In his essay Panopticism, Michel Foucault discusses power and discipline, the manipulation there of, and their effect on society over time. He also discusses Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon and other disciplinary models. However, after reading Panopticism, the question that baffles everyone is: What is panopticism anyway? One exceptional disciplinary model is the measures taken by a seventeenth century town when the plague appears. First there is a “strict spatial partitioning” which involves the closing of …showed first 75 words of 2001 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2001 total…since we are part of its mechanism.” (334) Panopticism is a technology dependant on power and discipline. Since the sixteenth century it has grown from a rare occurrence, to the surveillance our society is based on. It is a dangerous mechanism based on Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, behavior control, and constant surveillance. This technology has taken over our society and has put us in danger of being under the absolute control of someone else, anyone else.