The Principle of his own Subjection: Michel Foucault and Panopticism

Twentieth Century French historian Michel Foucault introduces his power theory of Panopticism in his book Discipline and Punish by using the leper plague as an example of its development. Because the leper was terribly contagious, each member in the plagued town was quarantined and required to, on a daily basis, reveal her face in the window as a means of surveillance: a mechanism confirming those who fell victim to the disease and those who survived. Simultaneously, the separation confined each individual to her own space and established a regulating order to the controversy within the society.

Foucault's theory of Panapticism is based on the Panopticon: a prison building designed by English theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The building was designed in order for an omniscient viewer to be able to see the entirety of the happenings within the building while simultaneously be entirely unseen.

Foucault writes, “The major effect of the Panopticon [is] to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power" (554). Power relations are implemented in Panopticsm by imposing absolute and "understood" rules.

In John Hughes's 1985 cult classic The Breakfast Club, five high school students are forced to spend an entire Saturday in the library serving detention. Detention is a form of punishment where students contemplate the fallacies they have committed without misbehaving further. Foucault would consider detention as one of the "tactics of individualizing disciplines [that] are imposed on the excluded" (553). The students are assigned to sit in the library on a day when there are no other students or teachers present. Principal Richard "Dick" Vernon serves as physical surveillance, but in actuality, he has little power over the students.

In this brief clip, each student sits unsupervised, each occupying himself until falling asleep from boredom. When the Principle discovers the students sleeping, he attempts to use verbal authority by screaming, "WAKE UP!" The students ignore him until he calmly offers a trip the “lavatory.” If the hired authority has no control, then why do the students stay for detention the remainder of the day?

Though they show little respect to the principle, the students adhere to the role of the school as an institution itself. Through their actions throughout the movie, the students reveal their awareness of ideological rules. Regardless, the students break free from the library at various moments to run around the school rebelling against the principle. Although they do not remain seated in their original library seat for eight hours, it is significant to note that the students are submissive to Panopticsm theory. The five students remain within the walls of the school for the entirety of the day confirming the power of the school itself and thus reaffirming Foucault’s idea that, “A real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation. So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behavior” (555).

Works Cited

Foucault, Michel. “Discipline and Punish.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Second Ed. Julie Rivkin & Michael Ryan. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004. 549-565. Print.