Discipline and Punishment: Panopticon and Panopticam

During class in the week of November 13th to November 17th, we discussed Michel Foucault’s two categories of control. The first, discipline-blockade and the second, discipline-mechanism

Discipline-blockade is defined as being a sovereign power; it is controlled externally by others. For example, a plague town is sampled as being severed from the surrounding towns and thus easily manipulated by outside powers with little to no independence.

Discipline-mechanism is depicted as being internally controlled thus being more independent than discipline-blockade. This method of power is visible, but unverifiable. A more concrete example can be sampled accurately through Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon. A panopticon was a prison designed around the prisoners being constantly observed and surveillance on a constant basis. Discipline-mechanism is more in-line in modern society more so than discipline-blockade. For example, the surge of CCTV cameras in public places allow individuals or accidents to be observed without knowledge of the observer. A more unconventional example in present day is the Panopticam project. Bentham’s skeleton is preserved on the campus UCL as a statue with a wax head equipped with a camera able to view the spectators of the statue. Eerily similar to Bentham’s panopticon project, it showcased a form of uncanny valley to onlookers of the statue. This achieved the sense of dread the prisoners would feel in the panopticon design, but on a larger scale. Most viewers of the still-life statue of Bentham were either not aware of the camera or were unaware of the purpose of a camera within the statue. This still creates an aura of uncertainty with the visibility of it.