BITSG539

Sushant Kishore

Dated: November 16, 2014

Agenda 12: Michel Foucaults Panopticism

Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted
distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes. (Foucault 202)

Foucault describes how power functions differently in a panoptic society than the ancient regime.
While in the ancien regime the body was subjected to torture and the rituals and ceremonies
around the torture displayed the power held by the sovereign, in the panoptic society no
individual holds power. Every body the observer or the observed- is subjected to a similar
disciplinary gaze and is organized in a similar hierarchy. The power is held by the state/system
and each individual is replaceable without affecting the power structure.
The mechanics of discipline in which everyone is observed and analyzed is embodied in a
building that makes these operations easy to perform the Panopticon. It developed out of the
need for surveillance in the city suffering from plague. Plague measures were needed to protect
society: the panopticon allowed power to operate efficiently. It is a functional and subtle
permanent structure.
The transition from ancien regime to a panoptic one, where every institution prison, military,
hospital and schools share a common structure, represents the move to a society in which
discipline is based on observation and examination.

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Works Cited
Foucault, Michel. Panopticism. Discipline and Punish. London: Penguin, 1991. Print.