Robby Riehle Foucault-Make up

In Michel Foucault’s article Panopticon he says, “our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance”, I believe this to be the main point of Foucault’s argument. He uses the idea of a Panopticon, a circular prison with cells arranged around a central well, from which prisoners could at all times be observed, as an analogy for understanding how our society works. He illustrates this concept by stating, “Everyone locked up in his cage, everyone at his window, answering to his name and showing himself when asked.” But why do conform to this model? I believe it is because, as Dick Hebdige would say, “ideology saturates everyday discourse in the form of common sense.” Thus, allowing for these “inspection[s to] function ceaselessly”. Foucault goes on to say this “power should be visible and unverifiable”. This can be understood better by looking at Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatuses and Repressive State Apparatuses. You see this is because RSA’s control the public through means of direct violence of threat of violence. So for example because of the prevalence of CCTV in England it is the most watch country in the world. So, people assume they are always being watched, and therefore follow the rules of the law as to not experience any violence. Essentially the same way a panopticon “induce[s] in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power”. Meaning that while there maybe nobody watching people act as if they are to avoid conflict. Which fits perfectly which Althusser’s ISA’s and the idea that, “Ideology represents the imaginary relationships of individuals to their real conditions of existence.” Whether you look at is as a Panopticon or its ideological value, “We are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power, which we bring to ourselves since we are part of its mechanism.”