Panopticism And Foucault

Every Society and community has a ruler that leads it; there should be power and authorities on any kind of group from smallest to largest in order to maintain unity and avoid chaos. There are many types of power; of course, there are positive and negative types of power as well. Michel Foucault, the French philosopher, historian, critic, and social theorist, addresses the connection between power and knowledge through his theories, and in what ways they’re used as a method of social control. “Power is everywhere” Said Foucault. In Foucault’s perspective, power is the thing that makes us who we are; he states that power is embodied rather than possessed, and stresses that power isn’t just negative, forcible, and tough, but also
To clarify, people functions the power not through social control, but through themselves. This is highly related to and portrayed in the reading “Discipline & Punish (1975), Panopticism” by Michel Foucault. To exemplify, in this reading it’s explained how the plague influenced people and made them prohibited to stay at home with a syndic in every street who keeps them under surveillance throughout the procedure of quarantine. Disciplinary mechanisms took place because of the fear of the plague as they were under self-regulatory power and control of themselves, as well as Panopticism in which they were watched through a building with a tower that they don’t know how and when exactly they’re being watched. I agreed with Foucault as I mentioned before that power can be positive as well as negative, but here I don’t find that Bentham’s method comes under positive power because when one feel that he’s being watched all the time, his behaviour will change only under those circumstances, so it would be only on the short run, but when he comes back alone and not being watched he’ll get back to his norms, and self-regulation might be lessened again. Many people agree with Bentham’s thesis, but for me I find that it has its positives and negatives, but not just
Ornamentation took place in the British Empire in which David Cannadine, who is a British historian, author, and specialist in modern history and history of business and philanthropy, argues that the British Empire had their own (bias) perspective in viewing the world regarding social structures in which for them, class, rank, and statues were of more importance than race. Cannadine discussed how far do Britain view and understand their own empire, and their social structure. As mentioned before, orientalism has a bias and subjective side in which it portrays a distorted image of the truth; Similarly, I believe that ornamentation has the same bias and subjective side, in the British case, as they would see themselves in a distorted image and in the way that they want to see which is through the flawless lens of viewing their