Week 6: Panopticism

Questions:

1. Page 200 – Foucault gives three functions to the dungeon and argues that Bentham only uses one – enclosure, but isn't there a way to read Foucault's take on Bentham and argue that Bentham is actually using all three functions of the dungeon in his formulation of panopticism?

The three functions are to enclose, to deprive of light, and to hide. Bentham's conception just encloses and drops the other two. On 201, he discusses how there is a hiding and a deprivation of light. Rather than a systemic change and functional inversion, perhaps Bentham's discussion represents more a systemic inversion and functional change. Are the guardians subject to a kind of enclosure? Is Foucault conducting an argument against the see/seeable dyad? What are the stakes? The touching touch would be a phenomenological example that is expressive of a certain type of ontology that goes beyond the perceptive?

2. What is the social for Foucault and how does it function in Foucault's genealogy? Is the social operating as part of the analytic or the object of the analytic? (209, 212, 214-215) What is the distinction between society and population?

The social exists in a strange vacuum (or empty material) for Foucault as what is produced through power or the material through which power moves. Is the social operating as a kind of analytic (a particular conceptualization of the social such that he is applying it to the archives) or whether the social is what emerges from the archive or both? Are society and the social different?

The social could be a set of relationships that makes power possible or the social is what results from relations of power? But Power can also produce a particular kind of society, in this case disciplinary society, so a certain kind of society is the product of a certain modality of power. Is the distinction between disciplinary society as its produced or discipline produces a certain kind of society? Sometimes, the social seems like the material setting through which power moves producing a kind certain kind of society. What's the status of the social? Is it an empty signifier? What's the status of old form of power vis-a-vie the new form of power? As the social shifts, this shift becomes constitutive of of a new form of disciplinary society. Are human multiplicities the social? Is this the metaphysical Foucault? When the problem of power becomes a transcendental one and ceases to be historical, is this a problem or metaphysical move? The distinction doesn't need have to be transcendental or historically specific.

Is there another option where society is historically produced? Why is society be produced rather than disciplinary culture? Where do we want to stop asking ourselves about how things get produced? Power as a relational concept provides a repetitive architecture for his argument that is similar to the social, perhaps. But what is the concern here? Is there a causal relation between disciplinary power and the social? How are society, power, and history correlated? Is society synonymous with a system power? The ordering of human multiplicities is interesting as a universal is because it is anthropologically capacious. The concept of society is a particular creation of a particular socio-historical time. Ordering of human multiplicity is a problem that is solved a number of ways. Power doesn't produce the problem of human multiplicities, this problem is given. Universal not because of generality, but because of repetition. Would we be comfortable with the idea that other ways of organizing groups of people still had to organize and this organization is a problem that can be solved in a lot of different ways. It is not always solved by the production of something called the social – the problem persists. This an abstraction. Power is the conduct of conduct – is this an ordering of human multiplicities? He seems to not sufficiently accounting for the presence of something called the social in his analytical apparatus – why not conduct or culture or class relations? Is trying to account for society? No. Power is the assurance of the ordering.

3. 202 – Is sovereign power 'real' for Foucault ? What is Latour's take?

For Latour, the complicity of others is inherent in power – along this line, can sovereign power exist for Foucault? Can power be wielded for Foucault? Does this connect to the surface/depth distinction? It might be that Foucault would accept that sovereign power is relational or perhaps Foucault just didn't dig into sovereign power with the same attention that he did disciplinary power.

In the panopticon, you don't need depth. Sovereign power acts on the depth of bodies. Disciplinary power acts on the surface of certain encounters. Sovereign power (constraining) has passed to disciplinary power (surface). In disciplinary power, the moment of contact is ephemeral between the examiner and examined. Disciplinary power is non-corporal and continuous, while sovereign power is a discontinuous application of power – a spectacle.

Latour isn't interested in describing historical shifts of power, or even in describing history, but it seems he is more interested tiny shift or transitions of things (which isn't to say they are nonhistorical), or modalities of power. There is a distinction between Latour the social scientist and Foucault the historian. What Foucault does for history, Latour does for history?

4. 215 - How do we parse the distinction between discipline as an apparatus, modality of power, or institution? How do these map to 'spaces'/domains of discipline?

How do disciplines interact with one another? He seems to both want to say that these disciplinary mechanisms or techniques are internal to the institution but also some how escape and become deinstitutionalize? How does the swarm work?

How is the panoptical gaze, once it is internalized, different then the the internalization of the religious gaze internalized? Rather than transcendental identity based on the threat/hope of the afterlife, the disciplinary society offers reward and conditioning as an aspirational goal. You don't have to be a believer in disciplinary society. So there is a psychological difference, there is no intentionality – disciplined at a level below conscious intentionality. We would need to historicize this claim. Is an ominiscient god the disciplinification (spelling?) of religion? Is Santa Clause an icon of the disciplinary society? How do we think through disciplinary relations psychologically?

Other Questions:

1. Clarification (205) – What does Foucault mean when he says discipline is a mechanism power reduced to its ideal form?

2. What are the methodological implications of types of archival documents Foucault uses, such as 'edicts' or 'proposals?' ? What if he used different 'documents' such as lived experience?

3. Can we parse these distinctions: mixture versus purity (206), surface versus depth (216-217), horizontal conjunctions (219) and verticality

4. Is there a causal importance to the panopticon?