Thoughts on staring

The discussion surrounding the effects of staring remind me of Foucault’s text Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. In this work Foucault explains the concept panopticism. Now, the panopticon was a prison model developed by philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. Essentially the design places the authority figure in a position that allows them to observe all of the inmates without the inmates ever knowing if they are actually being watched at any given moment. Thus, the panopticon operates on the principle that Power should be visible and unverifiable to the extent that the actual practicing of power is rendered unnecessary. If one knows that there is the potential for surveillance through constant visibility one begins to exercise self-surveillance. And as Foucault notes this manufactured self-surveillance is not just relegated to those society finds most deviant and in need of corrective measures, prisoners, this design is replicated throughout our industrial environment in schools, hospitals, and factories. This production of ‘docile-bodies’ another Foucault term that refers to those who have internalized normative expectations to the extent that they self-regulate is absolutely intentional. Sure, we tell small children that staring is rude but all of us understand and use the act of looking at another as a disciplinary force—a quiet coercion that demarcates the acceptable from the spectacle. Judges of normality arev omnipresent; omnipotent because the enforcer of norms is society and all members within (that means you!). In this way, we all are participants in biopower, or collective surveillance, of the body-- as the subject and the object.