ginny t. Foucault

"The gaze is alert everywhere." -- Michel Foucault, "Discipline and Punish"
"Big Brother is watching you." -- George Orwell, 1984

Well, well...it looks like someone has been reading their George Orwell, isn't that right, Mr. Foo-coe?

I'd venture to say that Foucault's theory was at least a little bit influenced by George Orwell's infamous, and eerily prophetic, social apocalypse novel 1984. (Or perhaps it's Orwell taking inspiration from Foucault? Derrida says it could happen...)

All I could think of when I read this essay was "Wow, that sounds just like 1984..."

In the world of George Orwell, the Panopticon was all around. "The Party" kept a constant eye on the people living in Oceania via the one-way telescreens that were kept on at all times and saw everything...or did they? The public was constantly reminded that they were being watched, but because they could not observe their captors, they had no way of knowing when and how often they were being inspected. Just like in the Panopticon, this environment of uncertainty bred obedience. Even if the citizens were not being spied on via the telescreens, they were under constant scrutiny from their fellow neighbors and party members. No one was safe from the gaze, not even top party members. In 1984, just as in the Panopticon, power was destabalized from any kind of absolute ruler, and the entire society plowed along, oblivious to the fact that there was no longer anyone at the helm.

So now it's 2006 in America...

...eerily prophetic indeed.