Panopticon (Symbol)
The Panopticon was a design for a building proposed by Jeremy Bentham. It has a tall central tower and cells in a circle around it, so that anyone in a cell might feel they were being watched by a guard or authority figure in the tower at any moment. The building was never actually constructed. However, it comes to symbolize, for Foucault, the disciplinary society he theorizes:
But the Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: it is the design of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form; its functioning, abstracted from any obstacle, resistance or friction, must be represented as a pure architectural and optical system: it is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use. (205)
Here the “abstraction” of a mechanism of power from a real thing (a building) into a general process (discipline) is the work of symbolism. The Panopticon symbolizes a society in which we always feel we are being watched and therefore unconsciously adjust our behavior.
A Pubic Execution and a Timetable (Allegory)
Foucault begins Discipline and Punish with two signal events: the last public drawing and quartering, of Damiens in 1757, and then the schedule of a prisoner at the end of the century. He explains that these symbolize the major transition he is exploring in his book:
A few decades saw the disappearance of the tortured, dismembered, amputated body, symbolically branded on face or shoulder, exposed alive or dead to public view. The body as the major target of penal repression disappeared. (8)
The movement from the tortured body to the imprisoned body is an allegory for the movement from sovereign power to disciplinary power. Instead of the body bearing the marks of sovereign power, it begins to be contained by disciplinary power. The rest of Discipline and Punish will fill in how this transition came about and what its effects included.
Observation (Motif)
The master theme recurring throughout Discipline and Punish is observation. It is what connects the “discipline” and “punish” in Foucault’s title: discipline works by creating a sense that people are always being observed, and they act in such a way to avoid punishment should they be observed doing something outside social norms. The rise of disciplinary power is the rise of an omnipresent sense of observation. At first, observation was contained to institutions: for instance, teachers observing students in school. But eventually, observation is freed from any particular place or person, and people start to act as if they are being observed at all times, because we are always judging and being judged by others according to our adherence to norms.
