authority | virtual

Few never-built buildings have attracted as much attention as Jeremy Bentham’s“Panopticon.” And it’s easy to understand why.

The panopticon was a prison. As Bentham imagined it, a circular tower would stand in the center of a ring of cells stacked several stories high. By manipulating light and perspective, the contents of the central tower, where the warden was to sit, was concealed from the prisoners, while the cells and their contents were always visible, lighted by small windows in the exterior wall.

As Foucault later said, the Panopticon is a simple idea, once someone has thought of it. But why is it important? Influential?

A common interpretation of the panopticon adopts an almost religious tenor. The warden — unseen, though (for all we know) all-seeing: pan-optic — knows exactly what happens within his domain. He, and only he, has the power of unobstructed observation, including the power to observe his own material agents, his prison guards, prison doctors, and so on. But he himself cannot intervene. To be seen is to lose power; to be seen is to inform everyone else that the prison is suddenly not under observation, that the grip of power has slipped.

As Lacan/Zizek would argue, to see the prison warden, to see him walk about in person, deflates virtual authority: once the warden can be seen, he becomes impotent, flaccid, perhaps funny, but certainly not nearly as threatening or powerful as he might have seemed before. In other words, the idea of the prison warden is more powerful than the person himself — and as such, he must remain concealed in the tower, invisible yet omnipresent, in order to maintain power. Likewise, the idea of being monitored is more powerful than actually being monitored.