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Created: April 1, 2003
Latest Update: April 1, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Foucault and the Institutional Gaze

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, April 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

Foucault.info -> The Eye of Power, Excerpt
From Power/Knowledge by Michel Foucault

Discussion Questions

1. What is the Panoptican? How is it associated to the power of the gaze?

   Consider: "Bentham's 'device' - the 'Panopticon'

   "The principle was this. A perimeter building in the form of a ring. At the center of this, a tower, pierced by large windows opening on to the inner face of the ring. The outer building is divided into cells each of which traverses the whole thickness of the building. These cells have two windows, one opening on to the inside, facing the windows of the central tower, the other, outer one allowing daylight to pass through the whole cell. All that is then needed is to put an overseer in the tower and place in each of the cells a lunatic, a patient, a convict, or a schoolboy. The back lighting enables one to pick out from the central tower the little captive silhouettes in the ring of cells. In short, the principle of the dungeon is reversed; daylight and the overseer's gaze capture the inmate more effectively than darkness, which afforded after all a sort of protection."

   From Power/Knowledge by Michel Foucault

2. Consider:

   "If you are too violent, you risk provoking revolts...In contrast to that you have the system of surveillance, which on the contrary involves very little expense. There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by interiorisation to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercizing this surveillance over, and against, himself. A superb formula: power exercised continuously and for what turns out to be minimal cost. (...)

   From Power/Knowledge by Michel Foucault

   How does Foucault come to see the similarities in the medical system and the prison system? Where does the gaze come in?

   Consider: In each case "experts" have "the right answers," to be imposed on the patients or deviants. In each case those answers are inherent in the all knowing gaze of the expert. Now, how can we relate this to the idea that woman has difficulty creating an image of herself, for that image is always reflected through the gaze of the male. Consider the male's power in the institutions. Which institutions would count here?

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