The idea of the Panopticon

“Technologies facilitate the objectification of the body”

First, we discussed the concept of ideology. This implied that it was all a matter of ideas (the manipulation of the mind). But, later, we saw that these ideas derived from our perspective of things. Now, perspective is based on what we see; therefore, we judge based on appearances (this reminds me a little bit about the dancing shadows in Plato's allegory of the cave). Therefore, if everything is judged by how it looks, then we can see why bodies are so important (and even why some people have written in literature about the body and portray it as a prison). Now that we have come this far, we can understand that mind and body are crucial in the process of the objectification of the subject since this allows for divisions and categorizations. Is it normal or natural to categorize things? Can human beings be categorized? Should human beings be categorized? Foucault is interested, as Paul Rabinow states in his introduction, in fighting against political violence. Power is an elements involved in this practice and in order to be able to keep such power there is a need for subjects to maintain that power. Therefore, Foucault is also interested in what is involved in the process “by which...human beings are made into subjects” leading to objectifying the subject through different practices of division (7). Social and personal identities, for example, are therefore categories to divide society and justify certain practices by normalizing some and condemning other and, of course, to turn humans into subjects.

I was especially fascinated, and frightened at the same time, by the idea of the Panopticon (a model prison by Jeremy Bentham—1748-1832) as it “offers a particularly vivid instance of how political technologies of the body function (18).The author in his study of power notes how technology becomes part of one of the most diabolical plans. “The cells become small theaters, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible...If the prisoner is never sure when he is observed he becomes his own guardian (19). Technologies are employed to discipline and weaken the body in order to be “subjected, used, transformed and improved”. This inevitably reminds me of Pavlov's experiments with dogs who used different kinds of drills and repetitions to make the dogs associate what he wanted with what he wanted (I also remember how his studies were included in teaching textbooks =/...). I found his analysis on individualization techniques and also on totalization procedures extremely interesting. Not to mention the normative rationality and technologies of normalization.

Questions:

1. Foucault is anti-Hegelian and anti-Marx for not searching for a theory of history. What is this theory of history?

2. The Panopticon: people are being observed, if they did not know that they are being observed,
a) would it be correct to say that they hold a naïve ideological consciousness?
b) If they knew that they are being watched and acted as if nothing wrong was happening, would it be correct to say that they practice a cynical ideology?

c) And last, if the prisoner knows and does not do anything but not because he does not care, in fact, he's worried, but because he is afraid, so he decides to live in denial, what would this be called?

3. Are social networks technologies of discipline and confession (21)? Are they the new Panopticon? Are people willing to be subjected to the omnipotent eye?