Panopticon

Bentham's Panopticon

Bentham is most famous for the development of the panopticon prison model, though much of his life work revolved around social reform and the advent of utilitarianism. The basic design model of the panopticon prescribed a tower in the center of the structure from which all surrounding inmate cells could be observed and noted; this tower was also kept darker than the rest of the structure. Bentham noted that this design not only enabled constant surveillance but also made inmates feel as if they were constantly observed, thus turning individuals into objects of surveillance instead of participants in communication. The circular aligned cells around the central observance tower allowed the warden to be omnipresent, or at least seem to be so. This feeling of being under constant surveillance on the part of the inmates and the sense of the warden's omnipresence exemplify the ways in which power seeped into the everyday lives of prisoners. It is this very concern on which Foucault focused.

Foucault's Panopticon

Foucault's interest in panopticism stemmed from his reading of Bentham's prison model, which he

then applied to other social institutions, such as the state, education, religion, and technology. Foucault contended that Bentham's panopticon design brought to light ideas about order and power that have long existed. In the panopticon, Foucault observed that the orbital design, which enabled inmates to be viewed at all times, meant that those people doing the viewing amass a great deal of power. In this scenario, a few people retain power, while numerous people are affected by the manifestation of such power. This same consolidation of power in which multitudes are affected by a few powerful actors, maintained Foucault, can be witnessed in myriad social institutions. Some scholars of Foucault contend that his observation of the ordering and disciplining of society emerged from a basic skepticism about modernist projects and ways of thinking.

Critical Panopticism

Foucault's panopticon reading has been influential in broader human geography discourse, especially in the critical traditions of feminism, Marxism, and poststructuralism. In feminism, heterosexuality is conceived of as a panopticon, or something due to which people discipline themselves regardless of whether their actions or lives are directly being monitored. Many women and gays fear the discriminatory heterosexual gaze, and thus, the metaphor of the closet, in which many gay people are trapped, comes into play. Marxism has been much concerned with the role of state power and surveillance in controlling classes and in consolidating power among the elites, and different trajectories of Marxist thought have expanded panopticism in numerous directions. Poststructuralists use panopticism to understand the relationships between and within subjectivity, normativity, and power, both discursively and materially. These varying critical schools of thought share the concern of how these powers and procedures are spatialized, how they affect people's interactions with and in space, and how these geographies are normalized and become part of the fabric of everyday life through careful study of the discursive and material histories of panopticon organizations.

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