The Viewer Society: Michel Foucault’s ‘Panopticon’ Revisited (1997)

In 1975 Michel Foucault published his widely acclaimed and important book Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison. The year is 1838, and Foucault’s source now is the rules for ‘the house of young prisoners in Paris’. The enormous popularity of the film implied the gathering of large crowds of people in large film theatres, blatantly contradicting Foucault’s thesis that in modern times we have moved away from the situation where the many see the few, away from synopticism. In the older context, ‘sender’ and ‘receiver’ were in each other’s proximity, be it in the ancient theatre or the festivals and image-building of the Colosseum; in the modern media context, distance between the two may be great. The information professionals are trained to filter information, and to present images which are favourable to the institution or organization in question. The older institutions of spectacle differed in several respects from the modern ones.