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| Panopticon Sketch |
A panopticon is a building with a central tower for a watchman surrounded by cells in which inmates, workers, or children are all visible at the same time. Drawing upon this unusual reference, the French historian Michel Foucault proposed the panopticon as a metaphor for the way power works in society. Like the guards in the watch tower, for historians “in the central tower, one sees
everything without ever being seen.”1 Reflection on Foucault’s panopticon
reveals some interesting insights into how historians have the power to define and
shape present understanding of past reality. History is essentially a guardian of the legacy of a culture, and as such it has power to motivate change in the present. “It lays
down for each individual his place, his body, his disease and his death, his
well-being, by means of an omnipresent and omniscient power that subdivides
itself in a regular, uninterrupted way even to the ultimate determination of
the individual, or what characterizes him, or what belongs to him, of what
happens to him.” 2
1 Michel Foucault, "Panopticism"
from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York, NY: Vintage
Books, 1979,
201-2.
2 Michel Foucault, "Panopticism"
from Discipline and Punish, 197.
