Michael Foucault's Panopticism And Our Secret

Analysis: “Panopticism” and “Our Secret”

In Michael Foucault’s reading on “Panopticism” he breaks down the social/economical systems and explains that society’s mentality on the law system. He answers the “why question” in a way certain individuals act and think as they do. Many times his explanation is much branched off into a different level of thinking. In one paragraph in “Panopticism”, a disciplinary mechanism is described, which is considered the best way for one person to be punished, in the new knowledge and learning is gained by every individual. But in “Our Secret” by Susan Griffins she carefully constructs and describes history, particularly WWII through the lives of several different people. Such as David Bartholomae and
Learning can only make you more intelligent and the more you know the broader you understand would be which in your mental state would make you stronger. “A whole literary fiction of the festival grew up around the plague: suspended laws, lifted prospect, individuals unmarked, abandoning their statutory identity and the figure which they had recognized, allowing some different truth to appear”. When the individuals were changing their personalities to fit into the containment, as I said earlier in the essay, their trying to adapt to their environment. But their also political dream of the plague, that got reverse. Not the collective festival, but strict divisions; not laws transgressed, but the penetration of regulation into even the smallest details of everyday life through the thoughts of complete hierarchy that assured the function of power; the masks were put on and off, but the assignment for each person was their “true” name, “true” place, “true” body, and “true disease”. This sentence talks about a different side of the plague, the “political side”. Instead of analyzing the people was forcing out the power to handle certain individual. This was the dream of many that instead of interaction and strict regulation of everything