Seminar one

08.11.10

Key points from the lecture:

• surveillance & monitoring
• power
• panopticism - constantly visible
• self regulation - modifying behaviour, discipline & behaviour
• disciplinary power - shifted from physical power (beheading and being hung,drawn and quartered) to mental disciplines so the victim is forced to think about their own behaviour and forced to take responsibility for their actions.
• power/knowledge/body - you change the way you act to play up to the people who are watching you, what they would like you to do or be like. Knowledge - people such as doctors who were 'useful' to the society gained a status because they were useful. 
• Institutional Gaze - asylums, prisons - places where there is that hierarchy. 

"Power is a relationship" - Foucault 

Sociohistoric moment - the moment where they feel the need for someone with status to judge society and determine who is 'normal' and 'abnormal'

Docile bodies - these are not lazy/stupid bodies, it is a body whom is easily controlled, takes instruction, more productive people. Such as soldiers, they are given orders and told in what way is appropriate to act, yet keep themselves in good shape and take their own responsibility to 'be up to the mark'.

Jeremy Bentham 1791 - he came up with the idea of a well built succesful building of panopticism, however was not around to see it built. 

He is also preserved in the University of London!!  

Notes from the passage: