Summary

Foucault begins “Panopticism” with, once again, two contrasting images that encapsulate two different ways of exercising power: the first is of a town that has been wrought by the plague, and the second is a leper colony. The town with the plague attempts to inhibit spread of the disease through strict partitioning; people are divided into groups under the authority of a government official, who keeps them under watch. These segmented people are subjected to inspection and observation, not only through surveillance but also through records that detail who has been infected among the groups. Foucault writes that “the plague of met by [the] order” of modern disciplinary mechanisms (197). In contrast, people in leper colonies were separated and excluded in a “mass,” rather than being partitioned into groups. Foucault concludes that the plague town was marked by orderly confinement and knowledge gathering, while...