Foucault on Panopticism and Progress

Technological advances may be taken as a means by which progress is attained, or at least that technology is a manifestation of such progress, and in either case this progress is assumed to be good. Roughly, the idea is that progress correlates to increase in knowledge, which allows for technological developments. Michel Foucault challenges this account of progress, and he does so in his Discipline and Punish by presenting an alternative view through the window of the Panopticon. For Foucault, the so-called progress found in human history does not so much reflect the summation of knowledge, but rather it reflects the amplification of power, and technology is a substantial means by which this is achieved.

The Panopticon is an architectural structure first proposed by Jeremy Bentham, consisting of a central tower encircled by blocks of cells. In each cell an inmate is isolated but fully visible, for on the inner wall of the circle, each cell has a window that faces the tower, and on the outer wall, another window allows light from the outside to illuminate the cell. Though the tower is very visible, it is never clear whether or not anyone is watching from the tower, so an inmate must act as if he or she is being observed at all times. Panopticism, says Foucault, inverts the principle of the dungeon exactly by assuring the visibility of the inmate. The dungeon was meant to cast a prisoner into the darkness to be unseen and forgotten, but the Panopticon does the opposite. The former represents one extreme of discipline, that of “the discipline-blockade,” and Panopticism itself is the other extreme, and it is closely bound with progress.

Nowhere is the relationship among progress, technology, and power better manifested than in the Panopticon. In fact, Foucault states that the Panopticon is “the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form”. The Panopticon is not in the least bit limited to architecture, but rather when the principles of Panopticism are severed from the spatial structure of the Panopticon, one should be left with the essentials of this mechanism of power. For this reason, Panopticism may be applied universally, wherever power is so manifest. Quoth Foucault, “it is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use”. Bentham had not stumbled upon a clever building at all, but rather an entire power structure; indeed, precisely the power structure that, for Foucault, was to be found in the world all too soon thereafter.

Foucault places the development of Panopticism in the context of history, and this history turns on the person of Napoleon, whose “character probably derives from the fact that it is at the point of junction of the monarchial, ritual exercise of sovereignty and the hierarchical, permanent exercise of indefinite discipline. The Napoleonic character is unique insofar as it at once embraces the spectacle in all the outward appearances of royal power surrounding the emperor and also effects the surveillance on which Panopticism depends, thereby “extinguish[ing] one by one” the elements of that former imperial pomp. With the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, the ancien régime as well as the European Enlightenment could be said to come to their end, and with their developments came also the end of the dungeon.

Foucault apparently divides his history, at least for the present purpose, into two distinct periods, the older defined by the “discipline-blockade” of the dungeon, and the current defined by Panopticism, with the shift occurring in the Enlightenment and as stated, being represented by the character of Napoleon. As stated, it was after Napoleon that the spectacle of power that had defined the old monarchies ceased to be. The spectacle refers essentially to the ideas inherent in Greek theatre or an ancient temple, which presented a few actors or relics to many spectators or worshipers. The Panopticon, rather, allows a few to observe many at once. Both are manifestations of power, but each is different, especially insofar as Panopticism is closely tied to progress.

The Panopticon at once strengthens power and facilitates progress, something the “discipline-blockade” could never achieve. To place personify power in an individual, such as the king, is to make a spectacle of it and to localize it. The Panopticon as ideal form pervades the mind of each member of the entire society, since its function as a machine of power is, in fact, to internalize that power structure within the individuals. This is the importance of surveillance to Panopticism. In Bentham’s design, this is the tower with its unseen and possibly present, possibly absent observers. The same goes for surveillance in the abstract. In a Panoptical power structure, each individual in the multitude understands his or her place possibly under surveillance, and each individual becomes the spectacle for some few to perhaps watch. The internalization of power that this produces is the instilment of discipline, “a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets; it is a ‘physics’ or an ‘anatomy’ of power, a technology”. Panopticism, by this technology of discipline, is able to “amplify” power, through which progress is accelerated. Technology and progress, then, are means of amplifying power.

Returning again to the historical angle, for after all, progress as we know it must range over history, Foucault posits three “historical processes” through which to explain “the formation of the disciplinary society.” These are the “economic, juridico-political, and…scientific”. Starting with the economic, Panopticism can be explained as being the mechanism that effects discipline on a populace—indeed, by the Enlightenment an increasingly large populace—over the greatest number and at the least cost. There is still another consideration beyond this, though, and that is progress, “to link this ‘economic’ growth of power with the output of the apparatuses…within which it is exercised”. The idea is, on the one hand, to ensure that the power structures are strengthened—that the individuals do not resist the structure—and on the other hand to strengthen the utility of each individual within the structure, hence progress for the structure. Such is the economic, and such is readily apparent in the rise of capitalist economies, in whose later assembly lines it became absolutely necessary for a few to have disciplinary control over the multitude of workers completing their appointed tasks on that line.

Of the juridico-political, Foucault argues that there is a separation between the laws and rights found in a given social structure and the disciplines by which the individual members of that society operate. Specifically, while the laws are established under egalitarian pretenses, the disciplines cannot be, since they derive from a power structure that is certainly not egalitarian. “The disciplines should be regarded as a sort of counter-law”, Foucault says. Of modern society, “its universally widespread panopticism enables it to operate, on the underside of the law, a machinery that is both immense and minute”. Hence disciplinary power derives from Panopticism, from the power to observe, and this alongside the law makes for the coexistence of supposed rights as well as the power structures of the Panopticon.

When it comes to science, Foucault emphasizes that Panopticism is itself a technological development, though it is not generally considered as such, and that like any technology, it may be used for the purposes of power. Of the former point, Foucault compares Panopticism to “the development at about the same time of many other technologies,” but that “It is regarded as not much more than a bizarre little utopia, a perverse dream—rather as though Bentham had been the Fourier of a police society”. Alas, Panopticism, as it has been seen, was a pervasive technology, and its institutional manifestations are many, ranging over the gamut from the narrow world of a prison to the broader domain of the state. For Foucault, this is the only means by which something like a modern army could be controlled—through the discipline instilled by this technology of the Panopticon. So the Panopticon is obviously a technology of subjection in Foucault’s view, but so too is any other technology, hence he notes that in a disciplinary society, “any mechanism of objectification could be used…as an instrument of subjection, and any growth of power could give rise…to possible branches of knowledge”. This link between knowledge and power, namely that growth in knowledge is directly linked to growth in power, is demonstrative of Foucault’s view of progress. Knowledge is a function of power, and from knowledge is technology and thence progress, thus progress is merely the growth of power.

Foucault has ventured far from any positive account of progress, and apparently away from any objective account of it, either. If progress is merely growth in power, and if technology is a means of internalizing power, even subtly, then it is very difficult to ascribe any special goodness to progress. In a disciplinary society operating in the structures of Panopticism, or at least so it is in the world of Foucault, one must be very wary of all technological advances, especially with regard to their uses and must take apparent progress with more than a little salt. After all, we cannot see into the tower, but we are wholly visible.

Romeo and Juliet and Representation

By representing William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in musical form, Hector Berlioz and Sergei Prokofiev confronted a problem that is necessarily common to all who attempt to convey one mode of expression through another, quite different one. It is the problem of translatability, the question of how the speech and other dramatics on the stage relate to the music. This is an especially piquant concern when the musical production is to be taken apart from the theatrics whence the music came. This supposed correspondence between the common subject of the works Berlioz and Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet, and the representations thereof provided by the aforementioned composers is central to the whole artistic enterprise. If music cannot be taken to represent non-musical, even non-auditory subjects, then all the history of Western music—perhaps all ballet—is littered with utterly meaningless analogies between musical works and their intended subjects, for the very intention of such a subject would be impossible. Beethoven’s “Pastorale” Symphony shall have to go right out alongside both attempts at Romeo and Juliet here considered. If, however, an account of this correspondence may be given, then perhaps music may coherently represent the non-musical, after all. Let Berlioz and Prokofiev stand before this test.

In any theatrical production, the element most closely linked to music is the verbal text, excluding the potential for music itself. The setting of texts to be sung has always been extremely important for Western music, from the earliest medieval chants to the leider of Schubert to the operas of Wagner. There are effectively two musical parts to this enterprise, which are approximately analogous to simple melody and accompaniment. There is, on the one hand, the musical line or lines actually appointed to present the text, and then there are usually other lines to augment this presentation. The deviations from this approximation are twofold. For one, the text itself need not be sung to be represented musically, as Berlioz and Prokofiev shall demonstrate. In addition, one need not directly represent the text at all, setting only the context alongside which it is uttered. That is, if a composer chooses not to take the lead of the text, it should be possible to simply accompany the scene, granted the possibility of the representation in question. Of course, it should also be perfectly possible—indeed, this is likely the most desirable option—to do both together in varying degrees, depending on the composer’s intention.

Berlioz makes the most avid use of text, and this can be said for the glaringly obvious reason that his score contains numerous scenes in which verbal texts are sung, providing a significant link to the dramatic source material. Interestingly, though, only a small bit of the text actually derives directly from Shakespeare’s characters, and none of it is given to Romeo and Juliet, whose parts Berlioz chose to represent instrumentally. The function of the sung text, then, is not what is to be expected from its traditional uses in, for example, opera. Rather than conveying the words of the characters, for Berlioz the text is appointed simply to bolster the real action that is taking place in the orchestra, hence his designation of Romeo and Juliet as a dramatic symphony, not an opera or anything else. This music is practically an inversion of expectation when it comes to representation. It is almost as if Berlioz means to say that verbal text is not enough to say what he wants his music to convey, that music can represent something beyond the text and yet is inextricably linked to it, for after all, departing from the story would disallow the music to be Romeo and Juliet. How can these things be?

Perhaps the purely instrumental representation found in the music of Prokofiev, whose choice to set the play as a ballet precluded somewhat the idea of song, can indicate something about this relationship that Berlioz boldly declared. Taking the music by itself, consider the movement in the first suite entitled “Romeo and Juliet,” which comprises the very famous balcony scene. Near the beginning of that movement, after what sound like a tip-toeing Romeo in the woodwinds, the strings begin to play in a very high pitch register; apparently to represent Juliet’s devoted musing about Romeo. This is followed by some short, menacing harmonies in the lower register, to indicate that Juliet has noticed the presence of another, namely Romeo, in the area, but Juliet does not know that it is he, and so this upper register theme interacts with the lower register, effectively paralleling the interaction that Juliet and Romeo exchange in the play itself. For Prokofiev, then, there is some literal representation taking place, namely the difference in voice registers, and there is also the possibility for a non-verbal strand of sound to convey something in a verbal communication.

Returning to previously mentioned case of Berlioz, then, the parallel should be amply apparent, and it shall be further amplified by Berlioz’s treatment of the same scene. Berlioz, according to Ian Kemp, represented nearly every line in the balcony scene as music, taking Prokofiev’s approach to the extreme. In general, after the singers enter and depart the score of Berlioz’s “Love Scene,” an interchange ensues between the upper and lower registers of the strings and woodwinds, formally very much like Prokofiev’s treatment in that sense, but stylistically entirely distinct. Where Prokofiev portrayed, for the most part, the events of the scene, Berlioz seems to try and present in the music the emotion behind each and every thing Romeo and Juliet say to one another. Romeo’s ascent to the balcony is not difficult to spot, though, with an ascending figure in the music, followed by Romeo and Juliet’s further interactions together on the balcony. In short, Berlioz went for a greater depth in his representation, while Prokofiev, writing a ballet, pursued representations more relevant to that medium, namely events. In a broad sense, then, the parallels can be drawn, in that passages in the music can be very well attributed to parts of the source text, some even to an extraordinary degree. It seems that a descriptive solution the problem of representation is at hand; that by example, clearly musical representation of non-musical text is possible.

Mentioned in the context of Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” were the “tip-toeing” woodwinds that open the movement. This designation is strengthened by the fact that they also end the movement, bookending a scene which, in Shakespeare, begins and ends with a sneaking Romeo. Thus the power of music to convey non-musical ideas apart from a text is seen. This example is interesting because it is relatively concrete—is is not an emotion or other such abstraction. It is the same idea as word painting in song, wherein the music to which a verbal text is set makes movements that imitate what the words say. If, for example, the text mentions ascent, one might expect an ascent in the melody or accompaniment. If the song mentions birds, perhaps a bird-like trill is to be found simultaneously someplace in the score. This case is different in that the text is not directly associated with the music that represents it. That is, the music is to be heard without it, as in accompaniment without melody—context. How then is the audience to appreciate this gesture if it does not know Romeo and Juliet?

This is the importance of the Prokofiev piece being a ballet. Not only does Prokofiev have music at his disposal, he also has dance, and no doubt any choreography should make use of such musical gestures as a tip-toeing Romeo in its visual representation of the plot. Importantly, between the music and dance in this case, a clear and scarcely deniable link can be established, this being between two different modes of expression, music and dance, though like music and verbal text, the two very often accompany one another. How is it, though, that Prokofiev’s notes should so strongly suggest that the dancer portraying Romeo tip-toe as part of his movement? The only possible answer is the mediation of Shakespeare’s text, which is the commonality between the two representations—it is what the two of them both, together represent, but which each could represent alone, as Prokofiev’s music frequently does. If the mediation of the play links these two modes of expression, could some mediator link the play and the music or the play and the dance?

It is not acceptable to use the dance to bond the play with the music or the music to bond the play with the dance, since the music and the dance proceed from the play, and the play proceeds from neither the music nor the dance. The mere claim that any two are Romeo and Juliet is not enough, either, since that comparison is only nominal and can be applied to any two things that have no commonality whatsoever. There must be an intentional representation of ideas between the representation and its source, and it must be understandable at some level to its intended audience. This, then, is the mediator: the audience, whether it is just the composer, just the composer’s friends, or all the world. It is a matter of intensionality—“aboutness.” It is up to the perceiver of the representation to attribute a musical line or a movement in dance to something that is to be found in Romeo and Juliet or whatever happens to be represented. When choreography is linked to Prokofiev’s music, then the link is made about Shakespeare’s play, to which both refer, necessitating agreement in referral. When Shakespeare’s words are bonded to the music, this is done about the listener, since the listener must consider, say, the tip-toeing woodwinds to be tip-toeing. This gesture is about the listener in that the listener is likely prone to make such a connection anyway—the musical gestures cater to common predispositions of the audience, so music shall to a point be about the audience.

On a more fundamental level, this is true of representations of abstractions, such as happiness, sadness, love, and so forth. The supposed minor-sad association is about the listener, which is not to comment on the ontological status of that association. Surely both Berlioz and Prokofiev are dependent on these sorts of associations. As it is, Berlioz portrayed Mercucio’s humorous and lewd remarks concerning Queen Mab as a scherzo, a musical “joke,” with much (but not complete) musical levity in the way of trills, pizzicati, a light and bouncy mostly major melody, and woodwinds that seem to laugh on occasion. Obviously he could not have written something akin to the Confutadis maledictis of Mozart’s Requiem, even if there were some kind of correspondence. It would not be about his audience because of the common stylistic and emotional associations. Just the same, Prokofiev could not have written his “Death of Juliet” in a way much resembling Berlioz’s Scherzo at all; rather, he wrote something slow and minor, with brooding, high pitched violins, a percussive jolt when Juliet seems to stab herself, and descending notes as she falls and dies. What else could a listener of Prokofiev expect? These associations allow for commonality between the listener and the subject that the music portrays.

Berlioz and Prokofiev both went to great lengths to associate their music with their source text, both depicting specific, concrete events and emotional content through music. In so doing, they demonstrate not only the commonalities demanded of all musical coherent representations of non-musical subjects, but also the different approaches composers are able to take in presenting their representations. As Berlioz attempted with much toil to convey the emotional content beyond the Shakespearean text, Prokofiev for the most part placed moods on the scenes of his ballet. Indeed, there is and must be much in the way of the expected in these musical works, but these must be unique to stand out not only against one another, but also against all the other musical depictions of Romeo and Juliet that have emerged over the years.

Humorism

Beloved,
be of balanced humors all.
Away, O blackest bile of the spleen,
and no more of this melancholic pall,
so spirits sound in harmony again.

Be sanguine,
be of beauty by the blood
(but e'en aghast, fair beauty does not fail).
Enliven, liver, let pure colors flood,
and let no leeching parasite avail.

Be happy,
be of blessed consonance,
and yellow gall begone of fulsomeness.
Ill-tempered tunes become exuberance,
for then no humor is replete or less.

Be balmy,
be of fit phlegmatic store,
and let the lungs be laden with fresh air,
but breathe enough and certainly no more
than thoughtful reason calls the nose to care.

Beloved,
pray the humors balanced be,
as are the spheres, to be in harmony.

Beltaine Again

Happy Beltaine, my friends! This, after all, is the single most important day of the year! Let the memory of last year suffice.

Let me also include this arbitrarily chosen picture of Ambrose Burnside from my hard drive: