The Panopticon

		home intro bio vision words work visuals contact
				the panopticon
		UNDER CONSTRUCTION

		"On March 1757 Damiens the regicide was condemned to make the 'amenda honorable" before the main door of the Church of Paris where he was to be taken and conveyed in a cart, wearing nothing but a shirt, holding a torch of burning wax weighing two pounds then in the said cart to the Place de Greve, where on a scaffold that will be erected there, the flesh will be torn from his breasts, arms, thighs and calves with red-hot pincers, his right hand, holding the knife with which he committed the said parricide, burnt with sulphur and, on those places where the flesh will be torn away, poured molten lead, boiling oil, burning resin, wax and sulphur melted together and then his body drawn and quarter by four horses and his limbs and body consumed by fire, reduced to ashes and his ashes thrown to the winds." From: The Commentaries on The Laws of England. Volume 4, 1766. Blackstone, William.

		download pdf soon

The Panopticon of Jeremy Bentham is an architectural figure which "incorporates a tower central to an annular building that is divided into cells, each cell extending the entire thickness of the building to allow inner and outer windows. The occupants of the cells . . . are thus backlit, isolated from one another by walls, and subject to scrutiny both collectively and individually by an observer in the tower who remains unseen. Toward this end, Bentham envisioned not only venetian blinds on the tower observation ports but also mazelike connections among tower rooms to avoid glints of light or noise that might betray the presence of an observer."

The Panopticon thus allows seeing without being seen. 'Such asymmetry of seeing-without-being-seen is, in fact, the very essence of power for Foucault because ultimately, the power to dominate rests on the differential posession of knowledge'"("Subject" 223).