault, the prison system serves as a model for power distribution because it combines in a single figure both architectures and discourses: the visibility of prison and the statements of penal law have been inextricably | |
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