The Panopticon: A Philosophical Object for Scholarly Work
¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 The-Panopticon
¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 Kamal Salem
¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 ENGL 985
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Dr. Alexis Lothian
¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 Assignment # 2
¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Oct, 08th, 2013
¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0
¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 The Panopticon: A Philosophical Object for Scholarly Work
¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 1 One of the major objects that I have been drawn to writer scholarly work about is the Panopticon. The Panopticon is an institutional building designed by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham and elaborated on by Michel Foucault. As part of an archive, the significance of the Panopticon as both a disciplinary system and a scholarly topic can be seen in the words of Jacques Derrida. In Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, Derrida highlights the significance of the archive as far as authority is concerned. He shows how archives have both authority and physical existence. As far as literature is concerned, this object (theory) can be applied to many literary texts, which helps appreciating them more and analyzing them deeply. An example on these texts is Franz Kafka’s The Penal Colony. Before going into analyzing this work, one needs to explain the origin and theory of the Panopticon.
¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 Foucault, the renowned French philosopher, has written extensively on power in society. He argued that power functions in all fields of life. In his analysis of the power system, Foucault focused on the concept of ‘discourse’, which he defined as ‘a system of statements within which the world can be known’ (cited. in Das, 371). Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin show that the colonial discourse aims at concealing ‘statements about the exploitation of the resources of the colonized’ (43). Foucault elaborates on the issue of institutional power in his famous book Discipline and Punish. Although his main argument is targeted towards the prison as a system of power, Foucault explains that his analysis extends to all institutions including schools. As MacNaughton argues, Foucault’s critique of these institutions is ‘a critique of sociological and philosophical norms that reduce our possibilities of freedom and justice because it shows these norms to be partial and biased’ (152).
¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 1 Foucault argues that all institutions operate power with a view at creating ‘docile bodies’ i.e., those people that are easily controlled, not necessarily by hegemony, but by systematic surveillance. Foucault draws on Jeremy Bentham’s concept of the Panopticon in order to illustrate the mechanism of power. He explains that the Panopticon setting entails the existence of an observer (the people with power), who monitors everything and maintains discipline, and an observed (the subjects), who conforms to the regulations imposed by the authority.
¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 In his elaboration on the prison system, Foucault explains that the Panopticon setting entail the existence of an observer (the guards), who monitors everything and maintains discipline, and an observed (Foucault’s delinquent), who conforms to the regulations imposed by the authority. As Foucault observes, “it is, by its very nature, the apparatus of punishment that conforms most completely to the new economy of power and the instrument for the formation of knowledge that this very economy needs” (304). Being the virtual observed delinquent, the inmate assimilates the significance of punishment as vital component of the personal as well as the societal power.
¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 1 It should be noted that Foucault’s argument come from within his elaboration on the history of ideas. As a new historicist, Foucault is interested in the change that happened in beliefs, ideas, practices…etc through time. However, Foucault’s historicist ideas go in stark contrast with the ideas of Walter Benjamin as promulgated in “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” In this famous essay, Benjamin provides a critique of historicism arguing that the past and the present are not on one continuum, which does not help in studying the change in ideas over time as Foucault and other historicists do. Still, Foucault’s ideas on the Panopticon remain paramount.
¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 Franz Kafka’s The Penal Colony is a best example on Michel Foucault’s argument on prison. The fact that the story is set in prison emphasizes its metatheatrical nature. This can be substantiated with view at Michel Foucault’s theory of the prison. Foucault’s unique perspective of prison set in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison gives clear implications of the metatheatricality of Kafka’s text.
¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 2 In his analysis of the prison system, Foucault’s stresses that the prison guards observe and watch the prisoners, who are aware that they are being watched but cannot watch their guards. In this sense, the prisoner’s life resembles that of the character’s action on stage in that both are aware of the roles imposed on them to act in a certain way. Like the situation on stage, in prison there is an observer and observed, and there is a “character” who should “act” according to prescribed roles. This made Foucault describe the prison as a “coercive theatre.” Accordingly, fiction about prison is metatheatrical by nature as it shows the life of the prisoner within the original story. This actually makes Kafka’s work embodies three layers of representation; namely the original story, the embedded real story in addition to the prison setting.
¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 Foucault argues that prison reshapes the identity of the prisoner, and so does the theatre; and that is why he regards prison as “a sort of artificial and coercive theatre in which (the delinquents’) life will be examined from top to bottom” (251-252). In line with Foucault’s argument, the prisoners in Kafka’s story are “delinquents,” whose lives are reshaped by his imprisonment. Significantly, and in line with Foucault’s thoughts, these prisoners go into an internal process of examining their lives to revaluate them. They experience three layers of prisons; that of the physical prison they are in; the story as a prison, and the real story that is embedded within the original story.
¶ 17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 0 Likewise, in Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, Erving Goffman also emphasizes the transformative nature of the prison and its relation to the theatre setting, speaking of what he calls “Prison theatricals.” Goffman indicates that, once in prison, the prisoner undergoes “progressive changes that occur in the beliefs that he has concerning himself and significant others” (14). This is exactly what happens to characters in Kafka’s story. Their view of their lives is redefined and corrected. They investigate their lives from a different perspective and reshape their knowledge of their surroundings. Both the story and prison, with their transformative nature, have played a vital role in creating the prisoners’ awareness of their reality.
¶ 18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 0 Foucault adds that any disciplinary system relies on a hierarchical paradigm reinforcing rankings. He clearly states that “discipline is an art of rank, a technique for the transformation of arrangements. It individualizes bodies by a location that does not give them fixed positions, but distributes them and circulates them in a network of relations” (146). Foucault adds:
¶ 19 Leave a comment on paragraph 19 0 He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection (202-203).
¶ 20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 0 The prisoner “becomes the principle of his own subjection.” He plays the power he enjoys on himself. So the delinquent becomes his own disciplining authority, imposing punishment on himself. By making the prisoner assume a controlling figure, the prison in the novel substantiates Foucault’s view of the very nature of any disciplinary system characterized by the focus on both delinquency and authority.
¶ 21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 0 Interestingly enough, Foucault assumes that the penal system does not aim at obliterating delinquent behavior since the existence of such behaviors is seminal for the sustenance of system power. He argues that “power can be exercised over the other only insofar as the other still has the option of killing himself…or of killing the other person” (292). So the existence of the delinquent is vey paramount for the system; similarly, the role of the criminal in the story is seminal to the power structure. Accordingly, by featuring the figure of the criminal, the story does not promote delinquency as much as it highlights the continuity of the system that relies on the existence of delinquent behavior.
¶ 22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 Although the above argument shown correspondence between Foucault and Kafka’s views of power, The Penal Colony also illuminates the different perspective both writers have regarding power. In general, Foucault, in Discipline and Punish, is descriptivist rather than prescriptivist. In other words, his argument does not call for adopting any of the three phases of the penal system he outlines. Rather, he describes them philosophically to demonstrate the shift in the penal discourse. Conversely, Kafka’s text is essentially political. Kafka clearly critiques the reappearance of a disciplinary strategy that takes the body as its main target. In this regard, his text functions as a form of resistance to the penal ideology. This resistance, according to Foucault, augments the existence of power as resistance is integral to the perpetuation of power.
¶ 23 Leave a comment on paragraph 23 0 To conclude, Kafka’s work shows many points of similarity with Foucault’s argument about power and penal system as outlined in Discipline and Punish. Kafka shows how the body becomes the locus of punishment, which ultimately creates Foucault’s “docile bodies.” Meanwhile, Kafka goes beyond Foucault’s mere “genealogy” of the penal system to include a critique of the very discourse that create such a system.
¶ 24 Leave a comment on paragraph 24 1 Within this context, Kafka’s text may embody what Foucault terms as the diffraction or “discounitity” that marks a transitional phase from one discourse to another. As the penal colony itself oscillates between sticking to the medieval form of punishment targeting the body and adopting the Enlightenment benevolent one, it marks a point of transition between these two phases. Kafka’s critique of the pre-Enlightenment phase adds to this reading.
¶ 25 Leave a comment on paragraph 25 0
Works Cited
¶ 27 Leave a comment on paragraph 27 0 Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., and Tiffin, H. The Empire Writes Back. London: Routledge, 2002.
¶ 28 Leave a comment on paragraph 28 0 Benjamin. Walter.“Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. 1940. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. 253-264
¶ 29 Leave a comment on paragraph 29 0 Das, Bijay. Twentieth Century Literacy Criticism. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers & Dist. 2005.
¶ 30 Leave a comment on paragraph 30 0 Derrida, Jacques Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 1-5; 83-101.
¶ 31 Leave a comment on paragraph 31 0 Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan,
¶ 32 Leave a comment on paragraph 32 0 New York: Vintage, 1995.
¶ 33 Leave a comment on paragraph 33 0 Goffman, Erving. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other
¶ 34 Leave a comment on paragraph 34 0 Inmates. Garden City: Anchor, 1990.
¶ 35 Leave a comment on paragraph 35 0 Kafka, Franz. The Penal Colony. Penguin Classics: Penguin, 2001.
¶ 36 Leave a comment on paragraph 36 0 MacNaughton, G. Doing Foucault in Early Childhood Studies: Applying poststructural ideas. UK: Psychology Press, 2005.
I really like the tie you’ve drawn between the archive, power, and authority. I agree with Rob that this has some interesting connections with hegemony – the gaze that regulates and controls, not just observes.
Actually, I wonder if the Panopticon can work multiple ways in the idea of archive. Now that I’m thinking about it, it might make sense that the archive itself is imprisoned, is constrained to the assumed (and hidden, literally so) standards and rules of its moderators. This influence, of course, is both pervasive and invisible.
Next question is, of course, is if the archive or the canon is in the panopticon in Literature, who is the observer? the reader, the archivist, the teacher, the student? I mean, who is shaping or reading these works for ‘fit’? and what assumptions are we making?