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Panopticism And Foucault

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As mentioned in my introduction, the paper will be focused on the theory of Panopticism under the light of Michael Foucault’s book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (first published in 1975; first translated in 1977 by Alan Sheridan). I will especially investigate how in both the novels Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) the Panoptic theory influence their characters.
In Discipline and Punish Foucault demonstrates that how the experience of being seen affects our human behavior. Foucault has used Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon to explain this principle and it’s also important to heed that Panopticon doesn’t come to us directly from Bentham but mediated to us through the work of Michel Foucault. Panopticon …show more content…

The focal issue of this chapter is to analyze that how the sense of being seen all the times affects an individual identity, basic behavior and can bring out the feeling of both empowerment and disempowerment. This power of all time surveillance is associated with working of supervision and establishment of hierarchal stratification. Surveillance in both of the novels Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Handmaid’s Tale affects the sense of identity of its characters and being living under the gaze of authority all the time bring disempowerment to characters and leads to a sense of loss of identity. This power of surveillance resides only in the few hands with those who are at the top of structure to watch those who are below in hierarchal structure just like in Nineteen Eighty-Four even those people who are working inside the four ministries, ministry of love, peace, war and freedom are subjected to surveillance; only those members who are working at the top level and are a member of inner party are allowed to switch off their telescreens for a certain period of time. The members belonging to outer party including the protagonist Winston Smith has no …show more content…

The Protagonist Winston reflects that even the sights of departments are frightening and the Ministry of Love is the most frightening it will give anyone

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