Thursday 10 March 2011

lecture notes 4.11.10

Panoptisism

Punishment
Prisons
Deviant/normal

The panoptican – building (school, army, hospital)

Michael Foucault 1926-1984
Madness and civilisation
Discipline and punish – the birth of the prison
The great confinement (late 1600’s)
Houses of correction to curb unemployment and idleness
All people deemed to be socially useless – mad, tramps, criminals, unmarried pregnant women, drunks, unemployed – locked away in confinement.
Made to be useful – put to work, teaching them how to be a ‘normal’ person in society, repress devients.
Operated for a long time then seen as a gross error
Started to corrupt each other
Legislation to segregate them
Asylum – disciplinary techniques were different, if good were rewarded
New forms of knowledge emerge.
Specialists have super human powers to decide fate of people
The pillary – put in front of the people to have stuff thrown at them etc
Disciplinary society and disciplinary power

Panopticon – a round building, illuminated by windows, going to be a prison
Each prisoner shut away separately, everyone constantly visible – always being watched, self- regulate behaviour.

Panopticism
Allows scrutiny
Allows supervisor to experiment on subjects
Aims to make them productive
Reforms prisoners, helps treat patients
Open plan areas – easy to control, keep an eye on people, people constantly watched.
Google street
Everyone everywhere under surveillance and scrutiny
CCTV – classic example of panoptic gaze
Always stay in line cos you know your being watched
Disciplinary society produces what Foucault calls – docile bodies
Self- monitoring, self- correcting, obedient bodies.
TV – classic way of creating docility
Bruce Nauman – video corridor pieces (late 1960’s)
Michel Foucault
Panopticism as a form of discipline
Techniques of the body
Docile bodies

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