The Journal of Ihe Hislory of Ihe Behavioral Sciences Volume 2s. January 1989

THE THEORY OF PANOPTICAL CONTROL: BENTHAM’S PANOPTICON AND ORWELL’S NZNETEEN EZGHTY-FOUR

HARRY STRUB

The basic idea of panoptical control is that people will obey the prevailing rules and norms when they know they are being watched. The theory was developed by Jeremy Bentham 200 years ago when he designed an architecturally and managerially in- novative model prison called Panopticon. Along with his utopian Panopticon- poorhouse scheme, Bentham’s vast plans have been viewed as the most thorough com- bination of physical and social engineering ever devised. The various elements of panop- tical control theory received their most systematic realization in George Orwell’s Nine- teen Eighty-four. The novel serves to illustrate the theory and also to suggest Orwellian overtones to Bentham’s plans, which were quite antithetical to his Utilitarian philosophy.

In 1791 the great legislative reformer, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) published a proposal for an innovative model penitentiary. Its major feature was an architectural design that would have permitted continuous surveillance of all of the inmates. Accord- ingly, he named this prison Panopticon to reflect the Greek roots meaning “all seeing.” He assumed that if a prisoner believed he was being watched that this would be sufficient to reform his behavior, at least during his incarceration and perhaps beyond as well. Bentham elevated this assumption to the status of a law that I shall refer to as his “panop- tical principle.”’

This principle also played a critical role in controlling behavior in the novel Nine- teen Eighty-four by George Orwell ( 1903-1950).2 In this fictional police-state, the surveillance was accomplished mainly by electronic monitoring devices as well as by networks of human spies. The purpose of surveillance was the same as Bentham in- tended for his Panopticon penitentiary - to produce complete obedience to the govern- ing authority.

Bentham’s theory of panoptical control represents an original conceptualization for a technology of power. It had been almost completely overlooked until Michel Foucault examined its main propositions in his frequently cited Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the P r i ~ o n . ~ Since no Panopticon was ever built and since there is no known systematic application of the theory in real life, it is of interest that only in Orwell’s novel has the theory been so completely realized, leading one writer to allude to 2984 as “the precise actualization of a social Pan~pt icon .”~ There is no evidence, however, that Orwell was aware of Bentham’s theory and this essay will leave to others the task of revealing the historical tracings of panoptical components that were apotheosized in the novel.

For their critical comments on an earlier version of this essay, I thank my colleagues P. Brask, G. Bur- bank, J. Cote, B. Edginton, M. Golden, A. Hall, E. Levine, A. R. McCormack, R. Norton, B. Stearns, W. Stein, W. Stevens, and D. Topper. A portion of this paper formed the basis of a talk presented at the 1987 meeting of the Society for Utopian Studies.

HARRY STRUB is Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3B 2E9. His publications have been primarily on animal conditioning, and his current empirical interest b the experimental analysis of hypnotic analgesia. He is now writing on the behavioral analysis of utopian systems.

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THE THEORY OF PANOPTICAL CONTROL 41

Part of the popularity of 1984 is attributable to the way it epitomized the metaphor of society as a prison. It depicted an entire community ruthlessly policed by a small ruling group that deprived millions of people of any meaningful liberty or individuali- ty. As such, the novel has come to be regarded as the paradigmatic example of totalitarian aversive control. Nonetheless, there has been far more interest in Orwell’s brilliant treat- ment of thought control- his inventions of Newspeak and doublethink, for example - and too little concern about the precise nature of the clversive context that permitted the cognitive manipulation to appear so effective in controlling behavior.

The main purpose of this essay is to provide a systematic analysis of the theory of panoptical control in terminology accessible to most behavioral and social scientists. This account will also serve to clarify behavioral processes that are typically taken for granted in 1984. Finally, the parallels between the Panopticon and 1984 will be made more complete through an examination of the repressive and totalitarian components of the Panopticon. By demonstrating their fundamental incompatibility with Bentham’s hedonistically based philosophy of Utilitarianism, in which pleasure is regarded as good and pain as evil, a paradoxical characterization emerges of the great reformer as “Big Brother” and of his proposed applications of panoptical control theory as “Orwellian.”

THE PANOPTICON The various designs for the Panopticon penitentiary were rigorously driven by one

principle: visibility of all points from the enter.^ Accordingly, it was modeled after a wheel with hundreds of cells in several stories circling the perimeter and facing the center. At the hub in the middle of the circle was a cylindrical observation tower of several levels. The huge intermediate space between the tower and cells was to be covered by a glass skylight resulting in a bright, airy enclosure.

By a complicated means of slits, blinds, lanterns, and reflectors, the inspectors in the tower could surreptitiously observe all parts of the building around the clock without being seen. Similarly, the prison director stationed in the central core of this tower would be able to monitor unobtrusively both his subordinates and the inmates. The one to three thousand projected inmates could clearly see the tower from their cells and know that they were being watched from it, but there could be no unintentional sign of the people inside. Acoustic inspection was to be facilitated by means of a narrow speaking tube running from each cell to the central tower. This tube was to be used to detect even small whispers. It could also function like a telephone permiting direct communica- tion from inspector to inmate when necessary.6

Thus Bentham intended that the Panopticon’s design would provide no refuge from the “all-seeing eye.” There would be no private space, no moment when one could assume that one was not being scrutinized, awake or asleep.

THE THEORY OF PANOPTICAL CONTROL Bentham believed he had discovered “a great and new invented instrument of govern-

ment” that permitted one person to control a large number of subordinates.’ He viewed panoptical inspection as “ . . . the only effective instrument of reformative manage- ment.”* He thought it could be applied with great efficiency to any sort of establish- ment requiring people to be kept under supervision, such as “penitentiary-houses, prisons, houses of industry, work-houses, poor-houses, lazarettos, hospitals, and schools.” It seemed to him to be an unprecedented means of focusing power to secure “morals re- formed, health preserved, industry invigorated, instruction diffused . . . all by a simple

42 HARRY STRUB

idea in Architecture.”’ Superficially, this simple idea appeared merely to entail a novel structural design that enabled all-encompassing, panoramic observation. However, there are five components of the process of panoptical control which can be delineated.

Panoptical inspection. People will behave themselves when they know they are be- ing watched. This idea is at the core of the panoptical principle. Bentham believed that a continual watch over a prisoner might ultimately lead to his reformation because: “Men become at length when they are forced to seem to be: propensities suppressed are weakened and by long-continued suppression killed.”” Foucault formalized this no- tion as a precept: “The exercise of discipline presupposes a mechanism that coerces by means of observation; an apparatus in which the techniques that make it possible to see induce effects of power . . .”‘I What remains is to specify the precise nature of this “mechanism” of coercion.

Certitude of punishment. It should be obvious that the reason mere observation might induce coercive effects of power is that those being observed expect negative con- sequences to follow the detection of inappropriate behavior. It was certainly clear to Bentham that the threat of severe punishment for misbehavior must be omnipresent “in every tense: in memory, in sufferance, and in prospect.”12 As he had written suc- cinctly in Principles of Penal Law: “It is the fear of punishment . . . which prevents the commission of crime.”I3

Thus it was not all-seeing inspection in itself or some disembodied “inspective force” but the certainty of strong punishment for clearly defined transgressions that was to deter mi~behavior.’~ The expectancy of certain punishment was to be sustained by the belief that one was being continually watched; the strength of this belief should vary directly with the apparent rate of detection of misbehaviors.’:’ Clearly, detectability and fear of detectability should be seen as the two essential and conjoint features of panop- tical control. They constitute the basis for the principle of avoidance which governs behavior following experience with response-contingent punishment. Together they com- prise the essence of Bentham’s metaphorical “inspective force” and Foucault’s mechanism of coercion in the exercise of discipline. l6

Covert observation. While Bentham emphasized that “for the greatest proportion of time possible, each man should actually be under inspection,” he recognized the im- possibility of constant surveillance of each prisoner.” The next best thing was that each person believe that he was continuously monitored. According to Foucault, this was to be achieved by the conjoint operation of two principles herein referred to as con- spicuity and unverifiability.’* Briefly, it was the tower merely as the locus of the covert observers which was to be conspicuous as a perpetual reminder of the invigilation regimen. The tower’s conspicuity would readily encourage 100 percent confidence that one may be observed. But the concealment of the inspectors inside would result in unverifiability, that is, 0 percent momentary knowledge of whether one was being ob- served. Thus conspicuity together with unverifiability define a very specific process of covert observation. Their function is to enable the belief in (while circumventing the necessity for) continuous inspection.

Invisible omnipresence. Bentham believed that a critical by-product of covert obser- vation would be the illusion of the inspector as a divine, invisible omnipresence, like a disembodied supernal gaze perpetually cloaking its subjects. l9 Although resolutely atheistic, Bentham was not oblivious to the powerful role which theistic belief played in the minds of others. He rather relished the thought that he might be able to add a

THE THEORY OF PANOPTICAL CONTROL 43

secular analogue of fear-of-deity to the fear of the earthly punishments which he was prepared to provide.”

It is the pervasiveness of “uninterrupted exposure to invisible inspection”L’ which permits the Panopticon to be characterized as the “perfect secularization of divine om- niperception.”” Bentham assumed that without the unfettered opportunity to misbehave, the will to do so would weaken while the sense of being observed by an invisible judg- mental being would become internalized, Prisoners would be “awed to silence by an invisible eye.”23 It was this aspect of panoptical control - of a disembodied, all-seeing eye, an invisible, omnipresent, inspective force- which Bentham regarded as the “new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind.”24

Hierarchicalpanoptical organization. Whenever panoptical control is to be utilized on a large scale (as envisioned by Bentham), some type of hierarchical organization ap- pears necessary. While the Panopticon’s warders were to observe the inmates covertly, they were similarly to be monitored by the prison director, thus producing a “hierarchy of perfect optical supervi~ion,”~~ “a secular simile of God, angels and man.”26

Foucault analyzed how the Panopticon’s design refined the exercise of power by reducing the number of those who exercise it while increasing the number of those upon whom it is used, by acting directly upon the individual to produce self-restraint,” and by providing a generalizable formula for integration into many of contemporary socie- ty’s functions.28 The power in hierarchical surveillance derives from a network of super- visors perpetually supervised. Although its pyramidal structure has a head, it is the monitoring process that enables the apparatus as a whole to generate power and to sus- tain itself by its own mechanism. Power can be delegated to any supervisor within the organization yet its effects remain homogeneou~ .~~

The individual supervisor simultaneously plays two roles - as power-sharer and as subject to the power of others. This process combined with the general diffusion of power produces the illusion of power functioning automatically and the individual function- ing anonymously. The individual feels as if he is part of a machine.30 This sense of anonymity is shared with the ultimate victims, those at the bottom of the hierarchy who are relatively powerless except to the extent that they are mobilized to scrutinize and evaluate each other and to share power vicariously through identification with the en- tire organization. As Aldous Huxley remarked, “Today every efficient office, every up- to-date factory is a panoptical prison, in which the worker suffers . . . from the con- sciousness of being inside a machine.”31

PANOPTICAL CONTROL IN 1984

While Bentham’s application of panoptical inspection depended entirely upon a specific environmental design, Orwell’s was almost completely independent of such con- straint. Nonetheless, Orwell’s use of panoptical control theory in 1984 corresponded remarkably well with Bentham’s conception in virtually all dimensions.

Panoptical inspection. In addition to the official Police Patrols which inspected the streets, peering into people’s windows with impunity (even into upper-story windows from helicopters), it was expected that each person would spy on others and report to the authorities (that is, the Thought Police) any behavior suggesting ideological weakness. Such weakness would automatically be construed as antiparty sentiment. Even children were encouraged to report on their parents. “The family had become in effect an exten- sion of the Thought Police [so that] everyone could be surrounded night and day by informers who knew him intimately.”32

44 HARRY STRUB

However, in 1984 it was the telescreen that was the major means of preventing privacy. While it usually transmitted propaganda continuously and could never be turned off, its main function which it performed concurrently was to serve as an audio-video spying device (controlled by the Thought Police). One was situated prominently in each room, at every work-station, in corridors, and at major gathering places.

The telescreen is the primary conceptual analogue of the Panopticon’s observation tower. In its all-seeing function, it was vastly more sensitive, surpassing the Panopticon’s potential of achieving power over minds: one was aware that even the presence of a forbidden thought (“thoughtcrime”) was detectable, betraying the individual by a small gesture or grimace (“facecrime”), or by more minute emotional signals of guilt such as respiratory and heartbeat changes. “You had to live-did live, from habit that became instinct-in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard [and] every move- ment ~cru t in ized .”~~

The telescreen also provided a nearly continuous, permanent record of virtually all of an individual’s actions, however trivial, and thereby represents the consumma- tion of the panoptical ideal of being able to observe everything. When Orwell was writing in 1948, television was a recent enough invention to revive an older latent sensibility about photography-that a part of one’s soul had been captured. A feeling beyond mere invasion of privacy was engendered with the telescreen, suggesting a deeper violation - the theft of a part of one’s self, and its transmission to a distant inspection-house where it could be stored and reexamined, for all time, if necessary.

Similarly, Bentham had invented a system of bookkeeping that showed how detailed accounting and behavior records could be used as a written analogue of and supple- ment to panoptical i n ~ p e c t i o n . ~ ~ As he expressed it, “ . . . everything is to be registered [for] the minutest article may swell into imp~rtance.”~’ As Charles Bahmueller remarked: “For Bentham, bookkeeping freezes history, captures every moment. It was as close as he could come to photography. Even as [one is] watched by others now, through moral bookkeeping [one is] watched in the future by others still.”36

Certitude of punishment. As I have emphasized, panoptical inspection must be sup- plemented by anticipation of punishment for transgressions in order for misbehavior to be suppressed. Bentham believed that the Panopticon’s prisoners would be well be- haved because they would quickly learn the futility of escaping dete~tion.~’ Fearfulness should be circumscribed entirely to a specific aberrant action rather than existing as a generalized emotional state. At least in principle, panoptical surveillance combined with threat of punishment should obtain compliance without actual recourse to force or ~iolence.~’ Complete compliance precludes both punishment and fear.

By contrast, 1984 portrays a dystopian nightmare where an all-pervasive terror con- sumes each individual. The source of this terror is to be found only partly in the hor- rors of the punishments indicated, such as prison, forced-labor camps, torture, and death by hanging, shooting, or “vaporization.” Despite the extensive surveillance and police resources of the State, arrests appeared to occur capriciously, with an unpredictable delay following real or imagined transgressions, thereby generating some uncertainty about the completeness of surveillance at any specific instant. Even more terrible was the larger uncertainty stemming from the incomplete specification of which behaviors and thoughts were prohibited. Indeed, “nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws.”39 Daily behavior was guided largely by the existence of well-established (but unstated) norms and by periodic negative feedback (such as sharp reprimands) for devia- tions from these norms.

THE THEORY OF PANOPTICAL CONTROL 45

Thus three factors contributed to the prevailing sense of uncertainty in 1984: in- consistent negative feedback; the variable, unpredictable delay before the imposition of major punishment; and the vague guidelines differentiating acceptable from proscribed behaviors. Their combined effect was to engender a virtually constant state of intimida- tion, fear, and dread, and to suggest discontinuities in the surveillance process.

No coping strategy was entirely safe, but many everyday behaviors seemed relatively safe as they usually were not followed directly by punishment. The relative absence of punishment also served to sustain the illusion that the moment of one’s ultimate punish- ment was partially controllable (postponable) despite its unpredictability. The only real certainty luy in the perceived inevitability of punishment: “The Thought Police would get [one] just the same. . . . [Thoughtcrime was] the essential crime that contained all others in itself. . . Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.” “In the end [they] shall shoot

Most people, including Bentham, would concur with Orwell’s protaganist: “Never, for any reason on earth, could you wish for an increase of pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain.”41 To avoid pain through obedience is more easily accomplished in a systematically rule-based environment such as Panopticon. Nonetheless, the control can be even more powerful when a network of rules and regulations exists as a set of unarticulated (and unassailable) norms and when they are backed up by the reality of a similarly unstated set of strong sanctions.42

It is the inconsistencies in the use of punishment in 1984 that should, on sum, result in more deviant behavior than in Panopticon and a greater, omnipresent fear as well. Punishment that is remote in time, however intense and inevitable, is simply a weak influence upon present behavior. Threat of punishment can effectively control behavior only when coupled with Bentham’s prescription for the appearance of completeness in the covert, surveillance process. Such is attainable only with a high degree of feedback appropriate to the behavior being monitored.

Covert observation. The main purpose of surreptitiousness in the Panopticon was to produce the belief that one might be watched at all times. The inspectors of 1984 were the Thought Police. They were secreted in their headquarters in the Ministry of Love (Miniluv) which governed what was referred to as law and order. It also served as a prison, with its cells monitored via telescreens. Miniluv was one of four Ministries, each in similar buildings, which together housed the entire apparatus of government. Each building “ . . . was startlingly different from any other object in sight, . . . an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after ter- race, three hundred meters into the air, [containing] three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below, . . . completely dwarfing the surrounding ar~hi tec ture .”~~ The prominence of Miniluv as the locus of the unseen Thought Police within perfectly mirrored that of the Panopticon’s observation tower with its hidden inspector^.^^

In addition to the conspicuity of Miniluv, there was the ubiquitous telescreen, in- trusive as a transmitter of propaganda but providing no unintended sign as to when an inspector might actually be watching an indi~idual.~’ There were also numerous, prominent posters of Big Brother, “ . . . so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move.”46 Each one had the same caption-“Big Brother Is Watching You.”

46 HARRY STRUB

Thus, without direct evidence that one was being watched at any specific moment (that is, unverifiability), there were, nonetheless, ample reminders of the surveillance regimen (that is, conspicuity), and sufficient reason to be terrorized by the prospect of a slip in behavior being detected. However, as noted above, without the backup of con- sistent and immediate punishment, such “behavioral slippage” can be expected to escalate to a level commensurate with the apparent rate of detection.

Invisible omnipresence. Just as a congenitally blind man may by mystified by the ability of others to sense at a distance (with “invisible fingers”) what he discerns only by direct touch, so might the nonvisibility of Bentham’s inspectors generate the illusion of an ethereal, all-seeing and all-knowing presence, functioning like a persistently vigilant conscience. In 1984, this divine omnipresence was embodied in Big Brother, whose physical existence could not actually be demonstrated, and who served “as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt toward an in- dividual than toward an organi~ation.”~’

The posters of Big Brother (described above) along with similar pictures about a variety of everyday objects helped to reinforce the belief that it was His eyes which were always upon you (watching you on the telescreen, for example) and that it was He who would know all your actions and thoughts, The gaze of His “ . . . hypnotic eyes was as though some huge force were pressing down upon you-something that penetrated inside your skull, battering against your brain, frightening you out of your senses.”48 “Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath -no escape.”49

The conception of Big Brother as divine was even more explicitly developed by means of regularly staged events such as the compulsory daily pep rally (“Two Minutes Hate”). It consisted of a filmed presentation of a calm, wise, Christ-like, Big Brother as the people’s saviour in the continuing internal struggle against his antithesis - the traitorous, demonic, anti-Christ, Emmanuel Goldstein - the focusing point for hatred. Goldstein was personified as Evil Incarnate, the source of one’s dangerous impulses toward such sinister ideas as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of thought.

Thus, both Bentham and Orwell envisioned that a quasi-religious perception would emerge out of the panoptical control process and that it was quite important in securing stable, obedient beha~ior.~’ This represents a striking correspondence (of what in the present systematization would appear to be a comparatively secondary feature of panop- tical control) that connects Bentham’s projections with Orwell’s work.

Hierarchical panoptical organization. Perfectly parallel to the Panopticon’s hierarchy of director, inspectors, and inmates is the pyramidal organization in 1984: Big Brother, Thought Police, and Party Members. However, neither Bentham nor Orwell provided sufficient information on this theme to warrant further c~mparison.~’ Instead, I shall restrict the present discussion to the depersonalizing nature of hierarchical panoptical power which was a major point of emphasis in Foucault’s detailed analysis summarized earlier.

Bentham seemed to be aware that there was something dehumanizing about panop- tical inspection. In contemplating its application to schools, he did not think it undesirable that constant surveillance should serve “ . . . to give such herculean and ineludible strength to the gripe [sic.] of power, . . . so much exceeding anything that has been hitherto signified by despotic. . . . As long as the general security and happiness of society were enhanced, he believed it to be an utterly irrelevant concern “ . . . whether the result of this high-wrought contrivance might not be constructing a set of machines under the similitude of men . . . so they were but happy ones.”52

THE THEORY OF PANOPTICAL CONTROL 47

In the Panopticon, prisoners were to have been kept in “mitigated seclusion,” two to four inmates per cell.53 Each individual was expected to play the role of informer. Bentham proposed that failure to report the infractions of a cell-mate would result in the entire group incurring the same punishment as the offender. “Thus the prisoners would be converted into guardians and inspectors of each other.”54 Foucault viewed this mutual guardianship as “the most diabolical aspect” of panoptical control, evoking a Kafkaesque image of a “machine . . . in which everyone is caught, those who exercise this power as well as those who are subjected to it.”55

Similarly in 1984, such mutual spying under the relatively less controlled cir- cumstances of everyday life was intended to supplement the invisible, panoptical gaze and to isolate the individual completely in an asocial, metaphorical cell, thus attenuating the feeling of being human. Dehumanization was a deliberate governmental objective to be achieved mainly through fear and terror, but also indirectly through the hierar- chical panoptical organization. “Power is collective. The individual has power insofar as he ceases to be an indi~idual.”’~ A sense of freedom could be achieved only by self- negation and complete submission, by merging one’s identity with the Party and thereby sharing in its power and immortality. In a world where love and friendship and even self-love were prohibited, people lived in solitude but without the knowledge that they were truly alone because of the pervasive presence of Big Brother. It was with Big Brother that the only loving relationship was possible, but only as a “willing victim”57 participating in Orwell’s despairing vision of the future-a boot stamping on the human face, f~rever.~’

* * *

The following passage describing the net outcome of the panoptical control pro- cess in 1984 could almost have been written by Bentham, with but minor changes, on inspection in a Panopticon:

A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police. Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. Wherever he may be, asleep or awake, working or resting, in his bath or in bed, he can be inspected without warning and without knowing that he is being inspected. Nothing that he does is indifferent. His friendships, his relaxations, his behavior toward his wife and children, the expression of his face when he is alone, the words he mutters in his sleep, even the characteristic movements of his body, all are jealously scrutinized. Not only any actual misdemeanor, but any eccentricity, however small, any change of habits, any nervous mannerism that could possibly be the symptom of an inner struggle, is certain to be detected. He has no freedom of choice in any direction w h a t ~ o e v e r . ~ ~

In fact, as we have seen, it is insufficient that all misdemeanors and eccentricities are “certain to be detected.” They must also appear to be detected in order for them to be completely suppressed.

BEYOND PANOPTICISM The label “Orwellian” should be restricted to characterize any process that is either

inherently repressive or capable of being turned to a totalitarian end. At least in princi- ple, panoptical control need not be unremittingly repressive so long as the punishment and avoidance contingencies are clearly specified and there are suflcient opportunities for some positive experiences. This is exactly what Bentham would have claimed for his Panopticon. Yet there are a sufficient number of contradictions in Bentham’s writings that it becomes worthwhile to extend the comparison with 1984 beyond panoptical theory

48 HARRY STRUB

in order to clarify precisely the context of the behavior modification regimen envisioned in the highly controlled environment of Panopticon. Let us first contrast the extreme cruelty of the world of 1984 with Bentham’s central, Utilitarian philosophy, and then point to those repressive features of the Panopticon’s management plans that may at- tenuate the contrast. To enhance the generalizability of the discussion we shall also ex- tend the analysis to Bentham’s plans for a vast network of Panopticon-poorhouses.

Totalitarianism in 1984. I have pointed out that the pervasive terror in I984 ap- pears to be quite anomalous to the nature of panoptical control as conceptualized by Bentham and Foucault. As a satire of totalitarianism, the novel’s intent was to show omnipotence as the real objective of dictatorship. It suited Orwell’s purpose to stretch this objective to its logical limit so that the terror and suffering depicted as a result of the exercise of power were presented as its main aim. As Orwell described it, “Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation.”60 And so, the novel portrays a people stripped of any “dignity of emotion, or deep or complex sorrows,”61 living in “a world of fear and treachery and torment, . . . [of] trampling and being trampled upon, . . . [of] progress toward more pain, . . . [of] hatred, . . . [of] rage, triumph, and self- abasement- [a world which was] the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined.”62

1984 thus represents a complete inversion of Bentham’s Utilitariani~m.~~ While Ben- tham rationalized all of his efforts at legislative and prison reform as an attempt to ar- range for the greatest good of the greatest number, to maximize pleasure (good) and minimize pain (evil), 1984 depicted a government committed to stamping out pleasure and multiplying pain. Thus the world created in 1984 was utterly unfit for human be- ings to live in and quite antithetical to Bentham’s philosophy of life.62 Ironically, both stem from a common hedonistic theory of human nature - that man is infinitely malleable in adapting his actions in accordance with the principles of pleasure-approach and pain-avoidance.

Totalitarian components in Panopticon management: Orwellian previsions. Would life in a Panopticon have reflected an approximation of Bentham’s philosophy or its perverse inversion as portrayed in 1984? The question arises out of the dilemma that Bentham himself perceived, that in any penitentiary proposal, “ . . . every necessary point of coercive discipline presents [to some people] matter for a charge of inhumani-

His task, as he viewed it, was to create a set of principles to guide prison manage- ment such that his penitentiary would preserve “the nature of legal punishment - of just and merited suffering, without being converted into evils of every description.”66 But it is in the degree of “just and merited suffering”-howsoever rationalized- that the mini- world of Panopticon might reflect the anti-utilitarian animus of 1984.

Let us look first at some of those enlightened elements of Bentham’s plan of manage- ment that were proposed as correctives to the appalling prison practices of the day, whether in the dungeons known as the floating Hulks moored in England’s estuaries, or in similarly fetid conditions in ships transporting convicts to the wilderness of Australia. By contrast, in a P a n ~ p t i c o n : ~ ~ prisoners would not be enchained in their cells; they would not suffer from hunger or cold; they would receive some protection from disease by the maintenance of a high level of hygiene and sanitation; they would receive medical attention when ill; their prison labor would be compensated somewhat by (meager) wages in order to relieve “the oppressive influence of punishment and restraint”;68 the prisoners would “be protected against the caprices of their gaolers, and the brutality of their companion^";^^ and as one of several measures Bentham proposed

THE THEORY OF PANOPTICAL. CONTROL 49

which would make executive duty and personal interest coincide, the prison director would be fined for each death in excess of the national mortality rate. At the very least then, Bentham planned that the “necessaries of life,” however mean and meager, were to be provided in order to avoid those “inordinately severe” hardships which would typically fill a prisoner’s sentence with such “unremitted misery” as might, be “ . . . liable to affect and shorten life, amounting thereby to capital punishment in effect . . . [and incurring on the part of] the executive officer who subjects a man to such a fate . . . [the] guilt of unjustifiable homicide.” As Bentham observed, “what must not be forgot- ten is, that in a state of confinement, all hardships which the management does not preserve a man from, it inflicts on him.”70

The above are representative examples of the kind of sensitive, beneficent concern for the unnecessary suffering of his fellow humans (and animals as well) which Ben- tham typically espoused. Aldous Huxley provided a glowing version of the generally accepted opinion concerning the overall humanitarian legacy of Jeremy Bentham. Huxley praised Bentham’s benevolent contributions which influenced “ . . . the repeal of anti- quated laws, the introduction of sewage systems, the reform of municipal government, almost everything sensible and humane in the civilization of the nineteenth century. . . .” Huxley appeared to be struggling to come to grips with Bentham’s many contradictions and continued somewhat guardedly: “Bentham himself was no tyrant and no worshiper of the all-efficient, ubiquitous and providential State. But he loved tidiness and inculcated that kind of social efficiency which has been and is being made an excuse for the con- centration of power in the hands of a few experts and [for] the regimentation of the masses.” However, Huxley was quite perplexed by “ . . . the strange and alarming fact that Bentham devoted about twenty-five years of his long life to the elaboration in minutest detail of the plans for a perfectly efficient Yet another recent in- timation that all was not well was furnished by Margery Fry: “There were times when Bentham’s belief in fear led him to some conclusions which seem to us to contradict his bene~olence .”~~ Most provocative has been the position of Gertrude Himmelfarb in her chapter, “The Haunted House of Jeremy Bentham,” in which she argued that in analyzing the long-ignored Panopticon writings, “what emerges is more and more a travesty of the model prison and the model reformer.”73 As Himmelfarb noted, Ben- tham’s proposal vested extraordinary despotic and mercantilist powers in the position of prison director. Also, to fill the position, he put forward with ingenuous aplomb a man widely acknowledged to be of unimpeachable integrity - himself.74

Himmelfarb also described how Bentham’s proposal to run the Panopticon by con- tract labor was a retrogressive step. This notorious practice had been condemned by the Penitentiary Act of 1779- a progressive piece of legislation previously supported by Bentham.75 He now recommended that the contractor, as prison director, be given “all the powers that his interest could prompt him to wish for, in order to make the most of his bargain.”76 When Parliament initially approved Bentham’s bill in 1794, it accepted all of his provisions which included: conferring upon him complete responsibility for all aspects of construction, and also of the management and control of the prison, prisoners, and staff; appointing him as contractor for life (with the contract subsequently passing to his heirs); and granting him seventy-five percent of the profits from the prison labor.77 His financial interest would then coincide completely with his duty to his charges and the nation, he thought. Inmates thereby would be protected from abuses as it would be counterproductive to profits not to maintain them in good, healthy, well-fed work- ing condition.78

50 HARRY STRUB

The contractor alone was to determine which types of work might generate the greatest profits. Bentham’s stated concern that a prisoner receive instruction in a useful trade was, thereby, considerably weakened as a sincere priority. How long would prisoners be expected to labor? Bentham’s guidelines were “given by the rule of economy: . . . as much as can be extracted from each without prejudice to health.”79 The specific directives derived therefrom were consistent with his view of the Panopticon as “a mill for grinding rogues honest, and idle men industrious.”80 He first proposed six working days, each with one-and-a-half hours for meals, seven-and-a-half hours for sleep, one hour for exercise (on a treadmill), and fourteen hours for work. But later he suggested that the number could be increased to fifteen hours for work since “meal times are times of rest: feeding is recreation”;81 and later still (in a semi-confidential letter), to “sixteen and a half profitable hours . . . [which is] very near twice as many as our Penitentiary systems allow.”82 Prisoners would thus have been “compelled to engage in labour . . . whilst ennui, the scourge of ordinary prisons, would be banished.”83 Even the sabbath was not to be inviolate. Church services in the central tower were to be observed from the cells, after which some sedentary labor might be desirable to avoid idleness.

Small wonder, then, that after several years of governmental delays in getting the project started, Bentham petitioned twice in 1798 to be allowed to commence hisfinan- cia1 enterprise (without panoptical control) by serving as contractor for the prevailing dungeons (the infamous floating Hulks which even he viewed as “too effectually vicious to admit of much impr~vement”~~) , at least until such time as construction could begin on the Pan~pticon.~’ In a letter to Lord Pelham in 1802 promoting the Panopticon and explaining his own interest in its success, he offered “[to let his] Lordship into a secret, [that] the danger of loss was as nothing: diminution of gain was all the sacrifice.”86

That Bentham may have been less concerned with a prisoner’s reformation or socie- ty’s security than with the stability of the manpower pool that was the source of his envisioned profits was suggested by a clause he included in the 1794 bill to prevent Parlia- ment from commuting a prisoner’s sentence, for any rea~on.~’ Even more revealing were Bentham’s proposals relating to a prisoner’s discharge which were so restrictive - for all prisoners regardless of nature of crime or length of sentence-that the result was to be, essentially, bondage for life in a “subsidiary establishment.” This establishment was merely another Panopticon which was conceived of as a kind of transitional halfway house, entrance to which was compulsory, and release from which into society was at- tached to impossibly onerous conditionalities.88 Thus, the initial 1794 bill approved by Parliament had also accepted what Bentham referred to as his “ingenious plan” for a subsidiary Panopticon for the contractor to house and employ not only released prisoners but also those “of blasted character who, though acquitted for want of legal proof, were thought to be

With the appearance of Pauper Management Improved in 1797, the Panopticon concept was extended to its second major application-as a poorhouse.90 Bentham pro- posed to set up a chain of 250 Panopticon-workhouses to employ all the paupers in the land, 2000 per Panopticon, under panoptically controlled supervision. A fixed moderate fee would be charged them for their boardings but it was payable only through their labor. Children would begin working by age four.” They would not be allowed any non-productive playtime. Their work would not be reimbursed with wages, and they were to continue bound to these houses after the discharge of their parents until about age twenty, so that after about two decades there might be 500 such industry- houses maintaining a million people. By Himmelfarb’s calculations, this meant that over

THE THEORY OF PANOPTICAL CONTROL 51

10 percent of the population of England was to be consigned to a Panopticon under a strict regimen of nearly continual forced labor, with each activity of each moment of every day predetermined by its guardians.92 The proposed “National Charity Com- pany” would be like a private joint-stock company and would constitute a monopolistic establishment of unprecedented size with Bentham as major hareh holder.^^

Bentham insisted that the Company must also have “coercive powers” to apprehend anyone who did not appear to have a means of livelihood as well as their families.94 Even ordinary citizens would be encouraged to convey any beggar to the nearest Panop- ticon and its ruling despot. He saw no moral conflict in proposing to incarcerate thousands of these people without trial. As Bahmueller paraphrased Bentham: “It was foolish to denounce the deprivation of beggars’ liberty as punishment; it was no more punishment ‘than sending a boy to school’.” According to Bahmueller, Bentham had also made the following comment in a manuscript he deliberately withheld from publica- tion: “After all, in proposing compulsion in this instance it is not for the benefit of the individuals to be subjected to it, that I propose

All other public and private social welfare funding for the poor was to be eliminated, except for a yearly per capita government grant to the Company at a rate commen- surate with the prevailing Poor Laws.96 This grant was not to be in any way credited to the pauper’s “self-liberation” account, despite Bentham’s estimates of the profits from labor ranging from 100 to 300 percent and beyond for various classes of individuals, especially the youth and those too infirm to secure employment on the outside. Although a term in Bentham’s poorhouse might in some instances be worked off in a few days or weeks, and although the Company was to introduce innovative techniques to facilitate subsequent employment for the able-bodied adult on the outside wherever available in the nation, the majority would have remained jobless and would have been required to reenter the workhouse. Even with this monopoly, he argued that it was necessary that the living conditions in Panopticon must be kept somewhat less desirable than that of the poorest person remaining outside, or even of paupers in existing poorhouses en- joying three meals a day, with the luxury of some occasional meat, and little or no labor.97 “SO many industry-houses, so many crucibles, in which dross of this kind is converted into sterling,” wrote Bentham as he assayed his “pauper

If a perception of the poorhouse/workhouse as a prison is surfacing herein, there should be no surprise that Bentham felt that the entire system of imprisonment might in due course be taken over by the Company. The function of a prison could easily be “ . . . supplied by a strong ward in each of the proposed industry-ho~ses.”~~ He ex- pressed no concern for how his paupers might have viewed sharing the same abode and thereby some of the stigma of common criminals.

Bahmueller’s exhaustive analysis of The National Charity Company is balanced with a critical but fair account of the major benefits proposed by Bentham for the poor in- terred in Panopticon. Still, his book strongly confirms Himmelfarb’s earlier analyses and leaves the inescapable impression “that any argument that the poor were intended as the primary beneficiaries of Bentham’s system collapses under the weight of demonstrable evidence.” loo Echoes of 1984 resound in Bahmueller’s conclusions:

Bentham’s Poor Law reform was replete with a repressiveness so pervasive, so soul- destroying and with so little regard for either the civil liberties or the emotional sensitivities of those whose health (moral as well as physical) and happiness it set out to promote and protect, that its administrative progressiveness pales in the com- parison. Left in Bentham’s hands, the Poor [would be] . . . worse off by far than

52 HARRY STRUB

they in fact were”’ . . . [with their] dignity as human personalities hopelessly compromised. lo’

CONCLUSIONS The theory of panoptical control is based upon the behavioral principle of avoidance

and insists that so lcng as environmental cues can sustain the belief that one’s behavior is being constantly monitored, successful avoidance behavior will be obtained. It was Bentham’s genius to conceive of a unique architectural setting that would facilitate panop- tical control with a minimum of force as well as an extraordinary degree of economic and organizational efficiency. The comparison with 1984 serves to illustrate the resilience of the theory by showing its generalizability: to a more conventional, everyday environ- ment of a large city; to a wide range of punishment-avoidance contingencies; and to circumstances entailing profligate utilization of management resources. In addition, several components of the novel itself are clarified, in particular the precise nature and function of the aversive behavior control process and the various panoptical elements such as the telescreen and the slogan “Big Brother Is Watching You,” which have become archetypal symbols of threats to individual liberty and privacy.

Bentham’s major goal, ostensibly, was to instill in his subjects an irreversible habit of labor. At least while directly under panoptical control, obedient behavior should be obtained as individuals quickly learn what is required to avoid punishment. Would the habit of labor generalize outside the Panopticon? This is unlikely for two reasons. First, the same controlling processes and cues are not present to the same degree. Second, because the “training” relied upon coercive processes, no deep internal transformation should be expected. As Philip Zimbardo noted with reference to the type of obedience observed in 1984, “Coercive controls create compliant conformists but never true believers,” especially if the individual is isolated from those who might normally pro- vide natural sources of influen~e.’’~

Parallels to 1984 could likely be drawn with any prison. It is The National Charity Company rather than Panopticon-prison which serves as a more credible model for yielding “Orwellian previsions.” As Himmelfarb noted, Bentham was the only poor- law reformer who “ . . . would have made of pauperdom a growth industry . . . [that] would have ended with over ten percent of the population in the poorhouse.”’04 The magnitude of the profits he foresaw resulted in a conflict between his personal interest and his duty to promote the welfare of his charges. Consequently, his scheme wasprimari- ly exploitative.

Nonetheless, while daily life in a Panopticon-poorhouse would be very unpleasant , it would also be very different from the exaggerated world of fear, treachery, and tor- ment portrayed in 1984. For example, Bentham’s management would have had some degree of transparency to public scrutiny; he would have provided some recourse for internal complaints; also, in contrast to the sexual repression in 1984, Bentham would have encouraged early marriages. Most fundamentally, while Bentham believed that children might adapt to any environment, he never intended that reformation might entail the initial destruction of a person’s perceptual-belief system.

Yet the Panopticon is more readily perceived, as Douglas Long put it, as symbolic of “the irresistible and pervasive repressiveness of Bentham’s system of social condi- tioning and control.” Its most profoundly oppressive aspect was “the inescapable quali- ty of the remoulding process by which [inmates] were to be, too literally, re-formed into industrious and obedient utilitarian Bentham suggested that the public would thereby gain “a superior sort of population in exchange for an inferior [one] .” lo6

THE THEORY OF PANOPTICAL CONTROL 53

According to Long, Bentham saw the indispensable function of any government as one of organizing the hedonistic social environment: the administration of pleasurable and painful things was to be the essence of the government of men.lo7 Bentham held that since all laws entail a coercive or restrictive force, governments inevitably have to do evil so that good may come. From these premises could Bentham thus conclude: “Humanity consists in seeming to be Yet he engaged in the most strenuous efforts to make his cruel proposals seem humane and believed all of his own rationalizations. lo9

What this means, in essence, is that although he might claim that each of his pro- posals were derived from Utilitarian, greater-happiness principles, they were not ob- viously so. Too frequently did they require ad hoc justification based on utterly idiosyn- cratic considerations ranging from the arbitrary or expedient to the morally incoherent. Even a Bentham apologist could allude to disturbing problems which Bentham’s ad- mirers must confront:

The Panopticon writings do not always present Bentham personally in an attrac- tive light; his messianic tendencies are somewhat alarming; his devices when not ridiculous are repellant; his mechanistic concept of the nature of man is degrading to human dignity; he contemplated the exploitation of men, women, children, the sick and the maimed, over an oppressively long working day; his complacency and his cupidity are openly displayed.””’ As Anthony O’Hear remarked: “The reforming trick is always to make controlling

a man appear as if it is in his own best interests, and the reforming itself a favour done to him.””’ This is an exceedingly difficult task when the reformative techniques are based primarily on aversion-control principles. Indeed, without adequate avenues for the positive reinforcement of appropriate behavior, any reformation process is inevitably coercive and repressive.

For Bentham, reformation too often entailed the redefinition of the greatest misery of the few into the greatest happiness of the many, and to quote Himmelfarb, “the eleva- tion of expediency into virtue.””’ Bentham described his proposed authoritarian con- trol over Panopticon in the same manner as he defined the imperatorial authority of the State, that is, in strict terms of command and ~bedience.”~ However, as Philip Mullock argued, “Bentham’s logic of imperation . . . [was] inadequate as a basis for anything other than a theory of a closed Orwellian legal system . . . [in which] it is im- possible to take rights seriously.”114

A more critical point of condemnation revolves around Bentham’s casual proposa! for “coercive powers” for the National Charity Company, a type of policy he denounced only a few years earlier in defending the right of every man to the law’s protection. He himself had condemned the unjust imposition of restraints on the poor proclaimed in the name of the security of society at large.”’ He believed, furthermore, that each in- dividual was the best judge of his own interests and pleasures and should never be com- pelled to do something simply because it might accord with another’s personal taste. ‘16

He frequently overlooked even good, common sense which he had justified elsewhere. For example:

There is no individual insensible to the privation of liberty-to the interruption of all his habits, and especially of all his social habits. . . . Any occupation which . . . [a man] is compelled to exercise . . . [becomes] disagreeable, and in short becomes a punishment. l7

Contemplating his rejected Panopticon plans in 1830, Bentham expressed bitterness with George the Third whom he believed had intervened with Parliament to obstruct

54 HARRY STRUB

his ambitions. But for the King, he wrote, “all the prisoners in England would, years ago, have been under my management [;] all the paupers in the country would, long ago, have been under my managernent.”’l8 The magisterial title he had conceived for himself was “Sub-Regulus” of the poor and of the imprisoned part of the pop~lation.”~ In a diary note recorded in 1822, he reflected, likely quite ingenuously, on how the “ap- petite for power increases with the exercise of it. . . . On first entrance into the posses- sion of power, a man can scarcely suspect to what a pitch his appetite for it will swell.”’20

Orwell’s novel is frightening and represents a haunting and ever-present warning about a possible but preventable future. As Anthony Burgess remarked, “It is the metaphorical power [of 1984 that persists: the book continues to be an apocalyptical codex of our worst fears.”’21 Bentham also registered a warning about the potential danger of panoptical control:

Its great excellence consists in the great strength it is capable of giving to any in- stitution it may be thought proper to apply it to. If any perverse applications should ever be made of it, they will be in this case as in others at the doors of those who make them.”’

As with his previous comment on the risks of attaining power, the irony of this message would not have been apparent to him.

NOTES 1. See John Bowring, ed., The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols. (New York: Russell and Russell, 1962;

reproduced from the Bowring Edition of 1838-1843). Hereinafter as Works. The original publication of 1791 was comprised of a series of letters written five years earlier entitled “Panopticon; or, Inspection-House” (Works, IV, pp. 37-66), and two lengthier Postscripts written in 1791 which included ‘‘further particulars and altera- tions” as well as a detailed “plan of management” (ibid., 67-172).

2. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four (New York: New American Library, 1961; reprinted from 1949 edition published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich).

3. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977).

4. John Lea, “Discipline and Capitalist Development,” in Capitalism and the Rule of Law, ed. B. Fine, R. Kinsey, J. Lea, S. Piciotto, and D. Young (London: Hutchinson, 1979). p. 88.

5 . Bentham’s plans were derived from his brother Samuel’s designs for a workshop-factory commissioned for Potemkin’s estate in the Crimea. In the “Panopticon Correspondence” edited by Bowring, Bentham wrote: “My brother and I [have] . . . professed to have invented an engine for the universalising of inspection in a Penitentiary house” (Works, XI, p. 161). Although no Panopticon structure was ever completed, Robin Evans observed that within 70 years, “almost every controversial point put forward in Punopticon [emerged] as common practice in the building and organization of gaols and penitentiaries, substantially influencing also the planning of workhouses, poorhouses, houses of correction and lunatic asylums” (“Bentham’s Panop- ticon: An Incident in the Social History of Architecture,” Architectural Association Quarterly 3 [1971]: 23). For more complete histories of prison designs, see Robin Evans, The Fabrication of Virtue: English Prison Architecture, 175&1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); and N. Pevsner, A History of Building Types (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), ch. 10, “Prisons.” For a more specific example elaborating the role of architecture in implementing prison discipline, see C. J. Taylor, “The Kingston, On- tario Penitentiary and Moral Architecture,” Social History 12 (1979): 385-408. For a history of panoptical design in insane asylums and hospitals, see John D. Thompson and Grace Goldin, The Hospital: A Social and Architectural History (New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, 1972).

6. These listening devices appear to have been dropped very early. According to Evans, Bentham realized that they were “reciprocal,” that is, that there was no way of preventing inmates from eavesdropping on the inspectors (“Bentham’s Panopticon,” p. 28). Bentham never commented on this but continued to write as if there were no compromise in the degree of acoustic inspection of prisoners without the tubes. (But see Works, IV, p. 84, on their proposed deployment for communication amongst inspectors in the tower.)

7. Works, IV, p. 66. 8. Ibid., IV, p. 175. However, he simultaneously held that “There is, at all times, great reason for distrusting

the reformation of criminals’’ (ibid., I, p. 500).

THE THEORY OF PANOPTICAL CONTROL 55

9. Ibid., IV, pp. 37, 39. As one contemporary writer put it, Bentham discovered “the architectural form that most fully embodied the reformer’s desire to subject men to the discipline of surveillance” (Michael Ig- natieff, A Just Measure of Pain [New York: Pantheon Books, 19781, p. 113).

10. Works, IV, 40. 11. Foucault, Discipline, pp. 170-171. 12. Works, IV, p. 140. Bentham also intended that instructions, commands, reprimands, and punishments

be delivered promptly, contingent upon behavior: “Action scarcely follows thought, quicker than execution might here be made to follow upon command” (ibid., IV, p. 85).

13. lbid., I, p. 516. However, Bentham believed that in his Panopticon both misbehavior and its conse- quent punishment would be quite infrequent as it would be learned quickly that all transgressions rarely would go undetected. As he noted, it was ‘‘ . . . the prospect of [punishment] which would probably be forever suf- ficient to render the infliction of it unnecessary” (ibid., IV, p. 47). Since Bentham typically perceived only the idealized result of his imposed discipline-obedience-he may be forgiven for attributing the power in panoptical control. almost exclusively to the presumed “inspective force” (ibid., IV, p. 44). Bentham’s belief was elegantly encapsulated by Foucault: “ . . . the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exer- cise unnecessary” (Discipline, p. 201). Foucault similarly focused largely on the panoptical observation com- ponent (which induced in the inmate “a state of conscious and permanent visibility” [idem.]); he did not ade- quately attend to the nature of the self-control induced by the expectation of immediate negative consequences.

14. For a discussion of Bentham’s position in the eighteenth-century development of the three concepts of penal punishment (that is, retribution, deterrence, and reformation), see Barbee-Sue Rodman, “Bentham and the Paradox of Penal Reform,” Journal of the History of Ideas 29 (1968): 197-210.

15 . This formalization concerning the strength of belief in the continuousness of inspection was intuited by Bentham: I‘ . . . the greater chance thereis, of a given person’s being at a given time actually under inspec- tion, the more strong will be the persuasion-the more intense . . . the feeling, he has of his being so” (Works, IV, p. 44).

16. In the highly controlled, rule-governed environment of the Panopticon, certitude of punishment would have incorporated certitude of its quality and severity as tailored for each offence, with the restriction that the overall “value of the punishment must not be less in any case than what is sufficient to outweigh that of the profit of the offence” (Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, in Works, I, p. 87). The degree of fear should vary directly with the severity of the anticipated punishment, and the degree of severity inversely with the degree of certitude. The punishment must always be strong to deter future wrong- doing, but no stronger than necessary for the circumstances of the individual, and never debilitating, “for every punishment that is not needed is really a lawless punishment” (Works, X , p. 283). Although Bentham’s complex system of punishment has the ring of reasonableness, it is utterly unrealistic and impracticable.

In his Panopticon papers, Bentham provided only “a few hints” about the types of physical punishment he would deploy, and these examples were likely far too mild to yield the degrees of fearfulness he felt necessary to maintain prison discipline. Thus, “Outrageous clamour may be subdued and punished by gagging; manual violence by the strait waistcoat; refusal to work, by a denial of food till the task is done” (ibid., IV, p. 164). Elsewhere (in Principles of Penal Law, in Works, I , pp. 365-580), he presented a detailed, systematic ra- tionale for corporal punishment which is quite revealing about how far he might have been willing to go in subduing the recalcitrant in a Panopticon. On the one hand, he recognized that since punishment can only be inflicted following a transgression, each application is another proof of its failure as a deterrent (p. 533). But by far his greater zeal was devoted to elaborating how he thought “the quantity of suffering ought . . . to be regulated [that is, in specific gradations] by the laws” (p. 414). He thought such a goal attainable, in part, by a whipping machine he conceptualized in which the force and rapidity of the strokes could be regulated. “Thus everything which is arbitrary might be removed” (p. 415). Multiple whipping machines for when there were many delinquents to be punished would heighten the terror of the scene “without increasing the actual suffering.” With respect to more severe punishments, he wrote that “mutilations ought to be reserved . . . [for] the most mischievous offences . . . [as] may perhaps be found in the case of rape, for which analogy most strongly recommends a punishment of this kind” (p. 420). Further speculation on the nature of punish- ment in Bentham’s penitentiary would exceed the bounds of this essay. (See, also, W. L. Twining and P. E. Twining, “Bentham on Torture,” Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly 24 [1973]: 305-356.)

17. Works, IV, p. 44. 18. In Foucault’s words, “Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible [conspicuous] and

unverifiable” (Discipline, p. 201). With this dual principle of conspicuity-unverifiability, the inspector’s “real presence” was combined with his “apparent omnipresence” (Works, IV, p. 45).

19. The “Principle of Omnipresence” was one of five synonyms Bentham used for his panoptical “Inspec- tion Principle.” (See Charles F. Bahmueller, The National Charity Company: Jeremy Bentham’s Silent Revolu- tion [Berkeley: University of California Press, 19811, pp. 189 and 254 [116n].) 20. See, for example, James E. Crimmons, “Bentham on Religion: Atheism and the Secular Society,” Journal

of the History of Ideas 47 (1986): 95-110.

56 HARRY STRUB

21. Works, IV, pp. 78-79. 22. 23. Works, IV, pp. 78-79. 24.

Stephen Oetterman, “The Panorama- An Early Mass Medium,” Swissair Gazette 9 (1986): 18.

Ibid., IV, p. 39. It is unclear whether the construct of an internalized, self-controlling entity adds explanatory-predictive power to a more parsimonious, behavioristic account in terms of external stimuli as conditioned and generalized discriminative cues for appropriate avoidance behavior. Regardless, the development of internal sensations and their attributions should not be dismissed as trivial or irrelevant self-perceptions.

25. Oetterman, “Panorama,” p. 18. 26. Evans, “Bentham’s Panopticon,” p. 22. 27, See, again, 13x1. 28. Foucault, Discipline, p. 206. 29. Ibid., pp. 176-177. 30. Ibid., p. 202. 31.

32.

34.

Aldous Huxley, “Variations on The Prisons,” in A. Huxley, Themes and Variations (London: Chatto

1984, p. 1 1 1 . This mutual spying was also part of the hierarchical panoptical organization.

See L. J. Hume, Bentham and Bureaucracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 157-158). Bentham’s ideas on the importance of detailed bookkeeping to good management were presented in Pauper Management Improved (Works, VIII, pp. 369-439), originally published in 1797.

and Windus, 1950), p. 196.

33. 1984, pp. 6-7.

35. Ibid., p. 392. 36. Bahmueller, The National, p. 193. 37. “Experiment, venturing first upon slight transgressions, and so on, in proportion to success, upon more

and more considerable ones, will not fail to teach him the difference between a loose inspection and a strict one.” (Works, IV, p. 44).

38. Foucault, Discipline, p. 201. 39.

40. 1984, pp. 19, 226. 41.

42.

1984, p. 9. The only law was that one should love Big Brother. Every arrest could be construed as due to a violation of this law.

1984, p. 197. For a contrary, psychoanalytic view, see Gerald Fiderer, “Masochism as Literary Strategy:

Bob Hodge and Roger Fowler, “Orwellian Linguistics,” in Language and Control, ed. R. Fowler, B. Orwell’s Psychological Novels,” Literature and Psychology 20 (1970): 3-21.

Hodge, G. Kress, and T. Trew (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), pp. 6-25. 43. 1984, pp. 7-8. 44. Despite the absence of windows, Miniluv was the source of the all-seeing panoptical control. Like the

Panopticon’s watchtower, it was similarly impenetrable to those under surveillance. Of the four Ministries in 1984, Miniluv “was the really frightening one” (p. 8). As a prison, it would have satisfied a requirement of Benrham’s that “the appearance of this habitation of penitence . . . strike the imagination, and awaken a salutory terror [while removing] all hope of escape” (Works, I, p. 424).

45. “There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment . . . It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time” (1984, p. 6). 46. Ibid., p. 5 . 47. Ibid., p. 171. 48. Ibid., pp. 68-69. 49. Ibid., p. 26. 50. For a more complete analysis of the religious imagery in 1984, see Alan Barr, “The Paradise Behind

‘1984’,” English Miscellany 19 (1968): 197-203. 51. According to L. J. Hume, Bentham’s bookkeeping system shaped information into a form that facilitated

bureaucratic decisicn-making and control. However, the notion of hierarchical organization was not exten- sively developzd by him beyond the basic idea of increased efficiency in economy and power. Nonetheless, Bentham succeeded in identifying the principal requirements of a bureaucratic institution (Hume, Bentham, pp. 157, 164).

Works, IV, pp. 63,64. These two quotes were taken from the last and longest of the set of twenty-one letters, written in 1786-1787, in which the Panopticon and its applications were first described. Bentham cau- tions the reader (pp. 40, 66) that many of the examples in this letter were devised “to bring a smile” and to “alleviate the tedium of a dry discussion.” Nonetheless, the portion quoted does not appear to be inconsistent with his other writings on panoptical purposes. Similarly, there is every reason to believe Bentham’s con-

52.

THE THEORY OF PANOPTICAL CONTROL 57

fidence in his conception of discipline, that in a Panopticon-school, “Two and two might here be less than four, or the moon might be made of green cheese [with pupils, so instructed, who are] obsequious beyond anything as yet known under the name of obsequiousness” (p. 65).

53. Bentham retracted his earlier (1786) proposal for complete solitary confinement as too cruel and ex- pensive (See Works, IV, p. 47). 54. Ibid., I, p. 500 . Bentham described this process loosely as “the law of mutual responsibility [which]

has stood for ages the object of admiration: Either inform, or suffer as an accomplice” (ibid., IV, p. 164). 55. Michel Foucault, “The Eye of Power,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings,

1972-1977, Michel Foucault, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), p. 156. 56. 1984, p. 218. 57. Jenni Calder, Huxley and Orwell: Brave New World and 1984 (London: Arnold, 1976), p. 47. 58. 1984, p. 220. This shocking characterization of the sadism inherent to the philosophy of tyranny was

felt to be too exaggerated by Aldous Huxley, who, nonetheless, regarded the novel as “profoundly important.” Huxley thought it doubtful that the policy of the “boot-on-the-face’’ would go on indefinitely. “My own belief, he said in a letter to Orwell, “is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power and that these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World’’ (Grover Smith, ed., Letters of AIdous Huxley [New York: Harper & Row, 19691, pp. 604-605). It is worth adding here that Bentham’s obsession with economical efficiency stands in stark contrast to the “wasteful ways of governing” which Huxley criticized in 1984. In 1984, Orwell posited that any processes that fostered intellectual efficiency were inimical to the illusions which the government relied upon for its strength. Conse- quently, “Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police” (1984, p. 163). However, in the Panop- ticon, “Saving the regard due to life [and] health, . . . economy ought, in every point of management, to be the prevalent consideration. . . . Its absolute importance is great -its relative importance still greater. The very existence of the system . . . depends upon it . . . [and the best type of punishment prescribed by it en- tails] the imposing [of] some coercion [that is, additional labor] which shall produce profit, or the subtracting [of] some enjoyment [that is, food] which would require,expense” (Works, IV, pp. 123, 125).

1984, pp. 173-174. Although Bentham similarly described his prospective prisoners as being under perpetual scrutiny, with “every motion of the limbs, and every muscle of the face exposed to view . . . ” (Works, IV, p. 47), he would have protested that the object of his inspection principle was merely the prevention of misbehavior “ . . . [by] confining [inspection] to overt acts” (ibid., IV, p. 66); he would have submitted that the more penetrative Orwellian objective was “ . . . to pry into the secret recesses of the heart” (idem.). In- deed, in 1984 we read: “The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. . . . It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the worid, however secret and powerless it may be” (pp. 209-210).

59.

60. Ibid., p. 220. 61. Ibid., p. 28. 62. Ibid., p. 220. 63. William Steinhoff, The Road to 1984 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), p. 217. 64, As Steinhoff noted (ibid., p. 218), Orwell extended this view as well to the positive utopias in literature

insomuch as the tendency to regard human beings as objects, as material to be molded or transformed into some conceptualization of perfection was a common aim of their authors. Orwell parodied this objective in a famous line in 1984 (p. 201) stated by the torturer (O’Brien) to his victim (the novel’s hero, Winston Smith): “I shall save you, I shall make you perfect.” 65. Works, IV, pp. 121-122. 66. Ibid., I, p. 502. 67. See ibid., IV, pp. 122-125 for a more complete summary. 68. Ibid., IV, p. 63. 69. Ibid., I, p. 498. 70. Ibid., IV, p. 123. 71. A. Huxley, “Variations,” pp. 193-194. That Huxley may not have given these plans a very careful reading

is suggested by his casual reference to the Panopticon as “a totalitarian housing project.” (On the negligible influence of Bentham on nineteenth-century prison reform, see Robert A. Cooper, “Jeremy Bentham, Elizabeth Fry, and English Prison Reform,” Journal of the History of Ideas 42 [1981]: 675-690, and Bill Forsythe, “Prisons and Panopticons,” Social Policy & Administration 18 [1984]: 68-88.)

72. Margery Fry, “Bentham and English Penal Reform,” in Jeremy Bentham and the Law, ed. G . W. Keeton and G. Schwarzenberger (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970), p. 48. 73. Gertrude Himmelfarb, Victorian Minds (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), p. 58. 74. As Himmelfarb pointed out, these two points were not only the most striking feature of the plan but

also the decisive cause of its ultimate rejection by Parliament in 1811 (retracting its prior endorsement of

58 HARRY STRUB

1794). Yet Bentham insisted that they were as necessary to the success of the Panopticon as its architecture. According to Janet Semple, the Act did not condemn contract labor but simply focused on a new system

of management for a proposed penitentiary near London (J. Semple, “Bentham’s Haunted House,” The Ben- tham Newsletter 11 [1987]: 35-44).

75.

76. Works, IV, p. 48. 77. Also, there were to be no official government inspections but merely a regular publication of the prison’s

accounts. Bentham had planned for a spectator’s gallery (in the Panopticon’s tower) to replace the need for paid (corruptible or disinterested) government inspectors. He likely placed too much confidence in the idea that such casual, public, “gratuitous inspection” (ibid., IV, p. 79) would be sufficient to allay concerns of the entire prison degenerating into a tyranny (see Bahmueller, The National, p. 116). 78. However, by providing only the cheapest food of the least palatability, prisoners would be encouraged

to spend their meager earnings on better tasting supplements (to be sold by the contractor). Bentham reasoned that such unappetizing food for people who were accustomed to impoverished circumstances ‘’would be no punishment at all” and in no way different than for “the Hindoo to be forbidden roast-beef, and to be con- fined to rice” (Works, IV, 124x1).

Ibid., IV, p. 142. Health was defined as “being the mere negation of disease” (Ibid., VIII, p. 387). For the “rule of economy,” see again 5811. 79.

80. Ibid., X, p. 226. 81. Ibid., IV, p. 163. 82. Ibid., X, p. 256. 83. Ibid., I, p. 499. Bentham was able to rationalize all of the most oppressive features of the Panopticon.

Thus the continual labor would not be aversive because physical work would be alternated with sedentary work. The work would be “rendered more agreeable by being carried on in the company of [one’s cellmates]: it will be followed by immediate reward, and the individual being allowed a share of the profits, it will lose the character of servitude” (idem.). Regardless, he believed that “industry is a blessing: why paint it as a curse?” (ibid., IV, p. 144); and, further, “ . . . I know of no test of reformation so plain or so sure as the improved quantity and value of their work” (ibid., IV, p. 50). 84. Ibid., XI, p. 117. 85. See Himmelfarb, “The Haunted House,” pp. 67-6811. 86. Works, IV, p. 200. 87. It should be noted, however, that Bentham had for a long time railed against the power to pardon

since he believed the pr&tice to be too arbitrary as well as a source of corruption in the judicial process. It also degraded the deterrent value of a punishment. (See J. E. Crimmons, “Strictures on Paley’s Net: Capital Punishment and the Power to Pardon,” The Bentham Newsletter 11 [1987]: 23-34.)

88. Semple agrees that this “mockery of release” was abominable and indefensible. It is understandable, however, when seen as a substitute for the miseries associated with transportation to Australia. Even those who survived the voyage and served out their term might be forced to remain in bondage. (Semple, “Bentham’s Haunted House,” p. 37.) 89. Himmelfarb, quoting an anonymous M.P., “The Haunted House,” p. 67. 90. Works, VIII, pp. 369-439. Bentham frequently referred to “Panopticon in both its branches,” that is,

91. Bahmueller, The National, p. 115. 92. Himmelfarb, ‘The Haunted House,” pp. 74-7511. 93. Gertrude Himmelfarb, TheZdea of Poverty (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), p. 85. Himmelfarb’s

thesis of Bentham’s greater concern in his Panopticon writings with creating a power base for his personal financial aggrandizement than with the welfare of his prospective charges was further elaborated in “Ben- tham’s Utopia: The National Charity Company,” The Journal ofBritish Studies X, 1 (1970): 80-125. W. Bader suggested that Himmelfarb’s thesis, if not wrong, was insufficient. Bentham’s self-interest lay in benevolent acts which were motivated by approbation from others as well as the experience of the pleasure of the exer- cise of power (for the benefit of others). It was for the sake of others that he wished to remake society in a utilitarian image. Thus, not money but “philanthropy [was] the end and instrument of [my] ambition,” wrote Bentham (Works, XI, p. 72; see William C. Bader, Jr., “Jeremy Bentham: Businessman or ‘Philan- thropist’?” Albion 7 119751: 245-254). Bahmueller saw Bentham’s slimly veiled pretense of humility as a mask hiding his messianic ambitions as law-giver to the nations, his wish not only to rule men but to save them, and his “burning will to power” (The National, pp. 65-66). For a similar view, see W. Stark, “The Psychology of Social Messianism,” Social Research 25 (1958): 145-157. Stark also suggested that Bentham’s intense and genuine humanitarianism was compromised by his even more intense commitment to “a philosophy that was altogether inhuman, altogether cold and dead [in order] to be acknowledged as the ‘Newton of the social world’ [who might] redeem mankind with the aid of a formula” (pp. 152-153).

as prison and poorhouse (see Works, XI, p. 103).

THE THEORY OF PANOPTICAL CONTROL 59

94. Works, VIII, pp. 404-405. 95. Bahmueller, The National, pp. 154, 119. 96. Thus was “ . . . the gordian knot of the Poor-Laws not cut but untied . . . ” (Works, IV, p. 39). 97. Bentham retained a strong concern that the independent, working poor might find his poorhouse too

attractive. 98. Ibid., VIII, p. 398. With respect to the conversion of “dross” into “sterling,” Bentham wrote that he

had determined that “ . . . the pecuniary value of a child at its birth,-that value which at present is not merely equal 0, but equal to an oppressively large negative quantity [would be transformed under my system into] a positive quantity [of] no inconsiderable amount” (ibid., XI, pp. 103-104). That he could view the in- digent in terms something less than human is further suggested by his characterization of them as “that part of the national live stock which has no feathers to it and walks with two legs” (ibid., VIII, pp. 366-367). Similarly, in an unpublished manuscript cited by Bahmueller, Bentham wrote: “Call them cattle - suppose them treated on no better footing than cattle. I farm them. So long as I continue to farm them, they are at any rate my cattle” (The National, p. 114).

100. 101. Ibid., p. 2. 102. Ibid., p. 10. 103. Philip C. Zimbardo, “Mind Control: Political Fiction and Psychological Reality,” in On Nineteen Eighty- Four, ed. Peter Stansky (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1983), p. 207. 104. Himmelfarb, “Bentham’s Utopia,” pp. 124-125. 105. Douglas G. Long, Bentham on Liberty (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), pp. 186-187, 212. (See, also, Bahmueller, The National, chs. 6-7). 106. Unpublished manuscript cited by Bahmueller, ibid., p. 57. In reflecting on the social engineering pro- posed for the Panopticon, w. Bader remarked: “In its most favorable light the Panopticon is Huxley’s brave new world. In its least favorable, it is Orwell’s government by calculating and unprincipled thought control” (Bader, “Jeremy Bentham,” p. 250). 107. Long, Bentham, p. 212. 108. Unpublished manuscript cited by Long, ibid., p. 142. However, as Lea Campos Boralevi declared: “It is simply a mistake to look for humanity and pity in writings which were to serve as a technical guide for legislation, and had therefore to be based exclusively on [the broadest purvey of] utility.” (Bentham and the Oppressed [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 19841, p. 103.) 109. Bahmueller suggested that Bentham may actually have invented the word “rationalize” based on his translation of the French “raisonne” (The National, pp. 186-187). 110. Semple, “Bentham’s Haunted House,” p. 36. 11 1. Anthony O’Hear, “Imprisonment,” Philosophy 18 (1984 Supp.): 208. 112. Himmelfarb, “Bentham’s Utopia,” p. 112. 113. Long, Bentham, p. 214. (For the argument that Bentham envisioned the proposed National Charity Company as a state within a state, see Bahmueller, The National, pp. 122-128.) 114. Philip Mullock, “Logic and Liberty,” Philosophical Studies 35 (1979): 236. Bentham viewed as ”nonsense on stilts” (Works, 11, p. 501) the traditional definitions of liberty, human rights, and natural law as they were expounded, for example, in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1791), or the earlier American Declaration of Independence (1776). Since they were not derivable from positive law, they were inherently anarchical, for as he believed, “subjection, not independence, is the natural state of man” (ibid., I, p. 31 1). (See also Long, Bentham, for a penetrating discussion of Bentham’s views on liberty and individual rights.) 115. See Long, Bentham, p. 188. 116. See Constance I. Smith, “Bentham’s Second Rule,” Journal ofthe History ofldeas 3 1 (1970): 462-463. 117. Works, I, pp. 424, 430. 118. Ibid., XI, p. 96-97. 119. Ibid., XI, p. 103. 120. Ibid., X, p. 503. 121. Anthony Burgess, 1985 (Boston; Little, Brown, 1978), p. 48. 122. Ibid., IV, p. 66.

99. Works, VIII, pp. 418-419. Bahmueller, The National, p. 121. See pp. 10-11 and 208-209 for brief summaries of benefits.