Surveillance is one of the instruments or mechanisms of power for imposing norms. It
attempts to monitor, scrutinize, and control the way we behave, talk, hear, or see and
interpret our worlds and surroundings. The study of surveillance addresses some of the
pressing questions at any point of history. Issues of power, resistance, identity, inequality,
individuality, and ethics are dealt with under the framework of surveillance. Surveillance
studies have often been traced to Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon as a theatrical guidance.
Bentham’s Panoptic is a penal building designed for problems of controlling and monitoring
prisons. It is a circular building, divided into cells, with a tower of vigil at its center. The
warder can see everything without ever being seen from its watchtower. There is a
constant threat of surveillance, thereby the fear of being watched would lead the inmate
to internalize the viewing tower’s gaze and in effect regulate his acts.
Foucault (1977, 200) describes Bentham’s panopticon as a punitive building, in which
“visibility is a trap.” However, the role of panopticon is far beyond this architectural plan. Foucault (ibid., 205) elaborates on this: “The Panopticon must not be understood as a
dream building: it is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form.”
Foucault’s panopticon is a machine of power rather than machine of gaze that is generalized
across all domains of society. Gaze, here, is only a mechanism by which power is exercised.
The panoptic mechanism illustrates a system of power, the purpose of which is to discipline
the body and create new docile and useful social subjects. Discipline is a product of
surveillance, fabricating individuals by forcing them to internalize codes and discourse of
institutions and to behave in a specified way.
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