Panopticism, Institutions & Institutional Power - Richard Miles 25.10.12

 

The Handout

Panopticism: Institutions & Institutional Power Richard Miles 2012
The lecture introduces the work of Michel Foucault and particularly his theoretical application of panopticism, techniques of the body and „disciplinary society‟. Funnily enough ‘institution’ is not defined in the lecture, but take it that institutions can exist on two levels, first, organised bodies which have some kind of collective material physical entity, [e.g., hospitals, government, the police] and secondly, organised practices which are more solidly defined around customs and practices, such as the institution of ‘marriage’, the ‘family’ and so on.
„Literature, art and their respective producers do not exist independently of a complex institutional framework which authorises, enables, empowers and legitimises them. This framework must be incorporated into any analysis that pretends to provide a thorough understanding of cultural goods and practices.’
Randal Johnson in Walker & Chaplin (1999)
Learning Aims:- •    UNDERSTAND THE DESIGN MODEL OF THE PANOPTICON •    UNDERSTAND FOUCAULT’S CONCEPT OF ‘DISCIPLINARY SOCIETY’. •    UNDERSTAND THE FUNCTION OF DISCIPLINARY SOCIETY AS A MEANS OF
RENDERING INDIVIDUALS PRODUCTIVE AND USEFUL •    UNDERSTAND FOUCAULT’S CONCEPT OF TECHNIQUES OF THE BODY AND
‘DOCILE’ BODIES
PANOPTICISM
‘Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.’    (Foucault, 1975)
•    What Foucault is describing is a transformation in Western societies from a form of power imposed by a ruler / sovereign to A NEW MODE OF POWER CALLED PANOPTICISM
•    The emergence of forms of knowledge – biology, psychiatry, medicine, etc., legitimise the practices of hospitals, doctors, psychiatrists.
•    Foucault aims to show how these forms of knowledge and rationalising institutions like the prison, the asylum, the hospital, the school, now work on human beings in such a way that they alter our consciousness and that they internalise our responsibility.
•    The panopticon is a model of how modern society organises its knowledge, its power, its surveillance of bodies and its ‘training’ of bodies
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POWER, KNOWLEDGE AND THE BODY.
•    Disciplinary Society produces what Foucault calls „docile bodies‟.
•    ‘power relations have an immediate hold upon it [the body]; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs’ (Foucault 1975)
Disciplinary Techniques
“That the techniques of discipline and „gentle punishment‟ have crossed the threshold from work to play shows how pervasive they have become within modern western societies” (Danaher, Schirato & Webb 2000)
Foucault’s definition of power is not a top – down model, as in Marxist theory, but is more subtle. Thus, power is not a thing or a capacity people have – it is a relation between different individuals and groups, and only exists when it is being exercised –
The exercise of power relies on there being the capacity for power to be resisted.
For Foucault, ‘Where there is power there is resistance’.
Bibliography
Please see yr 2 bib, But also, Foucault, M. (1975) ‘Panopticism’ from Hall, S. & Evans (1998) Visual Culture a Reader Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison London, Penguin See also web sites on Foucault of which there are plenty

• UNDERSTAND THE PRINCIPLES OF THE PANOPTICON 
• UNDERSTAND MICHEL FOUCAULT’S CONCEPT OF 
• ‘DISCIPLINARY SOCIETY’ 
• CONSIDER THE IDEA THAT DISCIPLINARY SOCIETY IS A WAY OF MAKING INDIVIDUALS ‘PRODUCTIVE’ AND ‘USEFUL’ 
• UNDERSTAND FOUCAULT’S IDEA OF TECHNIQUES OF THE BODY AND ‘DOCILE’ BODIES

 

 

• THE GREAT CONFINEMENT (late 1600s) 
• ‘Houses of correction’ to curb unemployment and idleness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This has a strange effect on the inmates of constantly being watched. Opposite to being locked in a dungeon for example. On display constantly.

 

the Panopticon internalises in the individual the conscious state that he is always being watched. What happens ultimately is you never behave in an unacceptable manor being you are going to be spotted. A form of mental torture. After a while you don't even need to people to man the tower because the idea is already planted in the inmates mind. They cant see into the Panopticon so they don't actually know if they are being watched.

PANOPTICISM 
‘Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.’ (Foucault, 1975)

 

•Allows scrutiny
•Allows supervisor to experiment on subjects
•Aims to make them productive


•Reforms prisoners
•Helps treat patients
•Helps instruct schoolchildren
•Helps confine, but also study the insane
•Helps supervise workers
•Helps put beggars and idlers to work.

What Foucault is describing is a transformation in Western societies from a form of power imposed by a ‘ruler’ or ‘sovereign’ to……….. A NEW MODE OF POWER CALLED “PANOPTICISM”

The ‘panopticon’ is a model of how modern society organises its knowledge, its power, its surveillance of bodies and its ‘training’ of bodies. 

Examples of modern day Panopticons:

 

In an office your always being watched. This open planned layout allows the boss to constantly watch you and for the purpose of making you more productive and to make you as an individual conform. 

 

Even in modern day bars you feel you have to conform and behave because you can be seen by bouncers and bar staff.

 

You are always being watched!

 

 

 

 

Key things to go away with:

•Michel Foucault
•Panopticism as a form of discipline
•Techniques of the body
•Docile Bodies

Seminar 2+ Study Task 2 - The Gaze - Richard Miles

Today we re-covered the Gaze theory and looked at some of the images from the PowerPoint presentation.

 

Looking at this image we said the women is actively engaging the audience but is happy to be viewed. She is looking at her reflection which connotes this fact that she knows she is being viewed. We said these paintings were the norm because at the time artist were always men. Men painting images of naked women for other men who could get voyeuristic pleasure from this. The cultural structure at this time was patriarchal meaning men had the power and the money to be the consumer. Dominance and power being created through this humiliation of the 'nude' women. 

The 'nude' was a term used in the time of the creation of these styles of paintings which writers

 used as justification of naked paintings of women. The writers generally spoke and created an idealisation of the female body. objectifying women's physical appearance.

This is where the normalisation of women being viewed as an object began. 

We compared these two image:

 

We said the differences in the two were the fact the first is passive and the below is active. The women in Cabanel's is covering her face and being submissive and subservient. 

The second image shows a prostitute actively engaging the audience. This was controversial at the time because of the idea of the women being more powerful and less submissive. Yes you can have sex with her but you have to pay and any other man can pay. This is reinforced by the gifts and the flowers. The women is looking straight at us as well as defensively covering her genitals.

 The bottom image is similar but with slight alterations and attention to details. Notice the hand below. Instead of being defensive its more inviting and soft. The head position is also more gentler and inviting. We noticed the dog also in comparison to the cat above. The dog symbolises more control, the owner being more of a master; cat being more of a free spirit and more wild. You can't really train a cat.

 

 

This is an image from an American Apparel advert. All of the AA adverts mimic this style of photography. The women's clothing adverts generally feature relatively naked women. Most of the women are posing in 'seductive' positions. Here we can denote the women blowing a buble with her chewing gum which could be observed as playful. 

Linking back to the gaze we said that most of the paintings of women which were produced in Alexandre Cabanel's era tried to represent the females faces as looking child like; children playing the subservient role with an adult having authority over them. Again this is to do with power, dominance and general control over the women.

The women's position is quite submissive too, by lying down she is almost offering herself in an ideal fantasy. Also the fact that she is lying on a bed carries connotations of sex. The stocking/socks are also associated with seduction. 

The title 'bubblelicious' also carries connotations of being quite a fun word, again playful. 

Coward, R., 'The Look', in Thomas, J. (ed.) (2000), Reading Images, Basingstoke: Palgrave, pahes 33-39

5 Quotes explained:

"The saturation of society with images of women has nothing to do with men's natural appreciation of objective beauty, their aesthetic appreciation, and everything to do with an obsessive recording and use of women's images in ways which make men feel comfortable. And women are bound to this power precisely because visual impressions have been elevated to the position of holding the key to our psychic well-being, our social success, and indeed to whether or not we will be loved."

The first sentence is basically saying that the reasons men find women aesthetically attractive is not natural but a manipulation of artificial feelings created by men for other men to feel powerful and dominant. The next sentence is saying that because of the trained appreciation of these fake feelings is becomes the normal for men to automatically think in this way and it turn women are trained to respond to these demands to conform and find love or a relationship because the vast majority of men have these preconceived ideas of aesthetic beauty. 

"Advertising is this society builds precisely on the creation of an anxiety to the effect that, unless we measure up, we will not be loved. We are set to work on an ever-increasing number of areas of the body, laboring to perfect and eroticise an ever-increasing number of erotogenic zones. Every minute region of the body is now exposed to this scrutiny by the ideal. Mouth, hair, eyes, eyelashes, nails, fingers, hands, skin, teeth, lips, cheeks, shoulders, arms, legs, feet - all these and many more have become areas requiring work. Each area requires potions, moisterisers, conditioners, night creams, creams to cover up blemishes. Moisterise, display, clean off, rejuvenate - we could well be at it all day, preparing the face to meet the faces we meet. "

I sum this up as advertisers are purposely creating areas of the body we can 'improve' in order for their to be a product for it. Basically a jobsworth of the human body which needs maintenance and needs money spending on it to be acceptable in current society.

"Where women's behavior was previously controlled directly by state, family and church, control of women is now also affected through the scrutiny of women by visual ideas. Photography, film and television offer themselves as transparent recordings of reality."

I think this is an easier quite to understand if not obvious but what its basically saying is that

times have changed and from the more predominate form of control being the church and state there is a more passive form of control which is the media. Controlling people through visual language which is current.

"True though it is that women, especially young women, are deeply concerned with their own images, it is radically incorrect to liken women's relation with media images to the happy state of Narcissus. Women's relation to their own self-image is much more likely to be dominated by discontent."

This can be summarised that women are interested in their own appearance but not in a vain manor but more in a forced annoyance of having to conform. Worrying that they are not socially aesthetically pleasing to men and that they will not be loved for being anything different from the cultural idea of beauty.

"Because women are compelled to make themselves attractive in certain ways, and those ways involve submitting to the cultures beliefs about appropriate sexual behavior, women's appearances are laden down with cultural values, or, with difficulty against them."

Because women are pressured to dress and make themselves attractive to a typical mans idea of beauty, they are submitting to the cultural beliefs about how women should behave both sexually and morally. The appearances of a women has lots of different connotations for example red lipstick might be seen as seductive.

The Gaze and The Media - Helen Clarke 18.10.12

The Handout

The Gaze and The Media
Helen Clarke
helenclarke@leed-art.ac.uk

The lecture introduces theories of The Gaze, through the writings of John Berger, Laura Mulvey, Rosalind Coward and Professor Griselda Pollock. It proposes that The Male Gaze identified by Mulvey through film, and Berger through painting, is in fact synonymous with The Gaze of The Media in contemporary western culture.
The lecture provides readings which follow the message of the key texts and encourages the questioning of our contemporary privileging of the visual in the western construction of desire.
It also looks at the impact this has in the everyday, and how the prevalence of the male Gaze normalizes these perceptions of women and their bodies and is internalized by women themselves. This is a complex area of investigation, and rather than a simple ‘reversal’ of the Gaze onto the male body, the lecture seeks to address and question image makers as to the possibility of an alternative portrayal of the body.

FURTHER READING:
John Berger (1972) Ways of Seeing, Chapter3 Victor Burgin (1982) Thinking Photography Rosalind Coward (1984) The Look Laura Mulvey (1973) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema Griselda Pollock (1982) Old Mistresses

‘The preoccupation with visual images strikes women in a very particular way. For looking is not a neutral activity. Human beings don’t all look at things in the same way, innocently as it were. In this culture, the look is largely controlled by men. Privileged in general in this society, men also control the visual media. The film and television industries are dominated by men, as is the advertising industry. The photographic profession is no less a bastion of the values of male professionalism. While I don’t wish to suggest there’s an intrinsically male way of making images, there can be little doubt that entertainment as we know it is crucially predicated on a masculine investigation of women, and a circulation of women’s images for men.’
Rosalind Coward (1984) The Look


‘according to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome - men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at’
(Berger 1972)

 

Virginal representation of a women. Her position is interesting as the woman is covering her face - The body being more predominant then the head. Concentration on her body rather then her as a person. 

 

Again another reclining figure. 3/4 of the picture taken up by her body. This advert was deemed too sexual for magazine and advert. So they turned the image vertically so it could be published:

 

 

 1980's. Survey carried out from which this poster was published. They wanted this posting on buses and billboards. The handle of the fan made it banned from public view.

 

Manet - This is interesting because of the mirroring in the background. Gives us further context. Although the mirror image is not correct as its to her left. Parisian social life being shown. Social perception of Parisian life being a false mirror?

 

Photographic cope of Manet's Bar at the Folies Bergeres.

 

City carrying on not noticing this women in the street. Normalization of female nudity in contemporary advertising. 

 

Another example. Wonder bra campaign. Continuing normalisation again.

 

Voyeurism: the compulsion to seek sexual gratification by secretively looking at sexual objects or acts; the actions of a Peeping Tom.

 

There are examples where the male body is objectified in a similar way.

The issue of male objectification is often raised in gender classes that I have taught. I have heard many men and women suggest that men are now equally objectified in popular culture. Many a people have focused on the Lucky Vanos ads of years past as a sign of advertisers recognizing the desire of women to objectify men in our society. But what is really happening in advertising? Can men be objectified as women? If so, in what frequency is objectification present in ads? The Ads: Consider the number of ads presented in this male trope as compared to other examples of female objectification. It is interesting that when I first began the Web site many years ago, the number of ads in this exhibit were small. Today, there are nearly 60 such ads.

Dr Scott A Lucas (genderads.com)

 

  Male nude as challenging the gaze

Gym- sports-power

Cult of fitness – male ideals of body image.

 

Laura Mulvey did not undertake empirical studies of actual filmgoers, but declared her intention to make ‘political use’ of Freudian psychoanalytic theory (in a version influenced by Jacques Lacan) in a study of cinematic spectatorship in narrative Hollywood cinema.

 

 

The idea that women are natural liars has a long pedigree. The key document in this centuries-long tradition is the notorious witch-hunter's manual, the Malleus Maleficarum or The Hammer of Witches, which was commissioned by Pope Innocent VIII. The book was written by two Dominican monks and published in 1486. It unleashed a flood of irrational beliefs about women's "dual" nature. "A woman is beautiful to look upon, contaminating to the touch, and deadly to keep," the authors warned. They also claimed that "all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable".

It's not difficult to see these myths lurking behind Pacelli's description of Knox: "She was a diabolical, satantic, demonic she-devil. She was muddy on the outside and dirty on the inside. She has two souls, the clean one you see before you and the other." The lawyer's claim that she was motivated by "lust" could have come straight from the Malleus, which insists that women are more "carnal" than men.

 

The Daily Mail has emerged as the major fall guy by mistakenly publishing the wrong online version of the Amanda Knox verdict.

Knox won her appeal, but the paper's website initially carried a story headlined "Guilty: Amanda Knox looks stunned as appeal against murder conviction is rejected.” The Mail was not the only British news outlet to make the error. The Sun and Sky News did it too and yes - hands up here - so did The Guardian in its live blog.

It would appear that a false translation of the judge's summing up caused the problem, leading to papers jumping the gun. So why has the Mail suffered the greatest flak? In time-honoured fashion, echoing the hot metal days of Fleet Street, it prepared a story lest the verdict go the other way.

But it over-egged the pudding by inventing "colour" that purported to reveal Knox's reaction along with the responses of people in the court room. It even included quotes from prosecutors that were, self-evidently, totally fake. In other words, by publishing its standby story, the Mail exposed itself as guilty of fabrication.