Panopticism

Panopticism

1) What is the major effect of the Panopticon?

Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. 

2) How does the architecture (institution) create and sustain a power relation independent of the person who exercises it?

The prisoner should be constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so.

3) In what way is the Panopticon efficient?

The efficiency of power, it's constraining force have, in a sense, passed over to the other side - to the side of its surface of application. He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it... he makes them play spontaneously upon himself.

4) How does the Panopticon do the work of a naturalist (scientist)?

The Panopticon also does the work of a naturalist. It makes it possible to draw up differences: among patients, to observe the symptoms of each individual, without the proximity of beds, the circulation of miasmas, the effects of contagion confusing the clinical tables; among schoolchildren, it makes it possible to observe performances (without there being any imitation or copying), to map aptitudes, to assess characters, to draw up rigorous classifications and, in relation to normal development, to distinguish 'laziness and stubbornness' from 'incur able imbecility'; among workers, it makes it possible to note the aptitudes of each worker, compare the time he takes to perform a task, and if they are paid by the day to calculate their wages.

5) In what ways was the Panopticon a laboratory?

But the Panopticon was also a laboratory; it could be used as a machine to carry out experiments, to alter behaviour, to train or correct individuals. To experiment with medicines and monitor their effects. To try out different punishments on prisoners, according to their crimes and character, and to seek the most effective ones. To teach different techniques simultaneously to the workers, to decide which is the best. To try out pedagogical experiments - and in particular to take up once again the well-debated problem of secluded education, by using orphans.

6) List the conditions in which Panopticism  strengthens power?

The Panopticon's solution to this problem is that the productive increase of power can be assured only if, on the one hand, it can be exercised continuously in the very foundations of society, in the subtlest possible way, and if, on the other hand, it functions outside these sudden, violent, discontinuous forms that are bound up with the exercise of sovereignty. 

7) According to Julius (1831) how is the panoptic principle particularly useful in a society made of private individuals and state?

In a society in which the principal elements are no longer the community and public life, but, on the one hand, private individuals and, on the other, the state, relations can be regulated only in a form that is the exact reverse of the spectacle; 'It was to the modern age, to the ever-growing influence of the state, to its ever more profound intervention in all the details and all the relations of social life, that was reserved the task of increasing and perfecting its guarantees...'.

8) Also according to Julius, rather than suppress the individual, what effect does the panoptic principle have?

It is not that the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated, repressed, altered by our social order, it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to a whole technique of forces and bodies.

Read transparent life (exon, 2012) - does social media increase the tendency for the exercise of power through surveillance?

As the author states in the article, today people consciously or unconsciously are  allowing  increasing amounts of information about themselves to be generated and left in the public domain - the "transparent life" of the event's title. At some point, by adding our photos, contacts and friends on Facebook and other social networks, we allow others to access our personal data without asking us. 

"Facebook's timeline and CCTV cameras are simply the start: what trade-offs are we prepared to make between protecting our privacy and freely accessing digital services that purport to improve society and/or our social lives?".

The main problem is that no one is actually watching people who watch us! There is no guarantee that all your personal information will not used against you one day. That was the main concern of Edward Snowden, a whistleblower, who revealed a number of surveillance programmes undertaken by the NSA in order to collect and store personal date taken from people's social networks accounts: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Yahoo etc.