C-CS

panopticon
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Working Definition:

'The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheral ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without being seen.' (Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 201-02)

Disciplinary Definitions:

In his Discipline and Punish, the social historian Michel Foucault offers this verbal account of one of his influential concepts, “panoptic surveillance”:

Bentham’s panopticon is the architectural figure of this composition. I know the principle on which it was based: at the periphery, an annular building; at the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other, on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other. All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy. By the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery. They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible. The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. In short, it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather of its three functions—to enclose, to deprive of light and to hide—it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two. Full lighting and the eye of a supervisor capture better than darkness, which ultimately protected. Visibility is a trap (200) .

It is difficult to understand Foucualt’s concept without the images that accompany it:

Comments:

In Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson demonstrate the pervasiveness of metaphor in our language. One can argue that concepts are metaphoric extensions that become detached from their original contexts.

This phenomenon suggests that some cultural configurations have become concepts. Such concepts depend upon their configural contexts for their meaning. However, since they are not direct references to a specific context, the extent of their application can far exceed it. I offer Foucault’s concept of “panoptic surveillance” as an example.

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