Critical Summary: Panopticism, By Michael Foucault

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Critical Reflection Paper 1 Summary Michael Foucault’s chapter titled Panopticism, analyzes how power has advanced in relation to surveillance. The chapter explores how when surveillance first evolved and how the King was the overall dictator and enforcer. The King held all the power and was capable of deciding what rules must be followed and the punishments that were associated with when the rules were disregarded. Punishment and torture was how the King choose to use his power. The King often turned to violence to deter people from committing crimes that he disproved of. It Foucault’s chapter, The body of the condemned, it describe how Robert-François Damiens would be tortured due to his attempt at killing the King. Instead of just …show more content…

Having the knowledge of getting in trouble if you get caught is not nearly as terrifying or compelling of not knowing when someone is watching your every move. Those in power essentially used scare tactics to keep the prisoner’s inline and from doing anything bad. Foucault says “the Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen” (232). Those in the panopticon never really know when they were being watched, the fear of this is what prevents people from continuing to break …show more content…

Dungeons were dark cells that were in basements that essentially aimed “to enclose, to deprive of light, and to hide” the prisoner’s that were incarcerated were kept away from society and essentially left in their cells to rot to death (230). On the other hand, the panopticon aimed to “place a supervisor in a central tower…to see constantly and recognize immediately” (230). Therefore, one of the only aspects that both these methods have in common is that the prisoners are locked up. This cage method is for security of the supervisors, other inmates, and society outside of the jail. It also gives inmates the overall idea of not being able to get out as punishment for whatever they

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