April 11, 2014
Soc. 385
Panopticism
Foucault looked much into power, and its history. One of the things he looked into were disciplinary and regulatory power. Disciplinary power, as he explains it, is self-policing power, while regulatory power is the regulating of movement through a direct force. In other words, with disciplinary power, people internalize a power mechanism and start acting upon it, so in a way they become “disciplined,” without no direct force or control. However, regulatory power, is when an actual force or authority figure is actually enforcing its power to the people. An example of disciplinary power as Foucault provided was the concept of Panopticism. Panopticism is the use of a panopticon, which is a disciplinary mechanism that enforces obedience, but does not need regulatory power to exist. A panopticon encompasses three special characteristics. The first is that it must enclose, secondly it should deprive people of light, and thirdly it must hide its power. Along with these characteristics, this disciplinary mechanism has principles that entail that a panopticon is visible and unverifiable. Like Foucault mentioned, through his example of Bentham’s panopticon, which is a surveillance tower that is built in the middle of a prison space, that is visible to the inmates who are in cells surrounding the tower. However, they are not able to see inside the tower, so they don’t know when they are being watched, which makes it unverifiable. Therefore, these principles enforce the obedience of the inmates.
The purpose of the panopticon then is to enforce obedience in a much efficient way because it “reduces the number of those who exercise it, while increasing the number on who it is exercised” (Foucault). Hence, there are various examples of panopticons that can be seen in today’s society, for its sole purpose of regulating people’s actions through disciplinary power. A prime example of a panopticon in today’s society is the surveillance of Muslim groups in the US.
Ever since the 9/11 incident in New York, the US government began introducing security methods to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks. The surveillance of Muslim groups in the state of New York is one of these security practices. According to Sethi (2014), beginning September 11, 2001, the New York Police Department has been watching over Muslim communities through various means of tracking procedures, such as: community mappings, video surveillance, photography and anonymous informants. Thus, the purpose of this is to track down people from the Muslim community, who are affiliated with terrorist groups. Nonetheless, the surveillance of this group, acts in a form of a panopticon because the surveillance of this group can be seen as enclosing the Muslim population because they are all being surrounded figuratively through the monitoring of their doings. Also, it is depriving them of the light and the NYPD is hiding its power because they are spying on them. They are not being open about it, as far as asking them personally if they are affiliated with terrorist groups. Instead, they are just being followed around.
Although the Muslim community knows that they are being watched, they don’t know when it is that they are being watched. Which is just what the principles of a panopticon holds, that it should be visible and unverifiable. This is exactly what the NYDP surveillance of the Muslim community is doing because they are visible, or present in the sense that the Muslim population knows of their spying, but they don’t know if they are being watched all the time. Because of this, the Muslims are said to be living in fear because they are not being left alone. They think before wearing hijabs, having long beards, or attending religious-based services. Also, they don’t feel comfortable speaking Arab in public places (Sethi 2014). Thus, the insecurity the Muslims are feeling with the ways of expressing themselves and being the way they were used to being is the effect that a panopticon has on the people. A panopticon, has to enforce obedience through an “omnipresent and omniscient power” (Foucault). This “omniscient power” is doing exactly that because even though the Muslims weren’t doing anything wrong before they knew they were being tracked down, now that they are informed of such, it has changed their behavior and the ways they want to be perceived as in public spaces, by trying to detach anything that is linked to their Muslim culture.
The panopticon as an example of disciplinary power is a way of enforcing obedience among the people without a direct force or control acting upon them. The surveillance of the Muslim community in New York is an example of this because through the relation of a panopticon’s characteristics and principles to this, it has shown an extent of its effectiveness.
References:
· Foucault, Michel. Panopticism. Discipline and Punish.
· Sethi, Arjun. 2014. Spying on Muslims is Legal? CNN. Retrieved April 10, 2014 http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/26/.