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originally posted by: RadioRobert
I guess I now know what all the Ghost talk was earlier... Except I have way more questions than I did 15 minutes ago.
The possibility that the panopticon is based on the royal menagerie at Versailles is raised. The Panopticon allows on to do the work of a naturalist: drawing up tables and taxonomies. It is also a laboratory of power, in which experiments are carried out on prisoners and staff. The plague-stricken town and the panopticon represent transformations of the disciplinary programme. The first case is an exceptional situation, where power is mobilized against an extraordinary evil. The second is a generalized model of human functioning, a way of defining power relations in everyday life. The Panopticon is not a dream building, but a diagram of power reduced to its ideal form. It perfects the operations of power by increasing the number of people who can be controlled, and decreasing the number needed to operate it. It gives power over people's minds through architecture. As it can be inspected from outside, there is no danger of tyranny
The theory of discipline in which everyone is observed and analyzed is embodied in a building that makes these operations easy to perform. The panopticon develops out of the need for surveillance shown in the plague. Plague measures were needed to protect society: the panopticon allows power to operate efficiently. It is a functional, permanent structure. The transition from one to another represents the move to a society in which discipline is based on observation and examination. The disciplinary society is not necessarily one with a panopticon in every street: it is one where the state controls such methods of coercion and operates them throughout society. The development of a disciplinary society involves socio-economic factors, particularly population increase and economic development.