Panopticism, described in Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

is form of control in which people are separated so that they can easily be seen and

immediately recognized.  During the early part of the unit on Panopticism Foucault shows

the reader how the practice was used during the time of the plague.  People were

controlled in spheres in which they can easily be identified and managed.  In other

words, contained and reacted upon with an implied “constant supervision”.  Foucault

compares this idea to a semi-opposite of the dungeon: in the matter that a dungeon is

meant to “enclose, to deprive of light and to hide” the panoptic principal keeps only

the “enclose” portion of the dungeon theory and embraces the opposite principal of

visibility and knowledge (Fclt. 200).  This form of control is more dangerous than the

dungeon theory in the fact that the person subject to this jurisdiction has to live under

some sort of invisible eye.  As described by Foucault, “He is seen, but he does not see,

he is the object of information, never the subject in communication” (fclt. 200).  This

state of unawareness creates a shackling presence that controls every facet of the

subject’s life.  Unknowing of when they are being watched they are forced to act as if

they were all the time.

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  Ultimately, what Panopticism creates is control out of fear.   It does not take much for

Panopticism to sustain itself because it is self-perpetuating in the sense that the fear is

grown and maintained in the people.  A good example of the strict need to comply with

this control is in George Orwell’s 1984. Under the watchful eye of the telescreens and

thought police, the characters of this story live in fear and compliance as to not be

caught doing things that would offend “Big Brother” the story’s dictator and benevolent

ruler.