Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Foucault's Architecture of Observation
In the reading for Thursday, Foucault is talking about how architecture and city planning has changed so that instead of showing the governed how great the governors are, it is designed so the governors can do surveillance on the governed. I can understand how in places like hospitals, schools, prisons, and military bases this is a useful strategy. However, in modern cities, in America, but especially in Europe, it seems like the poorer classes of society are pushed out of sight. Maybe the middle and upper classes are visible, but there seems to be more of a desire to make the poor invisible, rather than observed. This is the case in Paris especially, which has suburbs full of poor immigrants who live far removed from the city center. I guess there are gated communities for the wealthy, but there is surveillance there too, except it is to protect the community from outside intruders, rather than to observe the inhabitants.
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You state, "Foucault is talking about how architecture and city planning has changed so that instead of showing the governed how great the governors are, it is designed so the governors can do surveillance on the governed."
ReplyDeleteIn this section, Foucault explores how the success of discipline is contingent on three element, one of them being hierarchical observation. He explains that observation becomes a mechanism that coerces. What Foucault is exploring here is that one can be coerced or forced to do something merely by being constantly watched and observed. He says, "the perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly" (173).
Even if poorer urban areas are off the beaten track, I think it's fairly well known that police patrols are much higher in those places than their suburban counterparts ( at least in the U.S.). There are justifications for why this is, generally that crime can be more readily observed on "the streets" than in a living room, but this unproportional surveillance must be noticed by those being watched and make them wonder why we feel it is their behavior that needs correction.
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