CRITICAL AND THEORETICAL STUDIES

Panopticism

Panopticism is a method of inducing a constantly self-disciplined society. Its aim is to impose a feeling of constant visibility and surveillance on to society or an individual, to eventually create a state of permanent consciousness of ones behaviour and actions. This awareness of being watched and regulated at any time helps create a disciplinary power over ones self and insures that there is no place for deviant. A panoptic environment enforces a mental, rather than physical, discipline. In an asylum or prison, you are restricted and often physically punished.
In the Panopticon there are no such physical hardships enforced on you, as perhaps in an asylum or prison; you are however trapped in a building which allows you to be seen and studied at any time, therefore trapping you in a state of mind that transforms you in to the idea of the ‘perfect’ being. You will not act deviantly or disobediently, with the knowledge that you will be on view, and therefore punished.
An example of panopticism is religion. Christianity inflicts on to docile bodies the idea that God is permanently and indefinitely watching, therefore producing an ideal human that, despite natural urgencies to act in a way considered deviant, will not in fear of being eternally condemned. Religion is an example of a panoptic situation that can begin as a mental disciplinary, and lead to a physical one. For example, monks and nuns have chosen to commit themselves to a sheltered, obedient life under the house of God. You are now not only being registered and regulated by yourself and God, but also by those around you, living under the same constraint. As Foucault states, ‘He is seen but does not see’. This is a perfect description of ones relationship with God. It is also relevant when Foucault states, ‘a real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation’; the dedicated relationship a Catholic may feel between themselves and God forms a restriction on the way they behave. And finally, ‘the first is that of a pure community, the second that of a disciplined society’; here, Foucault comments on how panopticism affects society, creating a pure and disciplined one is also the effect religion could claim to have.