Foucault & Constructions of Power Michel Foucault (226) describe

Michel Foucault (226) describes the panopticon as a mode of surveillance in which individuals are constantly under observation by authorities and are in all ways subject to the supervision and oversight of these authority figures. Indeed, Foucault (227) sees the panopticon as an enclosed, segmented space observed at every point and in which individuals are literally inserted into a fixed place. The resulting system is one in which any meaningful kind of freedom is absent and in which the individual (often an inmate in a prison) is subject to a state of conscious and permanent visibility. It is this permanent visibility imposed upon those who are observed which gives to the observers an enormous amount of power and an equally enormous capacity for inflicting punishment and control on those who are being observed.

Further, Foucault (232) argues that the effect of panopticism is to disindividualize power. In essence, this means that the power held by those who man or staff the panopticon derives less from any of their pe

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