Panopticon College Essays Samples For Students

Paul Michel Foucault is a renowned scholar of philosophy and psychology. He also participated in several political activities and visited several countries. Foucault also visited prisons in France and America and developed his analytical approach about the conditions of prisons. He wrote about this issue thoroughly and in his book Discipline and Punish discusses several practical aspects of the issue. His influence is widely visible in America and after the incidents like 9/11 his relevancy has been accepted even by those who use to criticize his opinions. This paper discusses Foucault’s theory of Panopticism and several other aspects of ...

English

Foucault talks about the devastation of the plague and how it nearly decimated the whole of Europe. The plague left scores of people dead and thousands more dying. The whole of Europe was infected, and the air smelled of decaying bodies, and filled with airborne diseases. In such a situation when medical help was inconsequential, and the number of dead was rising by the minute due to physical contact between the affected and unaffected, the only way to contain further spread of the plague was to enforce law to stop people from spreading the disease. He argues that it would ...

Historical Origins of Correctional Enterprise

Correctional systems are institutions for rehabilitating criminals. They include prisons and community- based systems. After being convicted in court, criminals may spend time in correctional systems away from friends and family. There are different types of correctional systems classified according to the government level in which they function: private, local, state or federal. They can also be classified according to the level of security, age, and gender (Waldron, et al. 2009). Most correctional systems run Correctional Enterprise programs that provide opportunities for prisoners to learn new skills, be productive, and responsible. This initiative’s objective is to instill values ...

In his book “Discipline and Punish” Michel Foucault establishes a social theory called panopticism. The title of this theory originated from the idea of Jeremy Bentham’s prison called Panopticon. Foucault gives a detailed description of this 18th century prison that was constructed in a very sophisticated way: a supervisor can easily control each prisoner, while prisoners never see anyone and are completely alone. Foucault admires the construction of the building: “And this invisibility is a guarantee of order”. (Foucault, p. 287) Thus, Panopticon’s major effect is “to induce in the inmate a state of consciousness and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning ...

Prisons are vital in a society since it is part of the country’s criminal justice system. It plays crucial part in ensuring that offenders are brought to justice and that the rule of the law is upheld. It is general knowledge that the prisoners experience gross violations of their basic human rights. The traditional ideas about prisons include appalling suffering and maltreatment of prisoners. However, there are new principles that are applied today changed the environments of prisons. In the US, there are various reformations about prisons that looks upon the context of human rights. Reformation of the ...

For my design, I chose the Panopticon Peep Box Library. The patterned my design after the famous architectural design of the “Panopticon”, which had been present for several decades. The design is similar to a circular prison that has cells that are aligned and arranged surrounding a central well, where the prisoners can be seen at all times by the jail guards. The Idea of Peep Box Library symbolizes an expression of a free access to vast knowledge and information. The idea is that the Peep box is Persian-inspired in style that has gold glory box, where one can ...

Crimes are rampant today and laws have been implicated to prevent crime and impose regulations in a nation. Many laws have been reformed from brutal tortures to a lighter punishment which is imprisoning the law breakers. Even if this is more humane than the previous punishments, prison is still criticized by many. Michel Foucault was one who criticized imprisonment in his book ‘Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison’. He discusses the disciplinary power and its difference from the sovereign power of the state. In his book, he discusses a prison, Panopticon, of Illinois State Penitentiary. His idea was adopted in ...

The City and State

Michel Foucault on Visibility and Power
Power analysis is one of the fundamental aspects of Michael Foucault’s philosophical writings. He interprets the power based on the relationship that it creates between society and the institutions in it. Foucault differentiates his idea of power from that fronted by the Marxist. The Marxists view power as a tool of oppression and a form of repression (Foucault 1977, 3). He asserts that the power is not a possession of institutions that can be used and abused for the pleasure of the beholder. The Instead, Foucault focuses on the power, how it is acquired, ...

1.Michel Foucault distinguishes between Sovereign Power and Disciplinary Power.
(a)What are the essential elements of each type of power?
(b) How would Foucault interpret Weber’s distinction between Catholicism and Calvinism?
(c) How would Foucault assess Durkheim’s distinction between Mechanical Solidarity and Organic Solidarity?
Michel Foucault’s philosophy is directly related to the concepts of power and security within a society. As such, Foucault frequently discusses the ways in which individuals should be punished for crimes against their society, and the parties that should be responsible for said punishment. The two chief types of power Foucault defines ...

Question One

Prior to the adoption of the prison system, jails were used for temporary detention, corporal punishment and imposition of fines. Capital crimes were punishable through public torture, humiliation, embarrassment, flogging, branding and mutilation. These forms of punishment draw from puritan punishment practices, which encouraged public shaming of wayward sheep. This is not unlike Arpaio’s use of perp walking, pink underwear and chain gangs for inmates serving sentences of up to a month to humiliate and use them to serve as an example to mothers and children that see them on the highway to avoid crime. Specifically, chain gangs hack ...