The Panoptic Agreement

Michel Foucault when writing chapter three of his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison must have certainly had some advanced knowledge of the Facebook apparatus. The way Facebook intersects with Foucault’s text seems too comparable, too suspiciously relevant to be coincidence. 

Foucault defines a “capillary functioning of power,” one that trickles down from the top to minute sectors of the everyday. The breadth of this capillary functioning of power can be accounted for in full. Blood circulates to the far reaches of our body, dividing as it moves further from the organs that are capable of distributing such power. Facebook is at the top of this sort of hierarchy. In fact, Facebook created this hierarchy. The Panopticon is an architectural system of surveillance and captivity marked by a central tower of observation (Facebook) that “arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immedietly.” These cells that the tower is able to observe constantly are the equivalent of a Facebook account and the profile page that is associated with it. The user, by activating their Facebook account has essentially stepped in to one of these cells surrounding the panoptic tower.

 Foucault claims that the Panopticon induces in the inmate “a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power.” This idea speaks directly to the public persona that is embodied by Facebook’s users. The user’s image is broadcast unflinchingly in the way that their given information suggests. The “automatic functioning of power” can be read as: the image projected by the user, is exactly the truth that is recognized by the person (or system) watching. For Foucault the panopticon turned a prison from a “house of security” into a “house of certainty.” One is no longer on constant guard for behavioral regulation, as all behavior is recognized constantly and instantly. The whole can be extracted from the surface. In line with the success of surface projections, Foucault notes that the panoptic mechanism provides “perpetual victory that avoids physical confrontation.” This couldn’t be more relevant to Facebook. The perpetual victory is the idea that what the user says, how the user appears, is how they are seen by others outside of their own cell. A person can live vicariously through their online profile. Projecting an idealized version of the self while avoiding any real “physical confrontation.” In this sense, the panoptic mechanism is a tool. Perpetual surveillance is embraced for the benefits of a manicured self-image that the system affords. -Kevin Barrett Weil