the Panopticon IS Re: [ssf] some MORE thoughts by Michel Foucault

[@mparo]

(By the way I do object to excluding mozaz, since Dan has said "if
nobody objects...").

The Panopticon, terrible weapon of mass mental destruction.

Michel Foucault analyzed in depth the nature of prisons and
imprisonment, the concepts of locking up the poor and insane.

And again in Power and the Norm, he refers to the relevance of
"reporting to" (your hierarchical superiors):

........
"3. A knowledge of Inquisition: the arrest of an individual was always
accompanied by a report on his behaviour.

In the 19th century, these techniques were revived according to two
major principles:
a. henceforth every agent of power became a means of developing
knowledge; every agent of power had to send back to those from whom his
power had been delegated, specific knowledge corresponding to the power
he exercised. That is to say, any given order had to be matched by a
report on the way that order had been carried out, the conditions which
made its execution possible or impossible, the effects of the order and
the possible corrections to be made. The chief constables, the attorney
generals, were tied to this obligation of the report.

"b. The Report as a form of the relations between Power and Knowledge.
(If the report had existed before this, it was only as a periodic thing,
as a custom. The systematising, the institutionalising of this report
made by every agent of Power to his superior, is a phenomenon which has
been as important in the history of the relations between Power and
Knowledge as the invention of double-entry book-keeping was to the
mediaeval economy, or the invention of feedback is for modern
technology). Linked to the Report, a series of specific instruments was
introduced for the purposes of abstraction and generalisation, for
making estimates, statistical work, etc. Statistics became a State
science, giving rise to something like Sociology. (Philosophical
critiques of abstraction have often been produced, as has the history of
the experimental method. It is time a history of the administrative
extraction of Knowledge was drawn up).

(......)
"Psychiatry is another example. The power of the psychiatrist was
institutionalised by the law of 1838 which, by making the psychiatrist a
person who had to be consulted before anybody could be imprisoned, gave
psychiatric knowledge a certain degree of Power."


___________


R

shimbo wrote:

> robin&amparo wrote:
> 
>> (Note that physical restraint includes mental coercion)
> 
> 
> "... the major effect of the Panopticion [1]: to induce in the inmate
>  [2] a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the 
> automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the 
> surveillance is permanent in its effects, even so it is discontinuous
>  in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render
> its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus 
> should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation 
> independent of the person who exercises it; in short [3], that the 
> inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are 
> themselves the bearers.
> 
> To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the 
> prisoner [2] should be constantly observed by an inspector; too 
> little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too
>  much, because he has no need in fact of being so. In view of this, 
> Bentham [4] laid down the principle that power should be visible and 
> unverifiable ..."
> 
> Extract from Foucault's *Discipline and Punish*
> 
> ( Translator's Note : Any closer translation of the French title of 
> this book, *Surveiller et punir* have proved unsatisfactory on 
> various counts. To begin with Foucault uses the infinitive, which, as
>  here, may have the effect of an 'impersonal imperative'. Such a 
> nuance is denied us in English. More seriously the verb 'surveiller' 
> has no adequate English equivalent. Our noun 'surveillance' has an 
> altogether too restricted and technical use. Jeremy Bentham used the 
> term 'inspect' - which Foucault translated as 'surveiller' - but the 
> range of connotations does not correspond. 'Supervise' is perhaps the
>  closest of all, but again the word has different associations. 
> 'Observe' is rather too neutral, though Foucault is aware of the 
> aggression involved in any one-sided observations. )
> 
> --
> 
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon [2] a madman, a patient, 
> a condemned man, a worker or a school boy [3] did Foucault ever write
>  anything 'in short' ? [4]
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bentham 
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