Is the panoptican active in our world? Where might we have “biopolicy”?

Comment on Foucault please.

Is the panoptican active in our world? Where might we have “biopolicy”?

Is Foucault revealing things in ways that are causing you to think about things differently?

Or you can comment on another piece of it all. He’s pretty rich.

READING
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tnLbwGHZ2euEBlwQWxK0Q9gxfANpPyF4/view?usp=sharing
OTHER READING IS UPLOADED IN THE DROP FILE AREA

EXAMPLE OF A DISCUSSION
Before dealing with the questions head on, I think its important touch on my opinion of Foucault in general. Marvelous thinker on so many levels! It is great to see a break from the grand theories we saw before and move into the post modernist thinkers.

Foucault essentially examines the states ability to exert control over its given population. He finds that there is a key transition period from which torture turned to rule of law (in prisons). His focus in this regard is largely on the activity of and perception by the prisoners, but he contends that the existing relationship between prisoners with their guard overseers is leaking into society.

What is essential for Foucault is this ever reaching dimension of society focused on surveillance and social control

Is the panoptican active in our world? Where might we have “biopolicy”?

Several examples of the panopticon exist today; defined as some social apparatus providing the powerful with the ability to survey all other members of society. Some key examples are: satellite technology, internet/ the web, social media, and even more simplistic technologies like cell phones themselves.

Today, the second one steps outside their home they are being viewed by something. Visually speaking and less in a tracking sense, satellites from most world governments have the capacity to see right down to micro-street level interactions. No one is outside the scope of these technologies unless one is actively hiding under the grind so to speak (Snowden perhaps). Moreover, our more mundane technologies like advanced digital watches and cell phones capture our locations on a daily basis. They are always connected to cell towers and Bluetooth technology is easily traceable making everyday lives more visible to outside forces.

Even though we are being physically watched and tracked, at times, what is more significant is the influence on everyday interaction. In CJ terms we like to call this idea deterrence. (Of course in CJ we are talking about ones attenuation toward offending or non-offending as it relates to crime). In Foucaults perspective, the panopitcon operates to keep the prisoners or even citizens quelled by the thought of being watched alone. People will mitigate their behavior as a direct consequence of being surveyed.

(In terms of biopolicy an interesting thought here is the way society and politics legislates the ability of queer folks to express their livelihood. In some states, the availability of hormone therapies and the direct treatment by physicians is against the law. Some states have banned TRT).

Is Foucault revealing things in ways that are causing you to think about things differently?

Yes! The post modernist perspective is definitely something worth adding to our analytical toolkits. Modernist thinkers tend to argue that modernity as brought progress with fixed notions of democracy and industry. However, for Foucault and other post modernists thinkers, he seeks to describe the actionable ways society is moving at any given period; Society is not following along a unilinear train of tolerance and progressivism, rather society has become an interplay of dominate subsystems (institutions) that exert control over peoples being.

I think framing the present as essentially more developed or progressive than humanitys past does a disservice in at least two ways: 1. we are unable to think outside of modernitys categories of existing. Meaning, if democracy is a function of modernity in and of itself than the possibility of its existence outside of modernity is false. Essentially, everywhere the functions of modernity do not exist, those spaces are not modern. 2. As thinkers, we are confined to understanding the world through uniform means. As Foucault points out, society is not so progressive in the way modernists think; Society is constructed with complex movements forward and backward in practice. As is the case of Foucaults analysis of the prison system, society is structuring itself more or less along the institutional functions of a prison rather than holding changes in the prison system static to its own institution.

Foucault pushes us as thinkers to decide/consider for ourselves who has control in our lives. Is it us as the lay people or is the constructed system of social control forced on us? Obviously, there is no absolute answer in either sphere of that question. The point is that we have to think deeply about our position in the society in which we belong. Yes, we may exist in a space that contends we are modern, but by what standard? Foucault is able to elaborate on this rhetorical question in my opinion. Society is not so neat in the ways we often think; Control is an essential part of our lives; who exerts and configures this control should be of upmost importance if we are to take seriously the idea of exercising our own free will.

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