Second Vermont Republic

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There are nearly 7 million adults either in prison or on probation or parole in the United States. We have the largest prison population and the highest rate of incarceration in the world. With 2.3 million prisoners, the United States is far ahead of countries like China and Russia, whose combined populations are five times our own. One out of every 31 American adults is under correctional supervision.

Suppose you were convicted of a major criminal offense and were given a long-term prison sentence. Suppose further that you have been incarcerated in the State’s penitentiary which is a prototype of the octagonally designed panopticon prison invented by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham two hundred years ago. Such a prison is the Wisconsin Supermax located near Boscobel.

The outer ring of the prison is subdivided into separate individual cells, each of which is extended from the exterior of the octagonal ring to the inner ring which faces the prison yard and the central control tower. Each cell has an exterior window and an interior window which opens onto the prison yard. The two windows allow light to pass from one side of the cell to the other making it easy for the prison supervisor in the tower to view prisoners at all times. Although the prisoners can see other prisoners in their cells across the prison yard, they cannot see or communicate with their closest neighbors in adjacent or nearby cells. This enables prisoners to monitor most of the other prisoners and eventually internalize the surveillance mechanism embedded in the structure. Over time they learn to monitor themselves. The panopticon is virtually escape proof.

Bentham envisaged his invention not only as a powerful tool of prison management, but as being equally applicable to a wide range of institutions including hospitals, schools, factories, and military bases.

A modern-day version of the panopticon can be found in an increasing number of public schools around the country whose administrators are concerned about the risk of student-led violence and the threat of terrorism. Surveillance cameras are being installed in hundreds of schools to monitor classroom behavior. For example, before Hurricane Katrina, every classroom in the entire Biloxi, Mississippi public school system had a surveillance camera linked directly to the school superintendent’s office. Not only is such a surveillance system unlikely to prevent violence, but it represents a highly intrusive invasion of classroom privacy and a serious threat to the freedom of speech of both students and teachers. At the height of Soviet Communism, there were no such devices in Soviet classrooms. Our paranoid fear of terrorism seems to be motivating us to replicate in an American setting the kinds of big brotherism previously associated only with Communism.

With its emphasis on manipulation, power, and control, the panopticon is a metaphor for America - - a culture in which ostensibly free individuals allow the Fortune 500, Wall Street, and the U.S. government to manipulate their lives through the effective use of money, markets, media, technology, laws, and political power. In today’s world, what we have is not just a handful of isolated prisons and hospitals organized as panopticons, but rather a global network of interconnected panopticons consisting of international banks, transnational megacorporations, telecommunications networks, media, governments, and computers. With its foreign policy grounded in the doctrine of full spectrum dominance, has the U.S. government not become a truly global panopticon?

For any panopticon to be effective as a human control mechanism – whether it be a prison or not – requires that four highly interdependent conditions be met – separation, meaninglessness, powerlessness, and fear of punishment or death.

First, and foremost, in a prison individuals are separated from each other by the walls of their prison cells. As a result of their isolation and lack of human connectedness they may soon find themselves separated not only from each other, but from themselves and the very ground of their being. Second, although psychiatrist Victor Frankl developed a theory of meaning inside his prison cell at Auschwitz during World War II, most people find that extended periods of imposed isolation give rise to feelings of meaninglessness. As nihilism sets in, life loses its purpose and soon becomes absurd. Third, by virtue of your confinement you have been rendered nearly powerless. Fourth, although most fear the uncertainty of death and the possibility of nothingness, one can imagine that the fear of being punished and dying alone in a prison cell in the hands of the prison warden would be more than most souls can bear.

While separation, meaninglessness, and fear of punishment and death engender feelings of complete powerlessness among prisoners in a panopticon, these same feelings help empower the prison supervisor making his job of manipulation and control much easier than might otherwise be the case.

Before continuing, stop and ask yourself the following questions about life in a panoptic prison cell. How would you cope with the separation, alienation, and the powerlessness of prison life? Could you survive? What would you do? Could you find meaning there? How would you spend your time? What, if anything, would make life worthwhile? Is it possible to have a meaningful life without any human connectedness? What would prevent you from going mad? Would you rule out suicide? How might you rebél?

These questions are no different from the questions raised by life in dozens of other highly controlling institutions including hospitals, schools, factories, churches, military organizations, government, and the Internet.

Have we not imprisoned ourselves in our very own panopticon by embracing the culture of technofascism? Do we really have any other choice than to rebél against the global panopticon, the American Empire?

Rebél

Thomas H. Naylor

March 1, 2008