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Surveillance and privacy
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In this passage from "Panopticon" Michael Foucault presents an interesting argument that we live in a society of surveillance. People learn to behave or the personality they develop is from watching others. Powerful people try to study individual to find out why they act or think the way they do to. After finding the answers these people use their knowledge to control people and make them think certain way. Panopticon prison is one of the biggest example of this because it shows how zero guard can control thousands of prisoners. Where before it took hundreds of people to control that many prisoners. what panopticon does is, it puts fear in people's mind that they are being watched all the time. In panopticon the guard is placed in middle of
all the prisoners cell. In way where guard can see everyone and prisoner cannot see a single guard. So when the guard makes a example of one or two prisoners in front of all the prisoners it makes them think there are lot of guards and they are being watched constantly. The way the people are monitored changes overtime. In past there was panopticon prison but in today's times there are cameras that the police has full access to. Over the world all people have phones, tablets, iPads, and laptops: all these things have cameras that can be hacked or monitored by police at any time. Michael Foucault says "it is rather that the individual is carefully fabricated in it" explaining that to put all people under surveillance, then they should make that thing, or phone necessity to people. Through this all the people will happily except all the risk that come with that necessity. People can be watched through cameras in a phone but the user does not know who's watching him and even if he is being watched. When these people hear about someone who got caught by surveillance and police made an example of him then other people start to think twice before doing something bad.
Perhaps no other event in modern history has left us so perplexed and dumbfounded than the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, an entire population was simply robbed of their existence. In “Our Secret,” Susan Griffin tries to explain what could possibly lead an individual to execute such inhumane acts to a large group of people. She delves into Heinrich Himmler’s life and investigates all the events leading up to him joining the Nazi party. In“Panopticism,” Michel Foucault argues that modern society has been shaped by disciplinary mechanisms deriving from the plague as well as Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, a structure with a tower in the middle meant for surveillance. Susan Griffin tries to explain what happened in Germany through Himmler’s childhood while Foucault better explains these events by describing how society as a whole operates.
However, there are other critiques that take a different approach on the oppression that exists in the novel. In "Urban Panopticism And Heterotopic Space In Kafka 's Der Process And Orwell 's Nineteen Eighty-Four,” Raj Shah argues that the way in which society in novel is oppressed is not an obvious oppression but one that focuses on constant surveillance. He uses Foucault’s arguments on panopticism to describe this. Shah states, “Foucault neologizes panopticism to describe a form of power relying not on overt repression, but rather upon the continuous surveillance of a population and the consequent strict regulation of the body” (703). He explains it is the constant surveillance that strips individuals of their rights and places them under oppression. He goes on to
In “Panopticism” Foucault states, “the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” (Foucault, pg. 201). The function of the Panopticon is to keep the prisoners orderly by instilling fear inside of them, this fear forces them to stay in their cells, and to remain compliant. The Panopticon is a building designed for surveillance.
There were quite a few changes made from Aldous Huxley’s, Brave New World to turn it into a “made for TV” movie. The first major change most people noticed was Bernard Marx’s attitude. In the book he was very shy and timid toward the opposite sex, he was also very cynical about their utopian lifestyle. In the movie Bernard was a regular Casanova. He had no shyness towards anyone. A second major deviation the movie made form the book was when Bernard exposed the existing director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, Bernard himself was moved up to this position. In the book the author doesn’t even mention who takes over the position. The biggest change between the two was Lenina, Bernard’s girlfriend becomes pregnant and has the baby. The screenwriters must have made this up because the author doesn’t even mention it. The differences between the book and the movie both helped it and hurt it.
In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley deftly creates a society that is indeed quite stable. Although they are being mentally manipulated, the members of this world are content with their lives, and the presence of serious conflict is minimal, if not nonexistent. For the most part, the members of this society have complete respect and trust in their superiors, and those who don’t are dealt with in a peaceful manner as to keep both society and the heretic happy. Maintained by cultural values, mental conditioning, and segregation, the idea of social stability as demonstrated in Brave New World is, in my opinion, both insightful and intriguing.
Michel Foucault's "Panopticism" is based on the architectural concept of the panopticon. Foucault extended this concept to create a new sort of authority and disciplinary principle. His idea was that of the anonymous watchers hold in and has the power to influence the ones being watched. This concept is two fold – it is subject to the person being watched not being able to know when they are being watched and to the rules of society places on individuals on how they should act in a given situation. This idea can be applied to every day life, like how we set up testing rooms for students or when reading literary works such as Dracula by Bram Stoker. In Dracula, there are power differentials caused by a character or characters "seeing" what others do not and caused by societal constructions.
Is Michel Foucault a historian or not? At the beginning of the analysis on Foucault’s historical analysis, what should be acknowledged is that none of Foucault’s works refer to his previous ones and every work is based upon a new construction of theory and method which shakes the standard norms of history writing and put his methods under suspicion by some historians. On the other hand, many others favor his work; because of Foucault’s specific approach, Gutting calls him as an ‘intellectual artisan’ who was an expert of producing intellectual equivalents of material objects and especially three kinds of them which are history, theory and myth. (Gutting 1996, 3-6) Thomas Flynn answers this question by claiming that Foucault’s all major works are histories of a
According to David Lyon in his introduction “The search for surveillance theories”, “The panopticon refuses to go away.” (4). The prison architecture invented by Jeremy Bentham became the crucial ‘diagram’ for Foucault. It places an emphasis on self-discipline as the archetypical modern mode, replacing the previous coercive and brutal methods – “it reverses the principle of the dungeon; or rather its three functions – to enclose, to deprive light, and to hide – it preserves only the first and eliminates the other two” (Foucault 200). In 1975, Foucault coined the term ‘panopticism’ in his book Discipline and Punish, which quickly became used to describe Bentham’s utilitarian theory as a whole. However, there has been much debate amongst Bentham scholars as to whether Bentham would have appreciated Foucault’s interpretation of the Panoptic. Philip Schofield writes, “It would have seemed very odd to Bentham, who regarded his Panopticon prison as humane, and an enormous improvement on the practice of the criminal justice system of the time” (qtd. in Ernst-Brunon 2-3). This discrepancy between an increasingly attractive Bentham and a still repulsive Panopticon is largely to be attributed to Foucault. If Foucault’s interpretation of the Pantopticon has made Bentham’s work known to a wider audience, conversely it has also turned Bentham into a forerunner of Big Brother. Bentham scholars have consistently lamented Bentham’s bad name among the general public and Foucault’s hand in the matter.
‘Theorizing Surveillance: The panopticon and beyond’, UK: Willan Publishing. LYON, D (ed.) (2003), ‘Surveillance as Social Sorting’, UK: Routledge. OLSEN, M (1999), ‘Michel Foucault: Materialism and Education’, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey.
In Michael Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish”, the late eighteen century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's model of Panopticon was illustrated as a metaphor for the contemporary technologies of mass surveillance.
Michel Foucault’s essay, “Panopticism”, links to the idea of “policing yourself” or many call it panopticon. The panopticon is a prison which is shaped like a circle with a watchtower in the middle. The main purpose of the panopticon was to monitor a large group of prisoners with only few guards in the key spot. From that key spot, whatever the prisoners do they can be monitored, and they would be constantly watched from the key spot inside the tower. The arrangement of panopticon is done in excellent manner that the tower’s wide windows, which opened to the outside and kept every cell in 360-degree view. The cells were designed so it makes impossible for the prisoners to glances towards the center. In short, none of the prisoners were able to see into the tower. The arrangement of cells guaranteed that the prisoner would be under constant surveillance. This is the beauty of the panopticon that anyone can glance at the cells from the tower but no prisoners can see the tower. The prisoners may feel like someone is watching, and know the he or she is powerless to escape its watch, but the same time, the guard in the tower may not be looking at the prisoners. Just because the prisoners think that someone is watching them, they will behave properly.
Foucault, in his essay, “Panapticism”, emphasizes the idea of the panopticon, which originated as an idea to keep prisoners under constant surveillance. This idea, as Foucault says is “all-seeing”. This prison structure proposed by Bentham ...
...ons and ideas of panopticism. By adding the modern day twist and use of recently developed technology, Mr. Gray opens the door to a new age of modern day panopticons that can be implemented by practically any willing party. The modern day relation of such mechanisms seems to break down even the most complicated aspects of Foucault’s “Panopticism” into the simplest of nonprofessionals’ terms. Gray’s article tackled the effectiveness of Foucault’s ideas in modern society and successfully arrived at the conclusion that as technology advances, the ability to employ a more “perfect” Panopticon becomes simpler and simpler with each advance in surveillance.
It also shows how Foucault the idea of being watched for long periods of time of no privacy, it will cause them to feel insane since there are no communications being exchanged as if they are an object only being observed for information.
Theories of social control can also extend into the surveillance mechanisms of criminal and self-disciplinary actions by individuals in the workplace (Grey 1994; 479). An analysis of Michel Foucault’s theory on Panoptic techniques in the workplace, can be heavily related to the surveillance mechanisms of CCTV and the desired outcome of what these surveillance mechanisms seek to achieve. The Panoptic technique seeks to draw attention to the use of surveillance to bring attention to anti-social behaviours of people in society. This surveillance mechanism is relatable to CCTV, as CCTV is used to deter potential offenders from committing crimes and to promote a safe working environment, and to promote self-discipline. The panoptic surveillance