The Viewer Society: Michel Foucault's `Panopticon' Revisited

Abstract

The article takes its point of departure in one limited and consciously selected aspect of Michel Foucault's use of Jeremy Bentham's concept of `Panopticon': in his book Discipline and Punish, the aspect of surveillance, and the emphasis on a fundamental change and break which presumably occurred in the 1800s from social and theatrical arrangements, where the many saw the few, to modern surveillance activities where the few see the many. It is maintained that Foucault contributes in an important way to our understanding of and sensitivity regarding modern surveillance systems and practices, which are expanding at an accelerating rate, but that he overlooks an opposite process of great significance which has occurred simultaneously and at an equally accelerated rate: the mass media, and especially television, which today bring the many — literally hundreds of millions of people at the same time — with great force to see and admire the few. In contrast to Foucault's panoptical process, the latter process is referred to as synoptical. Together, the processes situate us in a viewer society in a two-way and double sense. This article explores the developmental parallels and relationships between Panopticon and Synopticon, as well as their reciprocal functions. It is maintained that the control and discipline of the `soul', that is, the creation of human beings who control themselves through self-control and who thus fit neatly into a so-called democratic capitalist society, is a task which is actually fulfilled by modern Synopticon, whereas Foucault saw it as a function of Panopticon.