what howard, i had no idea you were interested in such things. let's talk!
posted by:
|
-
Re: ???
Sun, March 14, 2004 - 6:32 AMso howard, when will you throw out a topic for us?
: ) how was your book club? -
-
random foucault topics
Wed, March 17, 2004 - 1:01 AMwell...what can u say about the dude..
he's said so much stuff and sometimes even contradicts himself completely.
that being said, let's just start off with the basic premise that Foucault's theory that you could understand society through how it treats it's prisoners.
in the prisons of this day, they were designed around what he called the "Panopticon" where all the jail cells were circular and there would be a Guard Tower or "Revolving Eye" that watches all the prisoners.
this type of model, Foucault believed, was the most efficient form of social control...hence, all of the architecture the industrial age created was to serve this purpose of a "master eye in control of the masses"
you see it in churches, schools, companies, basically any institution.
that being said...let's look at television.
we all know TV is driven by $$ & ads.
Foucault would say that TV projects an image to the masses...and hence acts as the revolving eye where the masses receives the input and as a result, knows what to buy & purchase.
hence, the most efficient form of controlling the masses, is ultimately self-control.
by projecting an "image" on to us (advertising), the masses conform by knowing what to buy, wear, etc.
ok..this is enough for now...any thoughts?
i would post some links but i'm too tired at this hour =) -
-
Unsu...
The Panopticon
Thu, March 18, 2004 - 6:32 PMI'm not sure if I agree with the TV as 'revolving eye' parallel. Here's how I understand it: TVs disseminate information, they flash images, but they don't see us. The panoptic subject self-controls because he or she knows that someone (and not just someone, but a gaurd, an authority) could be watching them at every moment - even if no one is watching. Accoring to F, "the major effect of the Panopticon (is) to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power." (Discipline and Punish p. 201)
I'm not sure that the TV does that to me. Do you feel as though TV is watching you? What does do this to me is the fact that at work there are people who have access to all my emails - they probabaly don't read them but the point is they could, at any time, pick an email where I talked some shit about my boss and that would be it for me. This causes me to be careful about what I write on my work email account, in this way, I self-discipline.
That being said, I'm sure we could have further discussions about the effect of the role of TV in our culture via Foucault, but I've said enough for now so I'll shut up. . . -
-
Re: The Panopticon
Wed, March 24, 2004 - 8:30 PMThe "TV as a Revolving Eye" metaphor may be a stretch but it's the an appropriate analogy our society has IMHO.
Foucault said the whole point of the Omniscient Eye was to regulate Normality in society. One example of this is how the media reports the news (or should i say tabloids?).
By sensationalizing scandals, be it crime, sexual infidelity or war, the hidden message is: This is what you should not do.
(Perhaps the Scarlett Letter was ahead of it's time.)
Another message from TV are the endless commercials or pop culture shows on MTV & friends of what THEY deem as "Normal" hence cool.
Case in point..."COPS" is the best example of this. this is such a wacky hilarious show if u can actually sit through this. but what's really happening from an illustrated point of view is:
1) the audience is passively watching TV
2) the TV appears as if its LITERALLY chasing down the criminals, or at least showing them in bad behavior
3) the images/subtext from this show is: These people are criminals, do not become like them.
here, the Omniscient Eye not only acts as a "Normality Cop" but also as messenger and agent of what is deemed normal.
In a post-internet context, perhaps a better analogy might no longer be the TV but the internet itself & the computer terminals we sit behind.
while we could have a field day discussing the powers of the internet & it's effect of an open society, capable of causing a revolution from the ground up....Foucault would probably say that those in power couuld easily undermine everything by simplying hinting the Internet is NOT open and does NOT protect privacy. This is especially true in the work place where emails & where you surf the web are recorded.
(speaking of which...i'll share a story a friend told me. she's a litigation attorney and since so much company information is sent through email these days, part of her job is simply combing through thousands of emails sent from a 4 year period.
during this investigation, all personal emails are saved and she has been able to detail the love affairs of 4 office romances. the whole point being: if ur gonna screw around in the office, don't use company email accounts! lolz)
so in some sense...yeah Beth, all that trash-talking you are saying about your boss is being recorded.
if you psychologically believe this, then i'm sure it will alter and regulate your behavior to what is deemed "Normal."
whether you are actually being monitored or not is irrelevant. it's the actual THOUGHT of being watched that Foucault was big on.
how all modern institutions were architecturally influenced by the panopticon: the Omniscient Eye watching the Masses....the perfect recipe for social control. -
-
Re: The Panopticon
Thu, December 30, 2004 - 2:16 AMhi. i'm new. can I be one of your friends howard?
-
Re: The Panopticon
Thu, December 30, 2004 - 5:51 AMI think that we make a major mistake to limit our understanding of Foucault to just one of his books. Certainly, "panopticonism" is one of the major apparati by which power/knowledge is organized in our civilization, but it is by no means the only one. We should also feel free to examine the theories of other thinkers who have analyzed phenomena that Foucault simply had not the scope or interest to examine.
I recently saw a film, "How to Get Ahead in Advertizing" (1989) in which the protagonist, an advertizing executive, explains that "Big Brother isn't watching us; we're watching him" on television. Needs are manufactured, consumption is created through an ever increasing number of services and products one needs in order to fit the image of "normal citizen" even when this consumption is detrimental to one's self-interest (and of course, Foucault has much to ask us with regards to selves and interests: Are we free individuals? Are we of a class? A race? A deviant group? A demographic?)
Television does not operate in isolation. Huge amounts of demographic data is amassed as to what sort of people watch given programing at given times. It is known where they live, how much money they likely earn, how much debt they likely carry, what products and services they likely consume, how much education they likely have, the complexity of information they are likely to be able to handle. This influences choices as to what entertainments might be offered, what products are hawked at commercial breaks, how advertizements are presented, how "news" is presented, what is presented as news, and what channel these things appear.
(Foucault talks about demographics most extensively in History of Sexuality, Volume I-- though the context is different.)
Wal*Mart is said (according to a documentary I saw on Public TELEVISION) to have more consumer and product data on its own internal computer network than raw data exists on the entire internet, and this allows them massive influence the world economy, especially in the United States of America and People's Republic of China-- this information allows them to not merely maximize products but heavily regulate the lives of "consumers" and "employees" both directly and indirectly.
The point, and this is something that many readers of Foucault seem to miss, is that systems of power/knowledge may constitute individuals, but they often have very little interest in individuals qua individuals. Ultimately, even the dossier exists just to classify the individual as a type and to refer the proper institutional response. "You may be the center of attention at this school, but we've seen so many students just like you over the years at many different schools and this is what all of them eventually must face..." or "You have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder with social phobia, there are people just like you, and we can help..." or "Do you need a loan?" or "Are you ashamed of your smile?"
This is why Foucault's main interest up until History of Sexuality, Volume II: The Use of Pleasure was about how power/knowledge constituted and organized populations of individuals-- and ultimately why those researches led him to talk about some of the greatest atrocities of the twentieth century: the Holocaust in the name of national identity and racial hygine; the Soviet Gulag in the name of a more rational society. These systems manifested to greater or lesser extents in all modern societies, be they capitalist or socialist, communist, fascist, or democratic.
It's with the final works that Foucault began to investigate the "technologies of the self" by which selves maintained themselves and became capable of resistance to the systems of power/knowledge that claimed universal rationality.
P.S. I just recently read Marshal McLuhan's "Understanding Media" and I think that it is really essential to understanding how television works. The intellectual exercise will be locating its functioning and those of other media in systems of power/knowledge. McLuhan sometimes glosses over that, but more so concentrates on how media relate to individual and tribal identities. -
-
Re: The Panopticon
Thu, December 30, 2004 - 10:53 AMyeah -- this idea of foucault that he was all about the panopticon and subjugation is a **very** limited understanding.
i recently read an essay by him in which he says, basically, it's a mistake to say i am all about power. what i am about, he says, is **the subject.** that is, how we are constructed as subjects. and he potently shows the relationship of the two what some might call disparate meanings of that word -- to be the center, the main thing, the motivating noun, etc, and to be an underling, a pawn in a system of power.
foucault spoke of "regimes of truth." how truth is not manipulated by those in power, but how TRUTH IS POWER. there is no truth. there are only belief systems that proliferate like viruses and allow some people to propser and others less so.
power is not a hierarchical top down thing. we are all subjects of it. to assert, say, that it is not true that the US is good and just in invading iraq and then letting that "truth" motivate one's actions, is to merely create another "regime of truth" -- no different in form than the "truth" that the US is good and just nation, and that "we" are liberating the iraquis.
in this world view -- the world view of foucault, there is no way to "truly" rebel against oppression. to rebel "truly" is just to perpetuate regime of truth/power.
in the essay i have referenced, he suggests that a useful activity might be to examine idenity -- how we are constituted as subjects. -
-
Re: The Panopticon
Fri, December 31, 2004 - 10:37 AMOf course, most Americans encounter Foucault through "Discipline and Punish." Perhaps because it is the work most accessible to American social science students and political activists. Furthermore, "Discipline and Punish" is often taught by people who don't understand the philosophical underpinnings of his critique to people who are ideologically committed to some form of watered down Marxism.
They fail to understand that Foucualt is not complaining that "the prison" is unjust, nor is he seeking to "reform the prison." Foucault is instead engaging in a genealogy of prisons: What were the historical conditions that allowed it to even be imagined? Why could it not be imagined in a previous era? What technologies, systems of communication, fields of knowledge, and organizations allow it to function? How do humans in this institution know and regulate themselves and others? How do the techniques, methods, etc. function into the larger society?
Foucault's argument becomes one that the prison is a western institution that sheds light on many other institutions of western society: the workplace, the school, the wellfare state, the hospital, the military, etc. and that these institutions shape the way we perceive our selves as westerners.
This is why Foucault's activism regarding prisons was not to call for reforms in the penal code or any other such common sense activity, but to publish a journal of writings by prisoners (something illegal in France-- Foucault was prosecuted.) Allow the prisoners to talk about whatever they want, instead of being the subject of discourse by "experts" each of whom have an idea of what to do about "the prison population." These experts are themselves created through dsiciplinary power.
Foucault's later work moved into the area of sexuality-- first in the modern era, in which he discovered that not only was it a way that we moderns talk about ourselves, but that the entire apparatus that allows us to think of ourselves as having "sexuality" is also an apparatus that leads to ethnic cleansing, and National Geographic.
It was at that point that he became interested our experiences of ourselves and this led to his studies of "technologies of the self" in "History of Sexuality, Volumes 2 & 3" and any number of essays in which he examined how ancient Greeks, Romans, and Christiandom experienced friendship, appetites, and "the flesh." Something for which most social critics were simply not prepared.
How do we experience ourselves? How does that define our place in our culture? Does this make us more resistant to power? Does it make us more capable wielders of power?
-
-
-
-
-
-
