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March 17, 2006

The point of Panopticon

The point of Panopticon is to train individuals to see themselves as being seen.

"He who is subjected to a field of visibility. and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constrains of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection." In general, individuals are complicit in the process of their self-formation and they learn to normalize themselves.

Indeed, normalization does not suppress individualization, but produce it. However, what it is to be an individual changes once the disciplinary regime colonizes and supplants the older juridical regime.

-- D. C. Hoy

Posted by Xiao at March 17, 2006 09:52 AM

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