Panoptikum, demokracja, inwigilacja

Abstract

The basic aim of the paper is to present the original interpretation of Foucaultian metaphor of panopticon. Using classical language of philosophy of politics, the author aims at proving that Michel Foucault as a political thinker should be considered rather as a conservative one, like Thomas Hobbes or Carl Schmitt, than indiscriminately associated with the left. The author’s attempt is focused on locating Foucault in the tradition of battle of social contract. On the one hand, one can find Hobbes and the Anglosaxon tradition of rational individuals, natural rights and fundamental contract, on the other the continental tradition with Carl Schmitt as a symbol of criticism of arbitral modern state which constantly obliterate the border between this what is political and what is not. The author’s interpretation of panopticon is focused on the fact of mediation of every social relation by the power of modern state, which nowadays is even multiplied in the process of European integration and the character of postmodern law, well defined in Foucault’s theory of normalisation and norm. The process of creation of the modern substratum of politics: individuum – the reason of the whole tradition of emancipation – was corelated with the development of the oppressive apparatus, which, especially in XIX century, autonomised from its democratical legitimisation. In consequence, it led to the eruption of new modern despotism in XX century. In this point of view, taking a creation of abstractive individuum as the condition of possibility of modern despotism, Foucaltian panopticon could be seen as a result of the depth of cultural individualism, favouring social atomism, in which every political subject prefers to ask the state for help than to turn to his neighbour. The main thesis of the paper is that the increase of cultural and political individualism corelates with the increase of preponderance of oppressive apparatus of modern or even postmodern state (where everybody controls everybody). The whole culture of individualism corelated with the tradition of emancipation leads both to rising of scepticsim towards traditional social institutions and traditional epistemological mediation of experience, which results in overestimating the phenomenon of fear, expressed in the growth of importance of social and international security. The cure for this global situation is to fund political thinking on trust, dialogue and natural, spontaneous social relation.