Michel Foucault. Disciple and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977) The panopticon is machine for surveillance; it allows one to totally see without ever being seen. Regularly used in prisons, this apparatus “induces in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” (201). However, this apparatus… Read More Panopticism, Old Power Regime

Michel Foucault. Disciple and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977). The purpose of execution as a public spectacle is a ceremony of power, meant to reinforce authority of the sovereign. When a law is broken, it offends the obedient, the sovereign who created it, and thus reparation must be sought; otherwise, the authority of… Read More Body of the Condemned, Spectacle of the Scaffold