Panopticon
The Panopticon (from Greek παν Pan , 'everything', and οπτικό Optiko , belonging to See '), Latinized also panopticon is one of the British philosopher and founder of the classical utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham derived concept for the construction of prisons and similar institutions, but also of factories , which enables the simultaneous monitoring of many people by a single monitor.
The French philosopher of the late 20th century Michel Foucault described this principle of order as a model for modern surveillance societies and as essential for western liberal societies , which he also calls disciplinary societies . Based on this, he developed his concept of panoptism .
Jeremy Bentham's architectural design
All buildings based on the Panopticon principle are characterized by the fact that all factory workers or prison inmates can be monitored from a central location. The focus is on an observation tower from which cell tracts emerge (in a so-called radiation construction ). In this way, the guard can see into the cells in the middle without the inmates being able to see the guard. This is because the prisoners are clearly visible from the guard's point of view in the backlight, but the guard himself cannot be made out in the darkness of his location. As a result, they do not know whether they are currently being monitored.
From this design principle, Bentham hoped that all occupants would behave in accordance with the rules at all times under surveillance pressure ( i.e. avoid deviating behavior ), since they would have to assume that they were being observed at all times. Above all, by reducing the number of staff, this leads to a massive reduction in costs in the prison and factory system, because the ratio between the fear that is generated of being watched and the monitoring work actually performed is very high.
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implementation
The Panopticon construction, actually designed for the supervision of factory workers, was to be realized for the first time in a prison building in 1811. The project was canceled, however, and Bentham was compensated for its planning efforts two years later with £ 23,000.
The Panopticon idea influenced some prison buildings of the Victorian era . A modification of the principle was that all corridors running in a star shape can be seen from a central point. Pentonville Prison in London shows the characteristics of a Panopticon structure. Star-shaped corridors also have or had the Holloway Prison (London), Wandsworth (London), Port-Arthur (Australia), the Moabit cell prison (Germany) and the prison on the Italian island of Santo Stefano .
In Presidio Modelo (span. "Model prison"), Cuba , Bentham construction concept is realized circumferentially. It was built in 1928 by the dictator Gerardo Machado , closed in 1967 and declared a national monument. The concept of the Panopticon was implemented in the Stateville Correctional Center in the US state of Illinois, which was inaugurated in 1925 . Further prisons in the sense of Bentham were built in Australia (1830), Milan (1944) and Ho Chi Minh City (1953).
Reception and reflection
Michel Foucault: Panoptism
Foucault interpreted Bentham's architectural principle in his book Surveillance and Punishment as a symbol for the order principle of western liberal societies (see also Panoptism ).
Zygmunt Bauman: Postpanoptikum
Based on Foucault, Zygmunt Bauman recalls the Panoptikum as an example of modern, territorial power in his work “Fleeting Modernity”. At the same time, Bauman tries to use the Panopticon to symbolically show that postmodern conditions are “evaporating” and that power moves independently of territories, for example with the help of electronic signals (smartphone, internet, etc.). He also describes the current state of postmodernism as "post-panoptic" .
But it is not only the social area of “ delinquency ” that can be characterized as “post-panoptic” in the sense of Bauman, because everyday life is also increasingly controlled by electronic signals. Today there are a large number of surveillance cameras in public places and in shops, but daily work is also often more or less electronically recorded.
Branden Hookway: Panspectron
The information theorist Branden Hookway led in 2000 the concept of Panspectrons one, an evolution of the Panopticon to the effect that there is no object more defined the monitoring, but everyone and everything is monitored. The object is only defined in connection with a specific question.
Fiction and film
The panopticon principle can be found in various dystopian novels :
- In George Orwell's 1984 , surveillance cameras are installed in all living, lounging and working rooms .
- In Yevgeny Zamyatins We have people's houses glass walls.
- In John Twelve Hawks Traveler , a secret organization is working to set up global surveillance based on the panopticon principle.
- In Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta , the action takes place in a camera-monitored state according to the panopticon principle.
- In Gordon Dahlquist's The Glass Books of Dream Eaters , there are repeated allusions to the panopticon principle, as well as a prison room, which was built according to the first plans of Jeremy Bentham.
- In the film Fortress , the MenTel underground prison has a similar design.
- In the film Guardians of the Galaxy , the Kyln prison is built on the Panopticon principle.
literature
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Panopticon, or, The Inspection House (1787). In: Miran Božovič: The Panopticon Writings. London / New York 1995, pp. 31-95.
- Translation: The Panopticon . From the English by Andreas Leopold Hofbauer , ed. by Christian Welzbacher . Matthes & Seitz Berlin, Berlin 2013. ISBN 978-3-88221-613-4 .
- Zygmunt Bauman : Fleeting Modernity (= edition suhrkamp . Volume 2447). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-518-12447-1 .
- Robin Evans: Bentham's Panopticon: An Incident in the Social History of Architecture. In: Architectural Association Quarterly , Volume 3, Number 2, April-July 1971, ISSN 0001-0189 , pp. 21-37.
- Michel Foucault : Monitoring and Punishing. The birth of the prison (= Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch. Volume 2271). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-518-38771-9 .
- Heike Jung: A look at Bentham's Panopticon. In: Max Busch, Gottfried Edel, Heinz Müller-Dietz (eds.): Prison and Society. Gedächtnisschrift für Albert Krebs (= series of publications for delinquency education and legal education. Volume 7). Centaurus-Verlags-Gesellschaft, Pfaffenweiler 1994, ISBN 3-89085-884-8 , pp. 33-46.
- Steffen Luik: The reception of Jeremy Bentham in German jurisprudence (= research on German legal history. Volume 20). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2003, ISBN 3-412-09202-9 , pp. 19 ff., 217 ff. (At the same time: Dissertation, University of Tübingen 2001).
- David Lyon: From Big Brother to Electronic Panopticon. In: David Lyon: The Electronic Eye. The Rise of Surveillance Society. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (MN) 1994, ISBN 0-8166-2513-1 , pp. 57-80.
- Janet Semple: Bentham's Prison. A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1993, ISBN 0-19-827387-8 .
Web links
- Theory of Surveillance: The PANOPTICON ( Memento from February 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). June 16, 2001.
- Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon Letters (February 10, 2015 memento in the Internet Archive ). June 16, 2001.
- Control and Surveillance .
- David Lyon: From Big Brother to Electronic Panopticon (English).
- Sandra Braman: Tactical memory: The politics of openness in the construction of memory . In: firstmonday.org , August 9, 2006.
- Thomas McMullan: What does the panopticon mean in the age of digital surveillance? . In: The Guardian , July 23, 2015.