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Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon was a prison design with cells arranged around a central tower, so prisoners could always be seen but never know when they were being watched. In Discipline and Punish (1975), Michel Foucault used it to show how the mere possibility of being watched can lead people to police their own behaviour.

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1975)

Philosophy

The story behind the card

Bentham (1748–1832) was an English philosopher and legal reformer. The idea began with his brother Samuel, an engineer who had planned a similar layout for a workshop in Russia; Jeremy turned it into a prison plan, drawn with the architect Willey Reveley in 1791. The name comes from Greek and means roughly “all-seeing”. No Panopticon was built in Bentham's lifetime, but some later prisons borrowed the layout, among them Cuba's Presidio Modelo, built between 1926 and 1931, where Fidel Castro was held in the 1950s. Foucault, a French philosopher and historian, argued that schools, hospitals, barracks and factories run on a similar logic of watching and being watched.

Türkçe oku
Jeremy Bentham'ın Panoptikon'u, hücreleri merkezdeki bir gözetleme kulesinin çevresine dizen bir hapishane tasarımıydı: Mahkûmlar her an görülebilir, ama ne zaman izlendiklerini bilemezdi. Michel Foucault, Hapishanenin Doğuşu'nda (1975) bu tasarımla, izlenme ihtimalinin bile insanlara kendi davranışlarını denetlettiğini anlattı.

Bentham (1748–1832) İngiliz bir filozof ve hukuk reformcusuydu. Fikir, Rusya'daki bir atölye için benzer bir plan tasarlamış olan mühendis kardeşi Samuel'den çıktı; Jeremy bunu bir hapishane planına dönüştürdü ve 1791'de mimar Willey Reveley ile çizdi. Adı Yunancadan gelir ve kabaca “her şeyi gören” anlamına gelir. Bentham hayattayken hiçbir Panoptikon yapılmadı, ama sonraki bazı hapishaneler bu planı benimsedi. Bunlardan biri, 1926-1931 yılları arasında Küba'da inşa edilen ve 1950'lerde Fidel Castro'nun da yattığı Presidio Modelo'dur. Fransız filozof ve tarihçi Foucault, okulların, hastanelerin, kışlaların ve fabrikaların da benzer bir izleme ve izlenme mantığıyla işlediğini savundu.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Panopticon
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