Panopticon
- “reformed morals, preserved health, reinvigorated industry, the diffused instruction, reduced public offices, strengthened economy - the Gordian knot of the laws on the poor not distinct, but untied - all that by a simple architectural idea. ”
- Jeremy Bentham , the panopticon , 1780. (The work, of 56 pages, is translated from English and is printed by order of the legislative Parliament in 1791.)
The panoptical is a type of prison Architecture imagined by the Philosophe Jeremy Bentham. The objective of the panoptical structure is to make it possible an individual to observe all the prisoners without those not being able to know if they are observed, thus creating a “ feeling of invisible Omniscience ” among prisoners. (See Michel Foucault, To supervise and punish , 1975).
The idea of Bentham derives from plans of factory developped at the point for a monitoring and an effective coordination of the workmen. These plans were developed by his/her Samuel brother, in the objective to simplify the assumption of responsibility of a great number of men. Bentham supplemented this project by mingling the idea with it with contractual hierarchy: for example, an administration thus governed (by contract, being opposed to management confidence) whose director would have a financial interest cause a drop in the rate of industrial accidents. The panopticon was as created to be less expensive as the other prison models of the time by requiring less employees. “ Let build a prison to me on this model ”, asked Bentham the Committee for the penal reform, “ I will be guard there. You will see '' that the guards will not justify a Salaire, and will not cost anything the State ”. The supervisors not being able to be seen, they do not need to be at their station constantly, which finally makes it possible to give up the monitoring with supervised.
Bentham devoted a broad part of its time and almost its whole personal fortune to promotion of panoptical constructions of prisons. After many years of refusal, political and financial difficulties, he managed to obtain the agreement of the British Parliament. The project however fell through in 1811, when the King opposed the acquisition of the ground.
The panopticon was not born of living of Bentham. Michel Foucault was interested in it later and saw a modern technology of observation there transcending the school, the factory, and the Armée. Variations around the panoptism can be seen nowadays, participant in a way less noisy than their penal equivalent, with the “S ociété of monitoring ”.
Others
- 1984 of George Orwell is a novel which is inspired largely by the principle of panopticon
- Xavier Mauméjean takes up this architectural idea in Panopticon of its novel, anatomical Venus
- Michel Agier is a famous diffuser of the idea of panopticon, in particular in its traditional " To make city, today, tomorrow, reflections on the desert, the world and spaces précaires"
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