Abstract
Foucault elevates Jeremy Bentham's panopticon as the instrument of this transformation; it becomes an emblem of modern power. The panopticon is 'the architectural figure' of the disciplinary mechanisms of regulation, surveillance, supervision, and ostracism which surround the abnormal individual. This chapter describes Foucault's theories, in particular his interpretation of penal history in Discipline and Punish. It discusses his limitations as a historian and his interpretation of the Enlightenment and eighteenth-century penal reform. The chapter leads to an evaluation of the panopticon and a comparison between the ideas of Bentham and Foucault on surveillance, deviancy, secrecy and responsibility. Bentham's panopticon provided him with a blue print for an absolutist structure which was the logical extreme of the buildings which were designed to fabricate virtue. According to Foucault, Bentham's panopticon provided a blueprint for a series of carceral mechanisms which 'all tend, like the prison, to exercise a power of normalization'.
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