‘Cam Era’ – the contemporary urban
Panopticon * Hille Koskela1
The major effect of the Panopticon is, in Foucault’s words (1977: 201), ‘to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automate functioning of power’. The emphasised meaning of recognised panoptic principle. The basic nature of the exercise of disciplinary power ‘involves regulation through visibility’ (Hannah, 1997a: 171). ‘Power is exercised through ‘the "eye of power" in the disciplinary gaze’ (Ramazanoglu, 1993: 22). To be able to see offers the basic condition for collecting knowledge, for being ‘in control’
WHATS NEW IN THE FIELD FOR SURVEILLANCE?
DIG IN!
This is the perfect moment to bring Foucault into our laboratory. Great shot Puddy.
ReplyDeletedid you ever see the debate between Chomsky and Foucault?
It was not a good day for the young Chomsky [at that time] Foucault chewed he up and spit him out, and Chomsky didn't even realize it.
This is one of the reasons that I kept asking Camusreblum what THE PLAGE is in Camus' book by that title.
Like I said, they know our rectal temp 24/7 and nobody seems to grok that.
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A Happy Death?
ReplyDeleteYea...don't you think that very last intake of oxygen has got to be the finest one since the first? Sorta yin/yang...the segue gulp{grin}
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The Plague may be a metaphor for the committee and the poisoning of the human species. TB, H1N1, Bisphenol, Aspartame, AIDS, Anthrax B, Cholera, Tyhphis, and the new coming cocktails of the future. Binders and contracts for the slooooowww death. Utopian man finally arrives to live out his days alone.
ReplyDeleteOMEGA ONE!
This question was our final exam for an experimental humanities class
ReplyDeleteI had in HS
[6 students selected by the teacher, Mr David Campbell].
The 'final exam' wasn't to be answered at the time--but we were given
several years to ponder before sending him our answers.
The actual answer goes more to the core of human nature than your
suggestion above. But I have someone here pondering the question, I
want to see what he comes up with.
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I like how you got to I am Legend...lol that was good.
ReplyDeleteNo this question on the Plague goes hand in hand with my other persistant question here: What does it mean to be well adjusted to a psychotic society?
Like I said to Camus? The relevance is very much in Foucault and quarantine and panopticon--the very world we exist in today, The Panoptic Maximum Security State.
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All of the characters in the novel The Plague by Camus suffer from a central malady expressed according to the individual characteristics of these people in quarantine during the time of a the bubonic plague.
ReplyDeleteThe novel itself is a study in panopticism. The plague is not the panopticon itself however...the plague is the resulting psychological effect it has on the inmates under quarantine.
Take the artist character in the book as an example. He is painting a picture of a horse. He has been painting this same picture throughout this entire ordeal of the plague and quarantine.
What is the significance of the horse? It has little significance, other than perhaps a symbol of a vehicle for escape. The major issue to resolve is that he is stuck. He is frozen on spot. He repaints the painting over and again. He cannot move beyond it even in his own imagination.
This is a manifestation of an almost catatonic neurosis.
This neurosis is shared by every other character, manifesting as their personalities are twisted to it.
This is the same resulting psychologically hobbling wound perpetrated by the panopticon.
The book/pamphlet, 'Art and Artist', by Otto Rank speaks to this issue with great insight.
Also see: The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
So moving beyond the box office of the yada yada carousel, I offer this merely for your edification, not as a ride ticket for the debate-athon .
© Copyright William Whitten 2010 ®
What does it mean to be well adjusted to a psychotic society?
ReplyDeleteI thought it was OCD and the complete self centeredness to detach from other human suffering as if that constituted a bad hair day or it was messy and might foul up your Ipad.
Was going to war and facing death an escape from panopticon imprisonment, ala Hemingway? Why put lithium and SSRI's in the water supply?
ReplyDeleteP:To ease the Calhoun effect (1962) of casual murder ie. genocide, death panels, herd thinning and panoptic city planning for the future. They can't really have the burbs anymore once they go GOLDENEYE. Sardine living in a petri dish under a microscope in panoptic designed urban slave centers would drive the unafflicted mad.
S: Sedation, Immunoantigen and the watchful eye will keep the rodetia in order.
6 billion people are a pimple on the planet but put into the Calhoun-Foucault corral, it requires a triad of Enmodifications.
Modified or mordified...the existential question.
ReplyDeleteI think, therefore I drool. {grin}
Camus' book the Rebel was like a bible to me during much of my 20's. It was rare in those days for me to lay down to sleep w/o being 3 sheets to the wind under multiple influences but I would invariably reach for my dog-eared copy, turn to some random spot and absorb a few paragraphs to usher me into dreamland.
ReplyDeleteOf course I read "The Plague" but my memory was fuzzy so I refreshed some on-line and found a few comments at Sprknotes I recall agreeing with:
" Camus asserts that perseverance in the face of tragedy is a noble struggle even if it ultimately fails to make an appreciable difference. Such catastrophes test the tension between individual self-interest and social responsibility."
and,
" Camus asserted that there is no intrinsic rational or moral meaning in human existence. However, his body of work suggests that within every human being there is an innate capacity for good, although many people never fully realize their potential. Camus often challenged the validity of accepted moral paradigms, but he did not view the human character as a moral vacuum..."
Each character struggles with how much to let the tragedy surrounding him affect him. Some were native, some visitors, all were torn between trying to escape the quarantine or resign to staying, and helping. I believe all end up doing what they can to alleviate even the most absurd and existentially trivial human suffering.
Of course I read it as an inherently socialist text.
Love one another, even during shitstorms, because we are in this together.
Sparknotes, not sprknotes
ReplyDeleteA few points to keep in mind when digesting the many threads of this masterpiece,
Albert had tuberculosis as a boy.
He was a literary hero of the French underground in their struggle against the occupying Nazi regime and published TheP in 1947.
He died in 1960 at the tender age of 47. So we were robbed of much later work that would have further clarified his vision.
CamusR,
ReplyDeleteSome insightful stuff as to what the story may have been about. The question however, was not about the the plot or even the meaning of the book. The question was, what was the plague. The reason I put this to you is larger than this particular issue.
There is the premise that if the correct question is asked, the answer is always available. But one has to answer the actual question asked. Do you follow me?
I am not trying to be antagonistic here. I am trying to highlight points on 'reasoning' and critical thinking.
As you say, you "of course" took the book to be about "socialism", admitting your projection. I am not criticizing that here, because the question asked again; was not "what is the novel about?", the question was, "what is the plague?"
"That scratches, and it scratches well...but that is not where the itch is"...
...a comment by a South American Indian shaman to a Catholic priest who was attempting to convert the tribe.
Do you see the shaman's wise insight here? He was telling the priest that his religion was an answer to a question the Indians did not have.
Foucault addressed these issues of "framing" and 'deconstruction' with Chomsky in the interview I mentioned earlier on this thread.
My question was framed very simply. Your answer was a complex deconstruction, one that places such as Sparknotes can take the complexity of deconstruction into the infinite.
This is the reason I asked you to use your own 'noodle'...because as you see [IF you are following me] as you began looking for clues from others, the actual question I asked drifted away. When you finally came back here you scratched everywhere but where the itch is.
I am not making you WRONG, with your interpretation of what the book was about.
Because your opinion and the ideas of many others on that are valid as such things can be.
What I am trying to do Camus, is COMMUNICATE with you. Nothing else.
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Well,,I know I am being watched on the internet. I got so loaded with malware and keystroke logs that i had to format and re-install a fresh system. Then when I got online I was doing something and My hard-drive began to sing,,sort of like when you got a fish on your line and he starts stripping line off the reel. I am sick of this shit. When I played games off-line I never had issues. This internet crap has become such a pain in the ass I am contemplating shit-canning the whole mess. Why should I pay 70 bucks a month to give the beast a heads-up on My life ? I sure could use those 70 bucks to paY My property tax,or the plates for the car,or plates for My trailers,or to pay the cell phone bill so the NSA can listen to My conversations. Piss!
ReplyDeleteYea...they whacked my last computer at the root...like an ax to the base of the skull. It's too weird to contemplate sometimes. Living in an ongoing episode of the Twilight Zone.
ReplyDeleteWinston Smith has nothing on us kiddos.
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http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html
ReplyDeleteThis is panoptics in real time. Of course it is pubicly available, unlike most of the real goods.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/evacuations-needed-following-china-floods-2059087.html
ReplyDeleteI hate to keep HAARPing on it but, 94,000 people had to evacuated in China due to flooding.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/debts-pushing-pakistan-to-the-brink-of-ruin-2058858.html
ReplyDeletePakistan as well....
This may well be WWIII with “silent weapons”. Da?
Yea Korn, "piss"
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