From Boardwalk to Prison

Today’s meme features the absurd idea of a Foucauldian version of Monopoly, which consists simply of “Go to Jail” spaces. If you haven’t binged on the lengthy Monopoly board game (formerly called The Landlord’s Game and ripped off a woman’s version), you’re not in for much of a treat. Players move across the board, acquiring property after property in hopes of their opponent(s) landing on their owned properties and paying them rent to use them. It is after a while a tiresome game in which the player who does not get bankrupt or destroyed wins.

Ruthless, one of the delightful qualities of Monopoly is its ability to land a player in jail for landing on the wrong spot, rolling too many double dice, or getting a card that indicates they must head on over there.

But why a Foucauldian version consisting only of jail? Why is incarceration the only option? Well, it will help to take a peek into the life’s work of Foucault to see the importance of prison to his oeuvre.

Bentham’s Panopticon, Foucault’s Criticism of Power

Maybe you’ve heard the word “panopticon” attached to Foucault’s name. We’ve certainly addressed it in former Memesletter posts. It has an even stranger history than we might at first presume, assuming it is merely a way to criticize surveillance.

At the turn of the 19th century, philosopher and conceiver of utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham decided to draft a vision for a place to house prisoners while saving on the amount of people hired to do so. The panopticon (“all-seeing”) would be a circular prison with a watch tower in the center. All prisoners, due to the circular nature of the prison, would always be visible to the watchtower. The person inside the watchtower would not be visible to the prisoners. As a result, it would appear as though the person (or persons) inside would (or could) be watching everyone at all times.

But that is a strange psychological trick, no? If you are afraid of being watched, perhaps you will be on your best behavior and not dare to even attempt violence or rebellion. But this threat of surveillance would begin to wear on you, perhaps. It would become your quotidian existence, the mundane.

When Foucault, two centuries later, illustrates the panopticon, he uses it not simply as itself, but as a metaphor for the power of the state. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), Foucault lays out one of his most foundational ideas, criticizing overarching power structures.

An Institutional Genealogy

A large amount of Michel Foucault’s work centers on genealogies. This may be a familiar term if you’ve heard of Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), a text that details a history of human ethics in Nietzsche’s own almost polemical language. A genealogy, much like genealogical research you might do about your family’s roots, is a lengthy history. But for Nietzsche and Foucault, a genealogy incorporates more than a linear history. It is a philosophical and psychological examination of the spirit of a part of human history.

Therefore, when Foucault pens Discipline and Punish, he informs it with criticisms of institutions rather than simple, short, dry histories. For Foucault, in describing the panopticon, he goes beyond the historical representation of Bentham’s idea and relates it to a terrifying human truth.

Foucault’s Panopticon and the Modern Prison

Foucault’s description of the panopticon is nauseating in its evocative depictions of the claustrophobic nature of inhabiting such a prison as an inmate. The constant fear of being watched is everywhere. There is no privacy. There is no sense of a self independent from the gaze of the warden.

The prison system of the 20th century would go on to take the idea of surveillance in a prison to new levels. Today’s prisons are built with omnipresent watchfulness in mind. In the United States, it is common for prisons (privately owned) to maintain cells with visible toilets, so that there is no moment of privacy. Meals are watched, physical activity is watched, and all is streamlined under the eye of surveillance.

Those sent to prison (or the psychiatric hospital, for instance) are demarcated by binaries that are created to separate the desirable people from the undesirable people. According to Foucault : 

In this sense, institutions divide people into binaries or dichotomies: one is good, one bad. One is normal, one is abnormal. One is harmless, one is dangerous. Sound familiar?

Our Modern Panopticon

Foucault knew what the dangers were in opting for a system of surveillance. And while Bentham’s panopticon may seem like a silly thought experiment, it is a blueprint for our contemporary life. Think of how often you are watched, even if not in a prison or psychiatric hospital. Social media follows everything you follow. Ads seem aligned with your thoughts. In some places in the world, surveillance of dissenters may offer dire consequences.

But more importantly, Foucault’s criticism remains valid for many of the world’s prison systems and is timely during the dark period of casting immigrants (and citizens) into a particular El Salvador prison (or internment or concentration camp) where surveillance is essential to the functioning. Dehumanizing and watching human beings in order to punish them is a demeaning and cruel violation of human dignity.

It gets even more complicated when you see who actually goes to prison and why . In the United States, the prison system is highly controversial as it is privatized and houses certain kinds of people more than the general population. Is it because these people are bad? Is it because they commit more crimes? Or is it something else altogether? Who are the people we want to lock up?

In addition, in the United States, the prison is the  biggest mental health institution (thanks in part to the mass deinstitutionalization movement of the late 20th century). Many inmates would be better served with good psychiatric care to prevent bad days. But prison is for the undesirables.

So, the next time you see yourself in the mirror, perhaps you might ask, in the (paraphrased) words of Foucault and 80s singer Rockwell: “Why does it feel like somebody’s watching me?”