Cultural Theory and Popular Culture

The panoptic machine
The panoptic machine 131
The panopticon is a type of prison building designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1787 (see
Figure 6.3). At the centre of the building is a tower that allows an inspector to observe
all the prisoners in the surrounding cells without the prisoners knowing whether or not
they are in fact being observed. According to Bentham, the panopticon is ‘A new mode
of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example: and
that, to a degree equally without example’ (Bentham 1995: 31). He also believed that
the panopticon design might also be used in ‘any sort of establishment, in which persons
of any description are to be kept under inspection, [including] poor-houses,
lazarettos, houses of industry, manufactories, hospitals, work-houses, mad-houses,
and schools’ (29).
According to Foucault (1979),
the major effect of the Panopticon [is] to induce in the inmate a state of conscious
and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. . . .
[S]urveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action;
that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary.
Figure 6.3 The panoptic machine.