Surveilance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Surveilance - Essay deterrent examplettempts to show how Michel Foucaults notion of surveillance using the panoptic principle is in fact do manifest by the use of video and still cameras. Further, panopticism has been used as themes of various photo exhibits, no doubt inspired by the creeping feeling of being watched.The practice of placing individuals under observation is a natural extension of a justice imbued with disciplinary methods and examination procedures. Is it strike that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, strained labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which every(prenominal) resemble prisons? (p. 228).In this particular passage, Foucault outlines the mechanisms that the prison uses in controlling criminality. On nestled examination, what he in fact outlines are the mechanisms that operate within different social institutions. This is a famed point, since the institutions that he mentioned, i.e. factories, schools, barracks, and hospitals, all function in essentially the same way as the modern prison. These all use specific procedures and techniques to discipline subjects. What follows is a discussion of Foucaults notion of discipline as even training, with its particular mechanisms and techniques.Foucaults book was originally titled in French, Surveiller et punir. The translator, Alan Sheridan, explained at the outset the difficulty in translating the title itself for various reasons. Apparently, the French surveiller does not have a directly appropriate English counterpart. The precondition surveillance proved too limited, and supervise tended to be understood quite differently from what Foucault originally meant. In the end, Foucault himself chose Discipline and Punish, clarifying in the book that the term