Michel Foucault

Twentieth-century French continental philosopher best known for his critical work on institutional power and repression.

The Panopticon

Perhaps Foucault’s most vivid metaphor, the panopticon was a new design for prisons put forth by utilitarianism philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. In the panopticon, prison cells are arranged in a circle around a central tower from which guards can look out but prisoners can’t look in. Bentham proposed this as a more humane reform, the idea being that prisoners would behave themselves if the knew they could be watched at any moment without guards having to resort to physical violence to ensure compliance. But in Foucault’s critique, the panopticon is more sinister: it turns the prisoner’s mind into a kind of prison, never free from the possibility of surveillance. Writing in the 20th century, Foucault drew the connection to the civilian applications of this idea: as governments’ surveillance capabilities grew, everyday citizens would be subject to the oppressive gaze of the panopticon. This was a radical shift in state power: violence inflicted by the state can be resisted and the state held accountable, but when the state uses surveillance and the mere threat of possible repercussions, it will have a chilling effect on citizens’ behavior in a way that’s more subtle and harder to resist. For example, if the government passes a law outlawing a specific book, that’s something people can choose to resist and fight in court. But if the government establishes a database of citizens’ library checkouts with the implication “We’re watching what you’re reading…”, it will have a similar effect of making citizens less likely to read radical books, but in a way that’s harder to fight. Opponents will argue, “Why do you want to read dangerous books, anyway?”, “What do you have to hide?”, etc.

See Gilles Deleuze‘s “Postscript on the Societies of Control”

The Medico-Legal Discourse

Foucault’s observation of the consequential shift (in the 19th century, I think) in the power attributed to the medical establishment. Specifically, when the concept of “sanity” was introduced and the state given the power to institutionalize those deemed “insane” regardless of their wishes, certain kinds of doctors allied with the state went from biological technicians serving the needs of their patients to wielders of state power with the authority to imprison anyone with the flick of a pen, no judge or jury needed. While there are of course checks on this power, we mostly take “institutionalization” for granted today, but Foucault’s history (which he was fond of calling “archaeology”) would remind us that this was a radical and relatively recent change in the social order which happened largely under the radar.

Power/Knowledge

The medico-legal discourse is one example of Foucault’s concept of “power/knowledge”, which emphasizes that power and knowledge are two sides of the same coin. Knowledge-creating institutions like universities and power-wielding institutions like governments mutually reinforce each other, a fact we ignore at our own risk. Government funding has a significant effect on the kinds of knowledge that are not just researched but publicized, institutionalized, and accredited; and on the flip side that very knowledge is often used to grow and justify the power exercised by governments. A stark example is the way the Nazi government funded eugenics research it then used to justify the extermination of groups of people. These kinds of relationships have grown more subtle in modern times, but no less present.