Foucault describes the “major effect of the Panopticon” in the following way:
to create in the prisoner a constant level of awareness that ensures the power is operating automatically. The arrangement is such that the effects of the surveillance are permanent even though the action is discontinuous; that the perfection of power tends to make its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus is a device for establishing and maintaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; or, to put it another way, that the inmates are caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. (201)
According to Foucault, the Panopticon’s mechanism may be used in a variety of “applications” outside of jail, and its results can be applied to a variety of different goals. He queries, at the end of the chapter:
Is it unexpected that the cellular prison, with its set schedules, forced labor, authorities for monitoring and registration, and experts in normality who carry out and multiply the judge’s duties, has evolved into the primary tool of punishment in modern society? It shouldn’t come as a surprise that prisons resemble workplaces, schools, barracks, and hospitals, all of which mimic prisons. (227-28)
Here, Foucault suggests that we have evolved into what he terms “a disciplinary society” (209) and a “society… of surveillance” (217), and that the Panopticon mechanism is at work in numerous social contexts.
Question instruction
Write an essay in which you follow the suggestion posed by Foucault’s conclusion and explain why it is not surprising that “prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons.” To get to an answer for this question, you will need to explain Foucault’s understanding of the how the Panopticon achieves its “major effect,” how it operates as a mechanism of power.
In addition, you will need to choose your own specific example of one of these social institutions (workplace, school, hospital) and demonstrate how you can use Foucault’s disciplinary mechanisms to re-see it and to analyze the workings of power in this institution. How would Foucault explain why so many of our social institutions resemble prisons? How does power work in these social institutions and what are the effects on the people who operate within them? What are some of the larger implications of living in a “society . . . of surveillance”?
