panopticon

This term was first used by Jeremy Bentham in 1791 to describe his idea of an ‘inspection house’ to be used for surveillance purposes in public institutions such as prisons, asylums, and workhouses. The panopticon was a circular construction of open single ‘cells’, built around a central inspection tower, by means of which both the inspector and the inmate were under constant surveillance. Michel Foucault discussed the idea at length inDiscipline and Punish (1975) and describes the panopticon as an apparatus of power by virtue of the field of visibility it creates. Because it made inmates always conscious of being visible, he argued, an automatic functioning of power was ensured. As a consequence of constant surveillance, individuals became ensnared in an impersonal power relation which both disindividualized the power relationship itself, and individualized those subjected to it. Foucault saw this as an essential development in, and metaphor for, the increasing surveillance, hierarchy, discipline, and classifications of modern society, by means of which individuals became ever more regulated and controlled by impersonal institutions. The idea of the panopticon as discussed by Foucault has also been important and influential in recent theories of the gaze.