ABSTRACT
This chapter constructs a conceptual dialogue between Han Fei’s Legalism and Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, between a Chinese and a European rationalization and centralization of state power. While dynastic Beijing as a Chinese capital is studied and a spatial machine of control is analyzed as a Legalist practice, the Panopticon – following Michel Foucault – is studied for internal spatial mechanism and historical importance in forming a modern disciplinary state and society in the west. This chapter investigates these two developments for similarities in an internal political and spatial logic, but also reflects upon differences and important diversions of the two political traditions.
