The idea is that our creative work is not free unadulterated personal expression but instead is the result of the society and institutions that surround us.
‘Literature, art and their respective producers do not exist independently of a complex institutional framework which authorises, enables, empowers and legitimises them. This framework must be incorporated into any analysis that pretends to provide a thorough understanding of cultural goods and practices.’ Randal Johnson in Walker & Chaplin (1999)
Michael Foucault (1926 - 1984) Was an Activist and was famous for fighting human rights issues particularly gays rights and prisoners rights.
His two most respected works are:
Madness and Civilisation
This surveys the rise of the asylum and psychiatry. The background to this started in the late 1600's. Up to this point in history madness was accepted as part of society.
A different social attitude started to emerge with the rise of religion and morality. Those who were no longer considered 'useful' or 'productive' were stigmatised. The Great confinement was created to accommodate criminals, madman,single mothers, lazy. They were 'put to work' with the threat of being thrashed. To force them to be productive 'House of correction' were seen as an error. They actually corrupted people more so this led to different types of specialist institutions.
The birth of the asylum
At this stage in society there became a definite distinction between Sane and the Insane with Specialists who are able to diagnose the conditions.
The control changed from physical control to where the inmates were treated like children and rewarded for good behaviour.
Foucault sees this as an important shift in controlling from physical to mental/emotional.
Discipline & Punish: The birth of prison
Surveys the rise of the modern prison
- The emergence of forms of knowledge – biology, psychiatry, medicine, etc., legitimise the practices of hospitals, doctors, psychiatrists
- Foucault aims to show how these forms of knowledge and rationalising institutions like the prison, the asylum, the hospital, the school, now affect human beings in such a way that they alter our consciousness and that they internalise our responsibility.
Pre-modern society
Criminals/abnormal/deviants were publicly punished for example in A stocks and pillory in a public area. The point of punishment was not to retrain you but instead to humiliate you.
For example when Guy Fawkes was charged the punishment was brutal. The King used scare tactics to control by making examples of people.
Discipline is a ‘technology’ [aimed at] ‘how to keep someone under surveillance, how to control his conduct, his behaviour, his aptitudes, how to improve his performance, multiply his capacities, how to put him where he is most useful: that is discipline in my sense’ (Foucault,1981 in O’Farrell 2005:102)
Panopticism - Allegory of modern disciplinary control. Foucault writes in 1970. The Design of the Panopticon building designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1791 is a metaphor of society control. When Bentham designed the building he said he could be used for school, prison, asylum. If it was a prison each space is a cell where a prisoner is kept. Each cell has a window so the prisoner is back lit. The Central Tower is where he prison guards can see all the cells.
Modern day use of a Panopticon Building - A US prison
'Institutional gaze'
Presidio Modelo, Cuba
Foucault describes the Panopticon as the ideal mechanism for the functioning of disciplinary power. The Prisoners can't see each other but think they are constantly being watched.
The experience of the Panopticon -Internalises in the individual the conscious state that he is always being watched
You always behave in the way the person who is watching you expects you to behave. The building - A machine which automatically controls the prisoners. They start to control their behaviour themselves and cannot conspire or corrupt each other. Like Modern Society - People's self control is established through mental control not physical.
‘Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.’ (Foucault, 1975)
Portraits of insanity
The Panopticon can also been used as a laboratory where the inmates are isolated so performance can be measured, compared and contrasted.
The building allows scrutiny and its purpose was seen as making people more productive. Assume responsibility for their own actions.
DR. HUGH WELCH DIAMOND.
Inmates of Surrey County Asylum, 1852. Albumen prints.
Royal Photographic Society, Bath, England.
Inmates of Surrey County Asylum, 1852. Albumen prints.
Royal Photographic Society, Bath, England.
•Allows scrutiny
•Allows supervisor to experiment on subjects
•Reforms prisoners•Aims to make them productive
•Helps treat patient
•Helps instruct schoolchildren
•Helps confine, but also study the insane
•Helps supervise workers
Helps put beggars and idlers to work
In modern society a lecture theatre is designed to make students more productive as we are aware a lecturer can see us ll and we are fixed physically in our seats.
For Foucault it was the emergence of a new form of disciplinary control to correct and train people.
What Foucault is describing is a transformation in Western societies from a form of power imposed by a ‘ruler’ or ‘sovereign’ to……….. A NEW MODE OF POWER CALLED “PANOPTICISM”
The ‘panopticon’ is a model of how modern society organises its knowledge, its power, its surveillance of bodies and its ‘training’ of bodies.
The 'Open plan' office is an example of Panoptocism in Modern society as employees are being observed by their Manager and the this make them more likely to work efficiently and tow the line. David Brent in the Office is a good example of a manager modifying his behaviour to what he perceives people want to see as he is being filmed.
Our behaviour is conditioned by Panoptic controls such as the register and the fact our performance is monitored.
Panoptimism exits everywhere in Modern Society. For example:
Modern bars have become more Panoptic as they have become open plan rather than intimate with 'cubby' holes.
Google Maps
CCTV - Not usually hidden as people want you to remind you are being watched.
Facebook - Act like a performance of yourself or how you want your friends to perceive you
The TV instructs and keeps you fixed an isolated receiving instructions. It is almost a metaphor for the Panopticon
We are constantly reminded that we are being watched. We act in a socially productive and acceptable manner for fear of being caught out.
Physical examples of Panopticons Pentonville Prison and Brotherton Library.
Panopticism relies on us knowing we are being watched or monitored IE attendance is a measure of performance. In the workplace there are Personnel records and swiping in system. The IT infrastructure can monitor system performance such as keystrokes per minute and what we look at online.
Relationship between power, knowledge and the body
‘power relations have an immediate hold upon it [the body]; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs’ (Foucault 1975)
Disciplinary Society produces what Foucault calls:- ‘docile bodies' Self monitoring and Self correcting bodies. Work harder and more productive
Disciplinary Techniques “That the techniques of discipline and ‘gentle punishment’ have crossed the threshold from work to play shows how pervasive they have become within modern western societies” (Danaher, Schirato & Webb 2000).
A cult of health and government support of this is not just keeping the NHS health bill down but it is if people are healthy they can work harder and be more productive.
There are constant reminders in the media about health and how your body looks, ads, How to look good naked, five a day etc
Nobody make you self-regulate your behaviour. We willingly allow others to have the power over our behaviour
Foucault and Power - His definition is not a top down model as in Marxism. It is not a thing or a capacity people have but a relation between individuals and only exists when it is being exercised . 'Where there is power there is resistance.'
Allegory of Panopticism
Chris Burden - Samson 1985
Every person that visits the gallery goes through a turnstile and is at risk of bringing the whole space down.
Conclusion
Modern disciplinary society trains us to control ourselves mentally and physically and causes us to become more productive, Panopticism.
•Michel Foucault
•Panopticism as a form of discipline
•Techniques of the body
•Docile Bodies
Handout
Handout
Richard Miles 2011
The lecture introduces the work of Michel Foucault and particularly his theoretical application of panopticism, techniques of the body and ‘disciplinary society’. Funnily enough ‘institution’ is not defined in the lecture, but take it that institutions can exist on two levels, first, organised bodies which have some kind of collective material physical entity, [e.g., hospitals, government, the police] and secondly, organised practices which are more solidly defined around customs and practices, such as the institution of ‘marriage’, the ‘family’ and so on.
‘Literature, art and their respective producers do not exist independently of a complex institutional framework which authorises, enables, empowers and legitimises them. This framework must be incorporated into any analysis that pretends to provide a thorough understanding of cultural goods and practices.’
Randal Johnson in Walker & Chaplin (1999)
Learning Aims:-
• UNDERSTAND THE DESIGN MODEL OF THE PANOPTICON
• UNDERSTAND FOUCAULT’S CONCEPT OF ‘DISCIPLINARY SOCIETY’.
• UNDERSTAND THE FUNCTION OF DISCIPLINARY SOCIETY AS A MEANS OF RENDERING INDIVIDUALS PRODUCTIVE AND USEFUL
• UNDERSTAND FOUCAULT’S CONCEPT OF TECHNIQUES OF THE BODY AND ‘DOCILE’ BODIES
PANOPTICISM
‘Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.’ (Foucault, 1975)
• What Foucault is describing is a transformation in Western societies from a form of power imposed by a ruler / sovereign to A NEW MODE OF POWER CALLED PANOPTICISM
• The panopticon is a model of how modern society organises its knowledge, its power, its surveillance of bodies and its ‘training’ of bodies
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POWER, KNOWLEDGE AND THE BODY.
• Disciplinary Society produces what Foucault calls ‘docile bodies’.
• ‘power relations have an immediate hold upon it [the body]; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs’ (Foucault 1975)
Disciplinary Techniques
“That the techniques of discipline and ‘gentle punishment’ have crossed the threshold from work to play shows how pervasive they have become within modern western societies” (Danaher, Schirato & Webb 2000)
Foucault’s definition of power is not a top – down model, as in Marxist theory, but is more subtle. Thus,
power is not a thing or a capacity people have –
it is a relation between different individuals and groups, and only exists when it is being exercised –
The exercise of power relies on there being the capacity for power to be resisted.
For Foucault, ‘Where there is power there is resistance’.
Bibliography
Please see yr 2 bib,
But also,
Foucault, M. (1975) ‘Panopticism’
from Hall, S. & Evans (1998) Visual Culture a Reader
Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison London, Penguin
See also web sites on Foucault of which there are plenty
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