Panopticon
Encyclopedia
The Panopticon is a type of building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham
in the late eighteenth century. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether or not they are being watched. The design comprises a circular structure with an "inspection house" at its centre, from which the managers or staff of the institution are able to watch the inmates, who are stationed around the perimeter. Bentham conceived the basic plan as being equally applicable to hospitals, schools, poorhouses, and madhouses, but he devoted most of his efforts to developing a design for a Panopticon prison
, and it is his prison which is most widely understood by the term.
Bentham himself described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example."
In 1786-7, Bentham travelled to Krichev in White Russia
to visit his brother, Samuel
, who was engaged in managing various industrial and other projects for Prince Potemkin. It was Samuel (as Jeremy later repeatedly acknowledged) who conceived the basic idea of a circular building at the hub of a larger compound as a means of allowing a small number of managers to oversee the activities of a large and unskilled workforce. Jeremy began to develop this model, particularly as applicable to prisons, and outlined his ideas in a series of letters sent home to his father in England. He supplemented the supervisory principle with the idea of contract management; that is, an administration by contract as opposed to trust, where the director would have a pecuniary interest in lowering the average rate of mortality.
The Panopticon was intended to be cheaper than the prisons of his time, as it required fewer staff; "Allow me to construct a prison on this model," Bentham requested to a Committee for the Reform of Criminal Law, "I will be the gaoler. You will see ... that the gaoler will have no salary — will cost nothing to the nation." As the watchmen cannot be seen, they need not be on duty at all times, effectively leaving the watching to the watched. According to Bentham's design, the prisoners would also be used as menial labour walking on wheels to spin looms or run a water wheel. This would decrease the cost of the prison and give a possible source of income.
. In 1791, he published the material he had written as a book, although he continued to refine his proposals for many years to come. He had by now decided that he wanted to see the prison built: when finished, it would be managed by himself as contractor-governor, with the assistance of Samuel. After unsuccessful attempts to interest the authorities in Ireland and revolutionary France, he started trying to persuade the prime minister, William Pitt
, to revive an earlier abandoned scheme for a National Penitentiary in England, this time to be built as a Panopticon. He was eventually successful in winning over Pitt and his advisors, and in 1793, was paid £2000 for preliminary work on the project.
The intended site was that authorised (under an act of 1779) for the earlier Penitentiary, at Battersea
Rise; but the new proposals ran into technical legal problems and objections from the local landowner, Earl Spencer
. Other sites were considered, including one at Hanging Wood, near Woolwich
, but all proved unsatisfactory. Eventually Bentham turned to a site at Tothill Fields, near Westminster
. Although this was common land, with no landowner, there were a number of parties with interests in it, including Earl Grosvenor
, who owned a house on an adjacent site and objected to the idea of a prison overlooking it. Again, therefore, the scheme ground to a halt. At this point, however, it became clear that a nearby site at Millbank
, adjoining the Thames
, was available for sale, and this time things ran more smoothly. Using government money, Bentham bought the land on behalf of the Crown for £12,000 in November 1799.
From his point of view, the site was far from ideal, being marshy, unhealthy, and too small. When he asked the government for more land and more money, however, the response was that he should build only a small-scale experimental prison - which he interpreted as meaning that there was little real commitment to the concept of the Panopticon as a cornerstone of penal reform. Negotiations continued, but in 1801 Pitt resigned from office, and in 1803 the new Addington
administration decided not to proceed with the project. Bentham was devastated, saying "they have murdered my best days".
Nevertheless, a few years later the government revived the idea of a National Penitentiary, and in 1811-12 returned specifically to the idea of a Panopticon. Bentham, now aged 63, was still willing to be governor. However, as it became clear that there was still no real commitment to the proposal, he abandoned hope, and instead turned his attentions to extracting financial compensation for his years of fruitless effort. His initial claim was for the enormous sum of nearly £700,000, but he eventually settled for the more modest (but still considerable) sum of £23,000. An Act of Parliament in 1812 transferred his title in the site to the Crown.
Bentham remained bitter about the rejection of the Panopticon scheme throughout his later life, convinced that it had been thwarted by the King and an aristocratic elite. It was largely because of his sense of injustice that he developed his ideas of 'sinister interest' - that is, of the vested interests of the powerful conspiring against a wider public interest - which underpinned many of his broader arguments for reform.
The National Penitentiary
was indeed subsequently built on the Millbank site, but to a design by William Williams that owed little to the Panopticon, beyond the fact that the governor's quarters, administrative offices and chapel were placed at the centre of the complex. It opened in 1816.
No true Panopticon prisons to Bentham's designs have ever been built. The closest are the buildings of the now abandoned Presidio Modelo
in Cuba
. Although most prison designs have included elements of surveillance, the essential feature of Bentham's design was that the custodians should be able to view the prisoners at all times (including when they were in their cells), but that the prisoners should be unable to see the custodians, and so would never know when they were under surveillance. This objective was extremely difficult to achieve within the constraints of the available technology, which is why Bentham spent so many years reworking his plans. Subsequent nineteenth-century prison designs enabled the custodians to keep the doors of cells and the outsides of buildings under observation, but not to see the prisoners in their cells. Something close to a realization of Bentham's vision only became possible through twentieth-century technological developments - notably CCTV
- but these made the need for a specific architectural framework redundant.
The Panopticon is widely, but erroneously, believed to have influenced the design of Pentonville Prison
in North London, Armagh Gaol
in Northern Ireland, and Eastern State Penitentiary
in Philadelphia. These, however, were Victorian
examples of the Separate system
, which was more about prisoner isolation than prisoner surveillance
; in fact, the separate system makes surveillance quite difficult.
Many modern prisons are built in a "podular" design influenced by the Panopticon design, in intent and basic organization if not in exact form. As compared to traditional "cellblock" designs, in which rectangular buildings contain tiers of cells one atop the other in front of a walkway along which correctional officers patrol, modern prisons are often decentralized and contain triangular or trapezoidal-shaped housing units known as "pods" or "modules" designed to hold between 16 and 50 prisoners each. Cells are laid out in three or fewer tiers arrayed around either a central control station or a desk which affords a single correctional officer full view of all cells within either a 270° or 180° field of view (180° is considered a closer level of supervision).
Control of cell doors, CCTV monitors and communications are all conducted from the control station. The correctional officer, depending on the level of security and segregation, may be armed with nonlethal and lethal weapons. Increasingly, meals, laundry, commissary items and other goods and services are dispatched directly to the pods or individual cells. These design points, whatever their deliberate or incidental psychological and social effects, serve to maximize the number of prisoners that can be controlled and monitored by one individual, reducing staffing; as well as restricting prisoner movement throughout the prison as tightly as possible.
- are true Panopticons in the Benthamic sense. In some cases, the claims for any influence are very dubious indeed, and seem to be based on little more than the fact that (for example) the design is circular.
A wooden Panopticon factory, capable of holding 5000 workers, was constructed by Samuel Bentham
in Saint Petersburg
, on the banks of the Neva River
, between 1805 and 1808: its purpose was to educate and employ young men in trades connected with the navy. It burned down in 1818.
The Round Mill in Belper, Derbyshire, England, is supposed to have been built on the Panopticon principle. Constructed in 1811, it fell into disuse by the beginning of the 20th century and was demolished in 1959.
The Worcester State Hospital
, constructed in the late 19th century, extensively employed panoptic structures to allow more efficient observation of the wards. It was considered a model facility at the time.
The Panopticon has been suggested as an "open" hospital
architecture: "Hospitals required knowledge of contacts, contagions, proximity and crowding ... at the same time to divide space and keep it open, assuring a surveillance which is both global and individualising", 1977 interview (preface to French edition of Jeremy Bentham's "Panopticon").
(in Discipline and Punish
) as metaphor for modern "disciplinary" societies and their pervasive inclination to observe and normalise. Foucault proposes that not only prisons but all hierarchical
structures like the army, schools, hospitals and factories have evolved through history to resemble Bentham's Panopticon. The notoriety of the design today (although not its lasting influence in architectural realities) stems from Foucault's famous analysis of it.
Building on Foucault, contemporary social critics often assert that technology
has allowed for the deployment of panoptic structures invisibly throughout society. Surveillance
by closed-circuit television
(CCTV) cameras in public spaces is an example of a technology that brings the gaze of a superior into the daily lives of the populace. Furthermore, a number of cities in the United Kingdom, including Middlesbrough, Bristol, Brighton and London have recently added loudspeakers to a number of their existing CCTV cameras. They can transmit the voice of a camera supervisor to issue audible messages to the public. Similarly, critical analyses of internet practice have suggested that the internet allows for a panopticon form of observation. ISPs are able to track users' activities, while user-generated content means that daily social activity may be recorded and broadcast online.
Shoshana Zuboff
used the metaphor of the panopticon in her 1988 book In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power to describe how computer technology makes work more visible. In 1991 Mohammad Kowsar used the metaphor in the title of his book "The Critical Panopticon: Essays in the Theatre and Contemporary Aesthetics" (American University Studies Series Xxvi Theatre Arts). Derrick Jensen
and Gerge Draffan's 2004 book Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control demonstrates how our society, by techniques like the use of biometric passports to identity chips in consumer goods, from nanoparticle weapons to body-enhancing and mind-altering drugs for soldiers, is being pushed towards a panopticon-like state.
inmates of Holloway Prison. The first use on record of camera surveillance in public space was that of the Metropolitan Police at Trafalgar Square
in 1960. They used two temporary cameras to monitor crowds during the arrival of the Thai royal family and on Guy Fawkes Day. Between 1960 and 1996, the proliferation of the closed circuit
system resulted in government spending on it accounting for more than three-quarters of the total crime prevention budget and a mass demonstration against camera surveillance in Brighton in May 1997. Over the next few years, face and license plate recognition was installed in key positions in London. With the recent 7/7 bombings, where the bombers were caught on CCTV on their way into London, the effectiveness of the CCTV system has come under scrutiny, with emerging reports showing little or no deterrence of overall crime in London.
", very much similar to that surrounding the City of London. It would surround 1.7 square miles (4.4 km²) of Lower Manhattan and cost $90 million. As of August 2007, the city had raised about $25 million. As in the case of the already-installed camera security system in London, its ostensible effectiveness is continually under question.
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism...
in the late eighteenth century. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether or not they are being watched. The design comprises a circular structure with an "inspection house" at its centre, from which the managers or staff of the institution are able to watch the inmates, who are stationed around the perimeter. Bentham conceived the basic plan as being equally applicable to hospitals, schools, poorhouses, and madhouses, but he devoted most of his efforts to developing a design for a Panopticon prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
, and it is his prison which is most widely understood by the term.
Bentham himself described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example."
Conceptual history
- "Morals reformed— health preserved — industry invigorated — instruction diffused — public burthens lightened — Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock — the gordian knotGordian KnotThe Gordian Knot is a legend of Phrygian Gordium associated with Alexander the Great. It is often used as a metaphor for an intractable problem solved by a bold stroke :"Turn him to any cause of policy,...
of the poor-lawPoor LawThe English Poor Laws were a system of poor relief which existed in England and Wales that developed out of late-medieval and Tudor-era laws before being codified in 1587–98...
not cut, but untied — all by a simple idea in Architecture!"
In 1786-7, Bentham travelled to Krichev in White Russia
White Russia
White Russia or White Ruthenia is a name that has historically been applied to a part of the wider region of Ruthenia or Rus', most often to that which roughly corresponds to the eastern part of present-day Belarus including the cities of Polatsk, Vitsyebsk and Mahiliou. In English, the use of the...
to visit his brother, Samuel
Samuel Bentham
Sir Samuel Bentham was a noted English mechanical engineer and naval architect credited with numerous innovations, particularly related to naval architecture, including weapons...
, who was engaged in managing various industrial and other projects for Prince Potemkin. It was Samuel (as Jeremy later repeatedly acknowledged) who conceived the basic idea of a circular building at the hub of a larger compound as a means of allowing a small number of managers to oversee the activities of a large and unskilled workforce. Jeremy began to develop this model, particularly as applicable to prisons, and outlined his ideas in a series of letters sent home to his father in England. He supplemented the supervisory principle with the idea of contract management; that is, an administration by contract as opposed to trust, where the director would have a pecuniary interest in lowering the average rate of mortality.
The Panopticon was intended to be cheaper than the prisons of his time, as it required fewer staff; "Allow me to construct a prison on this model," Bentham requested to a Committee for the Reform of Criminal Law, "I will be the gaoler. You will see ... that the gaoler will have no salary — will cost nothing to the nation." As the watchmen cannot be seen, they need not be on duty at all times, effectively leaving the watching to the watched. According to Bentham's design, the prisoners would also be used as menial labour walking on wheels to spin looms or run a water wheel. This would decrease the cost of the prison and give a possible source of income.
The abortive Panopticon prison project
On his return to England from Russia, Bentham continued to work on the idea of a Panopticon prison, and commissioned drawings from an architect, Willey ReveleyWilley Reveley
Willey Reveley was an 18th century English architect, born at Newton Underwood near Morpeth, Northumberland.He is probably best known for an ambitious but unfulfilled proposal of 1796 to straighten the River Thames in east London...
. In 1791, he published the material he had written as a book, although he continued to refine his proposals for many years to come. He had by now decided that he wanted to see the prison built: when finished, it would be managed by himself as contractor-governor, with the assistance of Samuel. After unsuccessful attempts to interest the authorities in Ireland and revolutionary France, he started trying to persuade the prime minister, William Pitt
William Pitt the Younger
William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...
, to revive an earlier abandoned scheme for a National Penitentiary in England, this time to be built as a Panopticon. He was eventually successful in winning over Pitt and his advisors, and in 1793, was paid £2000 for preliminary work on the project.
The intended site was that authorised (under an act of 1779) for the earlier Penitentiary, at Battersea
Battersea
Battersea is an area of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is an inner-city district of South London, situated on the south side of the River Thames, 2.9 miles south-west of Charing Cross. Battersea spans from Fairfield in the west to Queenstown in the east...
Rise; but the new proposals ran into technical legal problems and objections from the local landowner, Earl Spencer
George Spencer, 2nd Earl Spencer
George John Spencer, 2nd Earl Spencer KG PC FRS FSA , styled Viscount Althorp from 1765 to 1783, was a British Whig politician...
. Other sites were considered, including one at Hanging Wood, near Woolwich
Woolwich
Woolwich is a district in south London, England, located in the London Borough of Greenwich. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.Woolwich formed part of Kent until 1889 when the County of London was created...
, but all proved unsatisfactory. Eventually Bentham turned to a site at Tothill Fields, near Westminster
Westminster
Westminster is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster, England. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, southwest of the City of London and southwest of Charing Cross...
. Although this was common land, with no landowner, there were a number of parties with interests in it, including Earl Grosvenor
Richard Grosvenor, 1st Earl Grosvenor
Richard Grosvenor, 1st Earl Grosvenor , known as Sir Richard Grosvenor, 7th Baronet between 1755 and 1761 and as The Lord Grosvenor between 1761 and 1784, was a British peer, racehorse owner and art collector...
, who owned a house on an adjacent site and objected to the idea of a prison overlooking it. Again, therefore, the scheme ground to a halt. At this point, however, it became clear that a nearby site at Millbank
Millbank
Millbank is an area of central London in the City of Westminster. Millbank is located by the River Thames, east of Pimlico and south of Westminster...
, adjoining the Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...
, was available for sale, and this time things ran more smoothly. Using government money, Bentham bought the land on behalf of the Crown for £12,000 in November 1799.
From his point of view, the site was far from ideal, being marshy, unhealthy, and too small. When he asked the government for more land and more money, however, the response was that he should build only a small-scale experimental prison - which he interpreted as meaning that there was little real commitment to the concept of the Panopticon as a cornerstone of penal reform. Negotiations continued, but in 1801 Pitt resigned from office, and in 1803 the new Addington
Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth
Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, PC was a British statesman, and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1804....
administration decided not to proceed with the project. Bentham was devastated, saying "they have murdered my best days".
Nevertheless, a few years later the government revived the idea of a National Penitentiary, and in 1811-12 returned specifically to the idea of a Panopticon. Bentham, now aged 63, was still willing to be governor. However, as it became clear that there was still no real commitment to the proposal, he abandoned hope, and instead turned his attentions to extracting financial compensation for his years of fruitless effort. His initial claim was for the enormous sum of nearly £700,000, but he eventually settled for the more modest (but still considerable) sum of £23,000. An Act of Parliament in 1812 transferred his title in the site to the Crown.
Bentham remained bitter about the rejection of the Panopticon scheme throughout his later life, convinced that it had been thwarted by the King and an aristocratic elite. It was largely because of his sense of injustice that he developed his ideas of 'sinister interest' - that is, of the vested interests of the powerful conspiring against a wider public interest - which underpinned many of his broader arguments for reform.
The National Penitentiary
Millbank Prison
Millbank Prison was a prison in Millbank, Pimlico, London, originally constructed as the National Penitentiary, and which for part of its history served as a holding facility for convicted prisoners before they were transported to Australia...
was indeed subsequently built on the Millbank site, but to a design by William Williams that owed little to the Panopticon, beyond the fact that the governor's quarters, administrative offices and chapel were placed at the centre of the complex. It opened in 1816.
Panopticon prison designs
No true Panopticon prisons to Bentham's designs have ever been built. The closest are the buildings of the now abandoned Presidio Modelo
Presidio Modelo
The Presidio Modelo was a "model prison" of Panopticon design, built on Isla de Pinos in Cuba.The prison was built under President-turned-dictator Gerardo Machado between 1926–1928...
in Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
. Although most prison designs have included elements of surveillance, the essential feature of Bentham's design was that the custodians should be able to view the prisoners at all times (including when they were in their cells), but that the prisoners should be unable to see the custodians, and so would never know when they were under surveillance. This objective was extremely difficult to achieve within the constraints of the available technology, which is why Bentham spent so many years reworking his plans. Subsequent nineteenth-century prison designs enabled the custodians to keep the doors of cells and the outsides of buildings under observation, but not to see the prisoners in their cells. Something close to a realization of Bentham's vision only became possible through twentieth-century technological developments - notably CCTV
Closed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors....
- but these made the need for a specific architectural framework redundant.
The Panopticon is widely, but erroneously, believed to have influenced the design of Pentonville Prison
Pentonville (HM Prison)
HM Prison Pentonville is a Category B/C men's prison, operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service. Pentonville Prison is not actually within Pentonville itself, but is located further north, on the Caledonian Road in the Barnsbury area of the London Borough of Islington, in inner-North London,...
in North London, Armagh Gaol
Armagh Women's Prison
Armagh Prison in Armagh, Northern Ireland is a former prison. The construction of the prison began in the 1780 and it was extended in the style of Pentonville in the 1840 and 1850s. For most of its working life Armagh Gaol was the primary women's prison in Northern Ireland...
in Northern Ireland, and Eastern State Penitentiary
Eastern State Penitentiary
The Eastern State Penitentiary is a former American prison in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is located on 2027 Fairmount Avenue between Corinthian Avenue and North 22nd Street in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia and was operational from 1829 until 1971...
in Philadelphia. These, however, were Victorian
Victorian architecture
The term Victorian architecture refers collectively to several architectural styles employed predominantly during the middle and late 19th century. The period that it indicates may slightly overlap the actual reign, 20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901, of Queen Victoria. This represents the British and...
examples of the Separate system
Separate system
The Separate system is a form of prison management based on the principle of keeping prisoners in solitary confinement. When first introduced in the early 19th century, the objective of such a prison or "penitentiary" was that of penance by the prisoners through silent reflection, as much as that...
, which was more about prisoner isolation than prisoner surveillance
Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
; in fact, the separate system makes surveillance quite difficult.
Many modern prisons are built in a "podular" design influenced by the Panopticon design, in intent and basic organization if not in exact form. As compared to traditional "cellblock" designs, in which rectangular buildings contain tiers of cells one atop the other in front of a walkway along which correctional officers patrol, modern prisons are often decentralized and contain triangular or trapezoidal-shaped housing units known as "pods" or "modules" designed to hold between 16 and 50 prisoners each. Cells are laid out in three or fewer tiers arrayed around either a central control station or a desk which affords a single correctional officer full view of all cells within either a 270° or 180° field of view (180° is considered a closer level of supervision).
Control of cell doors, CCTV monitors and communications are all conducted from the control station. The correctional officer, depending on the level of security and segregation, may be armed with nonlethal and lethal weapons. Increasingly, meals, laundry, commissary items and other goods and services are dispatched directly to the pods or individual cells. These design points, whatever their deliberate or incidental psychological and social effects, serve to maximize the number of prisoners that can be controlled and monitored by one individual, reducing staffing; as well as restricting prisoner movement throughout the prison as tightly as possible.
Prisons for which a "Panoptic" influence has been claimed
As noted above, none of these prisons - with the arguable exception of the Presidio ModeloPresidio Modelo
The Presidio Modelo was a "model prison" of Panopticon design, built on Isla de Pinos in Cuba.The prison was built under President-turned-dictator Gerardo Machado between 1926–1928...
- are true Panopticons in the Benthamic sense. In some cases, the claims for any influence are very dubious indeed, and seem to be based on little more than the fact that (for example) the design is circular.
- Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail — Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaThe Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, United States - Balassagyarmat Fegyház és Börtön (Prison) — BalassagyarmatBalassagyarmatBalassagyarmat is a town in northern Hungary. It was the seat of the Nógrád comitatus.- History :The town's coat-of-arms bears the Latin inscription "Civitas Fortissima" , because in January 1919 Czechoslovak troops crossed the demarcation line delineated in December 1918 in preparation for the...
, Hungary - Carabanchel PrisonCarabanchel PrisonCarabanchel Prison was constructed by political prisoners after the Spanish Civil War between 1940 and 1944 in the Madrid's neighbourhood of Carabanchel. It was one of the biggest prisons in Europe until its closure in 1998...
— MadridMadridMadrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, Spain - El Palacio de Justicia y Cárcel de Vigo (modern El Museo de Arte Contemporáneo) — VigoVigoVigo is a city and municipality in north-west Spain, in Galicia, situated on the ria of the same name on the Atlantic Ocean.-Population:...
, Spain - Caseros PrisonCaseros PrisonThe Caseros Prison was a panopticon prison in Parque Patricios, a neighborhood in the southern part of Buenos Aires, Argentina.Caseros Prison was conceived by the military dictatorships of the 1960s, originally intended as a short term holding station for prisoners awaiting trial. It was built...
— Buenos AiresBuenos AiresBuenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, ArgentinaArgentinaArgentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires... - Palacio de LecumberriPalacio de LecumberriThe Palacio de Lecumberri is a large building, formerly a prison, in the northeast of Mexico City, Mexico, which now houses the General National Archive ....
— Mexico City, Mexico - Chi HoaChi HoaChí Hòa Prison is a functioning Vietnamese prison located in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The prison is an octagonal building on a 7-hectare site consisting of detention rooms, jail cells, prison walls, watchtowers, facilities and prisoner's farmlands. The prison is one of 12 national prisons in...
— Ho Chi Minh CityHo Chi Minh CityHo Chi Minh City , formerly named Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam...
, VietnamVietnamVietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –... - Fleury-Mérogis PrisonFleury-Mérogis PrisonFleury-Mérogis Prison is a prison in France, located in the town of Fleury-Mérogis, in the southern suburbs of Paris. With 3,800 prisoners, it is the largest prison in Europe ...
— Fleury-MérogisFleury-MérogisFleury-Mérogis is a commune in the Essonne department in northern France, in the southern suburbs of Paris. The commune has the Fleury-Mérogis Prison, France's and Europe's largest prison.Inhabitants of Fleury-Mérogis are known as Floriacumois....
, France. - Huron Historic GaolHuron Historic GaolThe Huron Historic Gaol was established as the Huron County Gaol for Upper Canada's Huron District. Clearing of the land began in Goderich, Ontario in 1839 and the jail was constructed between 1839 and 1842 using stone from the Maitland River Valley and from Michigan...
— GoderichGoderich, OntarioGoderich is a town in the Canadian province of Ontario and is the county seat of Huron County. The town was founded by William "Tiger" Dunlop in 1827. First laid out in 1828, the town is named after Frederick John Robinson, 1st Viscount Goderich, who was British prime minister at the time. The town...
, OntarioOntarioOntario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, Canada - Insein PrisonInsein PrisonInsein Prison is located in Yangon Division, near Yangon , the old capital of Myanmar. It is run by the military junta of Myanmar, the State Peace and Development Council, and used largely to repress political dissidents....
— InseinInseinNot to be confused with Insein, KaleInsein Township is located in the northern Yangon. The township comprises 21 wards, and shares borders with Shwepyitha township in the north, Hlaingthaya township in the west, and Mingaladon township in the east and south...
, Burma - Kilmainham GaolKilmainham GaolKilmainham Gaol is a former prison, located in Kilmainham in Dublin, which is now a museum. It has been run since the mid-1980s by the Office of Public Works , an Irish Government agency...
— Dublin, Ireland - Koepelgevangenis De Berg — ArnhemArnhemArnhem is a city and municipality, situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of Gelderland and located near the river Nederrijn as well as near the St. Jansbeek, which was the source of the city's development. Arnhem has 146,095 residents as one of the...
, Netherlands (Koepelgevangenis literally means dome-prison) - Koepelgevangenis De Boschpoort — BredaBredaBreda is a municipality and a city in the southern part of the Netherlands. The name Breda derived from brede Aa and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. As a fortified city, the city was of strategic military and political significance...
, Netherlands - Koepelgevangenis (Haarlem) — HaarlemHaarlemHaarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...
, Netherlands - Prisión Modelo — BarcelonaBarcelonaBarcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
, Spain - Mount Eden PrisonsMount Eden PrisonsMount Eden Prisons refers to two New Zealand prisons, located in Lauder Road in the Central Auckland suburb of Mt Eden. They are:* Mount Eden Prison, which holds about 420 sentenced male prisoners...
— AucklandAucklandThe Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...
, New Zealand - Okrąglak Areszt Śledczy w Toruniu — ToruńTorunToruń is an ancient city in northern Poland, on the Vistula River. Its population is more than 205,934 as of June 2009. Toruń is one of the oldest cities in Poland. The medieval old town of Toruń is the birthplace of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus....
, Poland - Old Provost — GrahamstownGrahamstownGrahamstown is a city in the Eastern Cape Province of the Republic of South Africa and is the seat of the Makana municipality. The population of greater Grahamstown, as of 2003, was 124,758. The population of the surrounding areas, including the actual city was 41,799 of which 77.4% were black,...
, South Africa - Panóptico — BogotáBogotáBogotá, Distrito Capital , from 1991 to 2000 called Santa Fé de Bogotá, is the capital, and largest city, of Colombia. It is also designated by the national constitution as the capital of the department of Cundinamarca, even though the city of Bogotá now comprises an independent Capital district...
Prison (today the National Museum of Colombia) - Pelican Bay State PrisonPelican Bay State PrisonPelican Bay State Prison is a supermax California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison near Crescent City in unincorporated Del Norte County, California. The facility is explicitly designed to keep California’s alleged “worst of the worst” prisoners in long-term solitary...
— Del Norte County, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, United States - Port Arthur, TasmaniaPort Arthur, TasmaniaPort Arthur is a small town and former convict settlement on the Tasman Peninsula, in Tasmania, Australia. Port Arthur is one of Australia's most significant heritage areas and the open air museum is officially Tasmania's top tourist attraction. It is located approximately 60 km south east of...
Prison Colony — Port Arthur, TasmaniaPort Arthur, TasmaniaPort Arthur is a small town and former convict settlement on the Tasman Peninsula, in Tasmania, Australia. Port Arthur is one of Australia's most significant heritage areas and the open air museum is officially Tasmania's top tourist attraction. It is located approximately 60 km south east of...
, Australia - Presidio ModeloPresidio ModeloThe Presidio Modelo was a "model prison" of Panopticon design, built on Isla de Pinos in Cuba.The prison was built under President-turned-dictator Gerardo Machado between 1926–1928...
— Isla de la Juventud, CubaCubaThe Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city... - Corradino Correctional Facilities - PaolaPaola, MaltaPaola, , is a town in the Grand Harbour area of Malta, with a population of 8,856 people . It is named after its founder, the Grandmaster Antoine de Paule, but is commonly known as Raħal Ġdid, which means new town in Maltese.Paola is renowned for its shopping centres, Good Friday procession, its...
, MaltaMaltaMalta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in... - Round HouseRound HouseThe Round House is the oldest building still standing in Western Australia. It is located at Arthur Head in Fremantle, and recent heritage assessments and appraisals of the precinct of the Round House incorporate Arthur Head....
— FremantleFremantle, Western AustraliaFremantle is a city in Western Australia, located at the mouth of the Swan River. Fremantle Harbour serves as the port of Perth, the state capital. Fremantle was the first area settled by the Swan River colonists in 1829...
, Western Australia, Australia. (Although not a Panopticon, this circular prison building of 1830 was designed by Henry Willey ReveleyHenry Willey ReveleyHenry Willey Reveley was a civil engineer responsible for the earliest public works at the Swan River Colony, the foundation of the state of Western Australia....
, the son of Bentham's architect collaborator, Willey ReveleyWilley ReveleyWilley Reveley was an 18th century English architect, born at Newton Underwood near Morpeth, Northumberland.He is probably best known for an ambitious but unfulfilled proposal of 1796 to straighten the River Thames in east London...
.) - Special Handling UnitSpecial Handling UnitThe Special Handling Unit is Canada's highest security prison. It is co-located with the Ste-Anne-des-Plaines Institution and the Regional Reception Centre, at the Correctional Service of Canada complex at Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec . As of 2008, there were 90 prisoners at the SHU...
— http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/facilit/institutprofiles/sadp-eng.shtml Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, QuebecQuebecQuebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, Canada - Stateville Correctional CenterStateville Correctional CenterStateville Correctional Center is a maximum security state prison for men in Crest Hill, Illinois, USA.-History:Opened in 1925, Stateville was built to accommodate 1,506 inmates. Parts of the prison were designed according to the panopticon concept proposed by the British philosopher and prison...
— Crest HillCrest Hill, IllinoisCrest Hill is a city in Will County, Illinois, United States. The population was 13,329 at the 2000 census and the 2010 census population estimate was 20,867.-Geography:Crest Hill is located at...
, IllinoisIllinoisIllinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, United States - Twin Towers Correctional FacilityTwin Towers Correctional FacilityThe Twin Towers Correctional Facility, also referred to in the media as Twin Towers Jail, is a complex erected in Los Angeles, California. In terms of physical size, but not in terms of capacity, it is the world's largest jail...
— Los AngelesLos Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, United States - Sachsenhausen concentration campSachsenhausen concentration campSachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD...
- Berlin, Germany - Lapas Sukamiskin - Bandung, Indonesia
Other panoptic structures
Bentham always conceived the Panopticon principle as being beneficial to the design of a variety of institutions where surveillance was important, including hospitals, schools, workhouses, and lunatic asylums, as well as prisons. In particular, he developed it in his ideas for a "chrestomathic" school (one devoted to useful learning), in which teaching was to be undertaken by senior pupils on the monitorial principle, under the overall supervision of the Master; and for a pauper "industry-house" (workhouse).A wooden Panopticon factory, capable of holding 5000 workers, was constructed by Samuel Bentham
Samuel Bentham
Sir Samuel Bentham was a noted English mechanical engineer and naval architect credited with numerous innovations, particularly related to naval architecture, including weapons...
in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
, on the banks of the Neva River
Neva River
The Neva is a river in northwestern Russia flowing from Lake Ladoga through the western part of Leningrad Oblast to the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland. Despite its modest length , it is the third largest river in Europe in terms of average discharge .The Neva is the only river flowing from Lake...
, between 1805 and 1808: its purpose was to educate and employ young men in trades connected with the navy. It burned down in 1818.
The Round Mill in Belper, Derbyshire, England, is supposed to have been built on the Panopticon principle. Constructed in 1811, it fell into disuse by the beginning of the 20th century and was demolished in 1959.
The Worcester State Hospital
Worcester State Hospital
Worcester State Hospital was a Massachusetts state mental hospital located in Worcester, Massachusetts.The hospital and surrounding associated historic structures are listed as Worcester Asylum and related buildings on the National Register of Historic Places.-Early History:Once known as the...
, constructed in the late 19th century, extensively employed panoptic structures to allow more efficient observation of the wards. It was considered a model facility at the time.
The Panopticon has been suggested as an "open" hospital
Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....
architecture: "Hospitals required knowledge of contacts, contagions, proximity and crowding ... at the same time to divide space and keep it open, assuring a surveillance which is both global and individualising", 1977 interview (preface to French edition of Jeremy Bentham's "Panopticon").
The panopticon as metaphor
Although the Panopticon prison design did not come to fruition during Bentham's time, it has been seen as an important development. It was invoked by Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
(in Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a book by philosopher Michel Foucault. Originally published in 1975 in France under the title Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison, it was translated into English in 1977. It is an interrogation of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind...
) as metaphor for modern "disciplinary" societies and their pervasive inclination to observe and normalise. Foucault proposes that not only prisons but all hierarchical
Hierarchy
A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...
structures like the army, schools, hospitals and factories have evolved through history to resemble Bentham's Panopticon. The notoriety of the design today (although not its lasting influence in architectural realities) stems from Foucault's famous analysis of it.
Building on Foucault, contemporary social critics often assert that technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
has allowed for the deployment of panoptic structures invisibly throughout society. Surveillance
Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
by closed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors....
(CCTV) cameras in public spaces is an example of a technology that brings the gaze of a superior into the daily lives of the populace. Furthermore, a number of cities in the United Kingdom, including Middlesbrough, Bristol, Brighton and London have recently added loudspeakers to a number of their existing CCTV cameras. They can transmit the voice of a camera supervisor to issue audible messages to the public. Similarly, critical analyses of internet practice have suggested that the internet allows for a panopticon form of observation. ISPs are able to track users' activities, while user-generated content means that daily social activity may be recorded and broadcast online.
Shoshana Zuboff
Shoshana Zuboff
Shoshana Zuboff is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School . She was born in 1951 and is an American citizen. One of the first tenured women at the Harvard Business School, she earned her Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University and...
used the metaphor of the panopticon in her 1988 book In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power to describe how computer technology makes work more visible. In 1991 Mohammad Kowsar used the metaphor in the title of his book "The Critical Panopticon: Essays in the Theatre and Contemporary Aesthetics" (American University Studies Series Xxvi Theatre Arts). Derrick Jensen
Derrick Jensen
Derrick Jensen is an American author and environmental activist living in Crescent City, California. Jensen has published several books questioning and critiquing modern civilization and its values, including A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, and Endgame. He holds a B.S...
and Gerge Draffan's 2004 book Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control demonstrates how our society, by techniques like the use of biometric passports to identity chips in consumer goods, from nanoparticle weapons to body-enhancing and mind-altering drugs for soldiers, is being pushed towards a panopticon-like state.
England and Wales
The use of photographic surveillance began in 1913 with the surreptitious taking of pictures from disguised locations of the suffragetteSuffragette
"Suffragette" is a term coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for members of the late 19th and early 20th century movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, in particular members of the Women's Social and Political Union...
inmates of Holloway Prison. The first use on record of camera surveillance in public space was that of the Metropolitan Police at Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square
Trafalgar Square is a public space and tourist attraction in central London, England, United Kingdom. At its centre is Nelson's Column, which is guarded by four lion statues at its base. There are a number of statues and sculptures in the square, with one plinth displaying changing pieces of...
in 1960. They used two temporary cameras to monitor crowds during the arrival of the Thai royal family and on Guy Fawkes Day. Between 1960 and 1996, the proliferation of the closed circuit
Closed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors....
system resulted in government spending on it accounting for more than three-quarters of the total crime prevention budget and a mass demonstration against camera surveillance in Brighton in May 1997. Over the next few years, face and license plate recognition was installed in key positions in London. With the recent 7/7 bombings, where the bombers were caught on CCTV on their way into London, the effectiveness of the CCTV system has come under scrutiny, with emerging reports showing little or no deterrence of overall crime in London.
United States
New York City has stated ambitions to create its very own "ring of steelLower Manhattan Security Initiative
The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative is an initiative to increase surveillance efforts in Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. The plan has been compared to London, England's ring of steel...
", very much similar to that surrounding the City of London. It would surround 1.7 square miles (4.4 km²) of Lower Manhattan and cost $90 million. As of August 2007, the city had raised about $25 million. As in the case of the already-installed camera security system in London, its ostensible effectiveness is continually under question.
Literature and the arts
- In Gabriel García MárquezGabriel García MárquezGabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...
's novella, Chronicle of a Death ForetoldChronicle of a Death ForetoldChronicle of a Death Foretold is a novella by Gabriel García Márquez, published in 1981...
, the Vicario brothers spend three years in the "panopticon of Riohacha" awaiting trial for the murder of Santiago Nasar. - Angela CarterAngela CarterAngela Carter was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works...
also includes a critique of the Panopticon prison system during the Siberian segment of Nights at the CircusNights at the CircusNights at the Circus is a novel by Angela Carter, first published in 1984 and that year's winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The novel focuses on the life and exploits of Fevvers, a woman who is – or so she would have people believe – a Cockney virgin, hatched from an egg...
. - In her 2008 young adult novel The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E. LockhartE. LockhartEmily Jenkins, who also writes under the name E. Lockhart, is a writer of children's picture books, young adult novels, and adult fiction.Her first novel as E...
has the protagonist talk about reading an excerpt from Michel FoucaultMichel FoucaultMichel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
's book Discipline and PunishDiscipline and PunishDiscipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a book by philosopher Michel Foucault. Originally published in 1975 in France under the title Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison, it was translated into English in 1977. It is an interrogation of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind...
in which he "uses the idea of the panopticon as a metaphor for Western society and its emphasis on normalization and observation" (Lockhart 2008, p. 54). He goes on to bring up the panopticon again throughout the course of the book. - Charles StrossCharles StrossCharles David George "Charlie" Stross is a British writer of science fiction, Lovecraftian horror and fantasy. He was born in Leeds.Stross specialises in hard science fiction and space opera...
's novel GlasshouseGlasshouse (novel)Glasshouse is a science fiction novel by British author Charles Stross, first published in 2006. The novel is set in the twenty seventh century aboard a spacecraft adrift in interstellar space. Robin, the protagonist, has recently had his memory erased...
features a technology-enabled panopticon as the novel's primary location. - The 2009 film "Law Abiding Citizen" uses the panopticon, both architecturally and conceptually, in a Foucauldian interpretation of the power struggle inherent in a system of constant observation.
- In JLA: Earth 2JLA: Earth 2JLA: Earth 2 is a 2000 DC Comics graphic novel written by Grant Morrison with art by Frank Quitely.It follows the first post-Crisis encounter between the Justice League of America and their evil counterparts from an antimatter universe, the Crime Syndicate of Amerika.At the time of its release, the...
and related works, the lunar headquarters of the Crime Syndicate of Amerika, analogous to the WatchtowerJustice League WatchtowerThe Watchtower is the name of various bases used by the Justice League of America in DC Comics and various other media. It has been portrayed in DC comics as a building on Earth's moon, and as a space-station in orbit in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon.The Watchtower debuted in JLA #4 during...
of the Justice League of America, is called the Panopticon. The contrast of names implies that from the Panopticon, observation serves purposes of control and coercion, while surveillance is conducted from the Watchtower in order to aid and protect. - Sludge metal band ISISIsis (band)Isis was a Los Angeles, California-based post-metal band, founded in Boston, Massachusetts, with a career spanning from 1997 to 2010...
named their third album PanopticonPanopticon (album)Panopticon is the third full-length album by Los Angeles, California based post-metal band Isis, released by Ipecac Recordings in 2004. The album's title is derived from philosopher Jeremy Bentham's panopticon prison ideal and philosopher/historian Michel Foucault's later allegorical appropriation...
, the album's focus is on the proliferation of surveillance technologies throughout modern society and the government's role in that spread. - In John XII Hawks' novels, The Fourth Realm Trilogy, the antagonists seek to create a "virtual panopticon" imprisoning and controlling the population by means of surveillanceSurveillanceSurveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
technology. - In Deus ExDeus ExDeus Ex is an action role-playing game developed by Ion Storm Inc. and published by Eidos Interactive in 2000, which combines gameplay elements of first-person shooters with those of role-playing video games...
, the protagonist J.C. Denton has a conversation with a prototype surveillance AI named Morpheus, who insists that humans require the feeling of being watched and judged in order to behave cohesively toward a mutual goal. Later, a more advanced iteration of the same program, named Helios, wants access to a global communications network housed under Area 51. The password to the server is "Panopticon". - In the 2004 video game Silent Hill 4: The RoomSilent Hill 4: The RoomSilent Hill 4: The Room is the fourth installment in the Silent Hill survival horror series, published by Konami and developed by Team Silent, a production group within Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo. The game was released in Japan in June 2004 and in North America and Europe in September of...
, one part of the game takes place in a Panopticon inspired cylindrical prison. - On September 22 2011 CBS Television aired "Person Of Interest", a panopticon plot with an all seeing "machine" monitoring society in search of terrorist plots against the United States.
See also
- Discipline and PunishDiscipline and PunishDiscipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a book by philosopher Michel Foucault. Originally published in 1975 in France under the title Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison, it was translated into English in 1977. It is an interrogation of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind...
by Michel FoucaultMichel FoucaultMichel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas... - Big BrotherBig Brother (1984)Big Brother is a fictional character in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is the enigmatic dictator of Oceania, a totalitarian state taken to its utmost logical consequence – where the ruling Party wields total power for its own sake over the inhabitants.In the society that Orwell...
, a character from the novel Nineteen Eighty-FourNineteen Eighty-FourNineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party... - Big BrotherBig Brother (TV series)Big Brother is a television show in which a group of people live together in a large house, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras. Each series lasts for around three months, and there are usually fewer than 15 participants. The housemates try to win a cash...
, the popular reality televisionReality televisionReality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded...
series - London's "ring of steel"
- GovernmentalityGovernmentalityGovernmentality is a concept first developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in the later years of his life, roughly between 1977 and his death in 1984, particularly in his lectures at the Collège de France during this time...
, and the Foucaultian idea of BiopowerBiopowerBiopower was a term coined by French Social theorist and philosopher Michel Foucault it refers to the practice of modern states and their regulation of their subjects through "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations." ... - Information Awareness OfficeInformation Awareness OfficeThe Information Awareness Office was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying surveillance and information technology to track and monitor terrorists and other asymmetric threats to national security,...
- Mass surveillanceMass surveillanceMass surveillance is the pervasive surveillance of an entire population, or a substantial fraction thereof.Modern governments today commonly perform mass surveillance of their citizens, explaining that they believe that it is necessary to protect them from dangerous groups such as terrorists,...
- OmniscienceOmniscienceOmniscience omniscient point-of-view in writing) is the capacity to know everything infinitely, or at least everything that can be known about a character including thoughts, feelings, life and the universe, etc. In Latin, omnis means "all" and sciens means "knowing"...
- Right to privacy
- TotalitarianismTotalitarianismTotalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
- The Transparent SocietyThe Transparent SocietyThe Transparent Society is a non-fiction book by the science-fiction author David Brin in which he forecasts social transparency and some degree of erosion of privacy, as it is overtaken by low-cost surveillance, communication and database technology, and proposes new institutions and practices...
by David BrinDavid BrinGlen David Brin, Ph.D. is an American scientist and award-winning author of science fiction. He has received the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards.-Biography:...
also Kiln PeopleKiln PeopleKiln People is a 2002 science fiction novel by David Brin. It was published in the UK under the title Kil'n People. It has the distinction of finishing second in four different awards for best SF/fantasy novel of 2002 -- the Hugo, the Locus, the John W. Campbell Award, and the Arthur C... - The TravellerThe Traveler (novel)The Traveler is a 2005 novel by John Twelve Hawks, which impressed critics and became an international bestseller, in part due to the reclusive behaviour of its author. The Dark River, book two of The Fourth Realm Trilogy, was published in July 2007...
by John Twelve HawksJohn Twelve HawksJohn Twelve Hawks is the author of the 2005 dystopian novel The Traveler and its sequels, The Dark River and The Golden City, collectively comprising the Fourth Realm Trilogy... - Video surveillance
- Panopticon (album)Panopticon (album)Panopticon is the third full-length album by Los Angeles, California based post-metal band Isis, released by Ipecac Recordings in 2004. The album's title is derived from philosopher Jeremy Bentham's panopticon prison ideal and philosopher/historian Michel Foucault's later allegorical appropriation...
by Isis (band)Isis (band)Isis was a Los Angeles, California-based post-metal band, founded in Boston, Massachusetts, with a career spanning from 1997 to 2010... - Total institutionTotal institutionA total institution is place of work and residence where a great number of similarly situated people, cut off from the wider community for a considerable time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life...
- PanopticismPanopticismPanopticism is a social theory originally developed by French philosopher Michel Foucault in his book, Discipline and Punish.-Background:...
- Eastern State PenitentiaryEastern State PenitentiaryThe Eastern State Penitentiary is a former American prison in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is located on 2027 Fairmount Avenue between Corinthian Avenue and North 22nd Street in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia and was operational from 1829 until 1971...
, a later revolutionary prison design
External links
- Panopticon — by Jeremy Bentham (online version)
- Special Issue on the Panopticon — Surveillance and Society
- Control and Surveillance from Computers In Society - on-line Course
- http://books.google.com/books?id=mG1YAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=editions:0ZyIuvvsgSQl-86GuRVji1#PPP7,M1 John Bowring, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 4 (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1843). This is the volume that contains Bentham's writings on the Panopticon.
- Simon Werrett "The Panopticon in the Garden" - essay on the Russian origins of the Panopticon