Foucault used the panopticon as a way to illustrate the proclivity of disciplinary societies subjugate its citizens. He describes the prisoner of a panopticon as being at the receiving end of asymmetrical surveillance: “He is seen, but he does not see; he is an object of information, never a subject in communication.”

French philosopher, Michel Foucault, was an outspoken critic of the panopticon. He argued the panopticon’s ultimate goal is to induce in the inmates a state of conscious visibility. This assures the automatic functioning of power.

Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher and social theorist in the mid-1700s, invented a social control mechanism that would become a comprehensive symbol for modern authority and discipline in the western world: a prison system called the Panopticon.

1791
panopticon, architectural form for a prison, the drawings for which were published by Jeremy Bentham in 1791.

Bentham reasoned that if the prisoners of the panopticon prison could be seen but never knew when they were watched, the prisoners would need to follow the rules. Bentham also thought that Reveley’s prison design could be used for factories, asylums, hospitals, and schools.

In 1975 the French philosopher Foucault coined the term ‘panopticism’6 which quickly became used to describe Bentham’s utilitarian m .co theory as a whole. Panopticism is the theorisation of surveillance society, ate derived from Bentham’s project of a prison, with an all-seeing inspector.

Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher and social theorist in the mid-1700s, invented a social control mechanism that would become a comprehensive symbol for modern authority and discipline in the western world: a prison system called the Panopticon.

Internalized Authority and the Prison of the Mind: Bentham and Foucault’s Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher and social theorist in the mid-1700s, invented a social control mechanism that would become a comprehensive symbol for modern authority and discipline in the western world: a prison system called the Panopticon.

Foucault calls this a “ discipline blockade ”. Similar to a dungeon where each inmate is sequestered, administered discipline can be absolute in matters of life or death. On the other hand, Bentham highlights the panopticon’s power as being a “new mode of obtaining mind over mind”.