ABSTRACT
The arrangement of Michael Foucault room, opposite the central tower, imposes on him an axial visibility; but the divisions of the ring, those separated cells, imply a lateral invisibility. And this invisibility is a guarantee of order’. Foucault further explains: Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. The inspector who unexpectedly arrives, as Foucault writes, at the center of this Panopticon will be able at a glance to observe how the establishment is functioning. In this sense, the Panopticon must be understood as a generalizable machine of functioning; a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday life of men. The inspector can, like any other God, leave the panopticon; its machine will run smoothly without him. What is staged in the panopticon, therefore, is ‘the all-seeing gaze itself.
