Foucault Panopticism

2. Panopticism and surveillance before European democratization process Foucault is a very famous socialist, in his book , he mentioned Panopticism, an architectural figure of surveillance. To be more specific, it is invented by British Bentham. Bentham once boasted that this architecture will strengthen ethical standards, protect health care, disseminate education, relieve the stress of public service. All these advantages are implemented by a simple architecture proposal———the Panopticism. According to Foucault, the architectural figure of surveillance—— the Panopticism is a combination of a central tower and a circular building. The tower at the center is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring. The periphery buildings is divided into cells which have two windows, one on the inside corresponding to the windows of the tower and one on the outside allowing the light to cross the cell. Prisoners are observed from the tower by the effect of backlighting because they are standing out precisely against the light. …show more content…
So after 18 century, surveillance or the panopticism architecture had been kept filtering into the European society. The whole society had become a massive panopticism. Even thought there is no more physical central tower, the surveillance is still operated by the police. Different from dictatorship in ancient time, the surveillance in 18 century Europe came from all sides. It had different level and surveillance was fragmentary. People at that time can easily feel that they are under supervision but cannot figure out who’s monitoring them. In Foucault’s view, the surveillance at 18 century kept giving pressure to the society but at the same time, it is invisible. Thus people cannot counterattack. The result was that the surveillance began to make brazen attempt to supervise the whole