Been Thinking About Foucault
Ascending Bookstacks #6 - Off-the-Cuff Musings About Panopticons and Omnipresence
I’ll admit it - I love reading Foucault.
(dodges hurled apple cores and half-eaten sandwiches)
For those unfamiliar and not sure whether they should throw refuse in protest, Michel Foucault was a French postmodernist philosopher known for his work on prisons, sexuality, and the power of discourses.
I’m writing a dissertation chapter this fall and, as one does, I returned to my notes on Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977). And it got me thinking about God and omnipresence.
Surveillance Prisons
In Discipline and Punish, Foucault famously analyzed the “panopticon” of Jeremy Bentham—a prison design that enabled a single prison guard to control numerous prisoners in wedge-like cells from a central point. It looked something like this:
Each prisoner would be “segmented, immobile, frozen [in] space,” and alone. Each prisoner knew that a warden likely occupied the central observation point. But no prisoner could tell, from a given cell, whether or not the guard was watching—or even there! Bentham, and later Foucault, theorized that wardens could exercise control if prisoners knew they might be surveilled at any moment.
Foucault explained it this way:
He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relations in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.
In plain English: if you know someone is watching you, you’re going to behave differently. If the person watching you is someone with the power to punish you—a prison guard or a manager—then you’re likely going to behave in a manner that avoids punishment. And if you can’t tell when you’re being watched, then it would be in your best interest to behave correctly all (or most) of the time because since you could always be seen. The warden exercises no physical power—the prison depends on its structure and story to make prisoners discipline their own behaviors.
Foucault’s analysis of the panopticon helps historians and other scholars think about other locations of surveillance-power. Schools, factories, offices, farm fields, and digital environments can all be analyzed as places where visibility and power are connected.
Panopticons and Faith
Ultimately, though, we’re talking about panopticons today because Foucault got me thinking about divine omnipresence.
I think we sometimes fall into imagining God as a tallying watchman—someone off-stage who tracks our behavior with granularity to make Google blush.
As Catholics, we indeed believe that God is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent (i.e. is everywhere, knows everything, and is all powerful). Therefore, someone could theoretically argue that creation is the ultimate panopticon. God watches all, has ultimate control, and we could be incentivized to act accordingly. I’m sure that Foucault himself may have argued the same, that Churches rendered people obedient before an ominously invisible divine. Maybe this is even the Christianity that some people practice—following rules out of fear.
But what happens to fear in a world where God died for us willingly? That God is love? That He gives us the free will to reject Him, but also to freely choose Him? That God desires us passionately and waits for us to respond to His invitation?
Rather than a disinterested watchman who makes light serve his own power, Christ says in the Gospel of John: “I have come as light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness” (John 12:46).
While the panopticon divides and isolates, the presence of God calls us out of ourselves and into communion with Himself and others. In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis wrote that, “at the very heart of the Gospel is life in community and engagement with others.”
While the panopticon controls, Saint Thomas Aquinas observes that “God’s mercy has willed that we should be free.” The presence of God is not a cause for regimented discipline but, instead, “good news of a great joy which will come to all the people” (Luke 2:10).
While the panopticon’s warden watches and punishes, Scripture speaks of a protective God who hears the prayers of the oppressed, rushes to serve mercy (Judges 3:15, Sirach 4:6, James 5:4, Luke 6:36), and yearns for his Church as a lover (Song of Songs).
While the panopticon wields power for the warden’s benefit, Christ’s self-sacrifice made every moment an opportunity to transform our lives in His presence.
Evangelization, then, is not a warning that an angry God watches you but, in Francis’ words, an invitation to encounter “the personal love of God who became man, who gave himself up for us, who is living and who offers us his salvation and friendship.”
I really like that.
And that vision of encounter changes what it means to believe, too. In Lumen Fidei, an encyclical written by Popes Benedict and Francis on faith, the popes write:
Believing means entrusting oneself to a merciful love which always accepts and pardons, which sustains and directs our lives, and which shows its power by its ability to make straight the crooked lines of our history. Faith consists in the willingness to let ourselves be constantly transformed and renewed by God’s call.
I’m going to try to meditate on that passage today. Am I constantly willing to be transformed and renewed? Am I willing to invite Christ to make straight the crooked lines of daily life? How can I entrust myself to His love in this moment?
Anyways. This deliberation from panopticons to divine presence is a great example of what I call (and maybe someone else first called?) the Foucault Problem. Read Discipline and Punish, and suddenly everything looks like a prison.
In C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle, part of the Chronicles of Narnia, a few characters are convinced they are imprisoned—even though, in reality, they’re in heaven! Sometimes, like them, we huddle in a mental corner and clench our eyes shut, convincing ourselves we can’t escape a given mood or habit or circumstance. Or perhaps we are so convinced that God has seen and judged our shortcomings that, well, the jig is up! Divine panopticon wins again.
But not everything is a prison.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Christ says: “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners” (Matthew 9:12-13). Christ did not enter the world to ensure that everyone was living in fear or that the sinner was punished. Creation is a blessing, not a panopticon. And God is no jailer.
That’s all for today. It’s a busy writing time on the dissertation front, and my mind is clearly thinking about prisons, so today’s post is a bit unconventional and short. If you haven’t read Foucault, though, I would definitely recommend (maybe with a good wine).
I’ll be back tomorrow with the link-drop!
Have a great day.