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Not surprisingly, panopticism renders a good deal of society powerless and incapable of resisting now codified power structures. As a social theory, it suggests that in order to maximize the power of punishment, prison's ought not adopt the "hiddenness" aspect of dungeon theory. Instead, prisoners (as well as patients and schoolchildren) should be subject to full lighting, which is contrary to the "ultimately protected" cover of darkness, in order that they may be trapped.
He posits that this formulation of discipline "assures the automatic functioning of power." In typical Foucault fashion, he sets up a dominant power structure that will be perpetuated throughout society and is nearly impossible to esacape. He writes, "the disciplines provide, at the base, a guarantee of the submission of forces and bodies." The forced submission is much more than mere subservience; the "disciplining" of subjects has less to do with discipline and much more to do with the forced conformity to some sort of social norm. And in his argument to the benefits of the seperation of society into natural categorizations (i.e. normal/abnormal) as opposed to complete isolationism, Foucault really seems to be arguing for a certain discipline that makes the "abnormal" normal and politely returns them to society.
I share in Jeremy Bentham's surprise at this mindless societal resignation to fate, "there were no more bars, no more chains, no more heavy locks; all that was needed was that the seperations should be clear and the openings well arranged." On a similar note, I am still a bit surprised at the frequency of Bentham's name in this paper; Bentham's work on utilitarianism seems a bit contrary at best and antithetical at worst to the ideas of Michel Foucault. With an understanding of how comprehensive Bentham's utilitarian calculus was, one that prevented the sacrifice of a few for the good of many, I can scarcely imagine his endorsment of an extension of his idea for an institution, the panopticon, to a theory on how society might be ordered to perpetuate oppressive power structures and force submission by citizens.
"He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake. he knows if you've been bad or good...by the phone calls that you make!"
Thomas Campanella's piece, Eden by Wire: Webcameras and the Telepresent Landscape explores the advancement of technology in making distances shorter, providing more immediate images with a "telepresence" of sorts, and in an increase of surveillance in various aspects of the public sphere. He first dotes upon the advent of the webcamera as something that made seeing beautiful sights possible to the average person. Consequently, this new technology seemed to have the ability to shrink distances. He explains that the invention of the locomotive and the rail transport lead to the adoption of a uniform time standard in the United States. He writes, "subsequent advances in transportation technology-fast steamers, the Suez Canal and eventually the airplane-osculated the great distances separating Europe, Asia, and America." He explains that the telegraph and wireless radios made long distance communication a lot more feasible, radically altering the lives of nearly every human on the planet.
He goes on to talk a bit about the phenomenon that is the world wide web, and discusses the role "telepresence" plays there. What he means with this term is much more than simply webcamera technology. He goes to on to explain what else it encompasses, using impossible to understand (albeit technical) terminology to advance his claims. He concludes by conceding that the inherent weaknesses of the webcamera technology are nearly mitigated by the fact that their popularity has broadened their network and, consequently, enabled generally effective communication and broadened knowledge base. He explains in the next section, "coffee pot to deep space" that the new technology made everything more accessible by the general public. People who were formerly helpless were able to benefit from the advances of technology while exerting very little extra effort.
The last section warns of the dangers of this surveillance technology as a potentially massive invasion of privacy, something analogous to a "Big Brother" situation. His warnings are timely considering the U.S. House of Representatives' disgustingly ironic decision on Thursday to call a "closed door session" to debate the newest surveillance legislation.
"The elegant male who is capable of killing is like the highly efficient secretary who takes off her glasses to reveal a passionate, gorgeous babe underneath: a species of tantalizing, sexy disguise." -page 198.
I was so compelled by the overall tone of this piece that I found myself reading and rereading, gaging the levels of sarcasm and cynicism and never once feeling sorry for the male. The text is, not surprisingly, drowning in overt feminism from the very beginning. Bordo notes, "Now that men are taking off their clothes, the culture is suddenly going too far. Could it be that the author doesn't even read all those naked female bodies as "overexposed"?" She goes on to describe (and, in fact, reproduce) several images of scantily clad males using such explicit detail I wondered if she set out to write a philosophical text or intended to provide the academic world with twenty five pages of erotica. Either way, several pages later, her rhetorical strategy becomes incredibly obvious: in her argument about the sexualization of the male body, she employs the exact same language and rhetorical devices used to describe the female body and the woman as a sexual entity. And this language, when used to describe the male body, makes people feel uncomfortable. When the distinction is made between the two distinct physiological responses the SAME LANGUAGE evoke, there is suddenly something counter-cultural about the ability of the public eye to freely linger on a man's naked, chiseled body. And so Calvin Klein took advantage of this dangerous new freedom and tapped into a formerly unsolicited market: the homosexual man. Bordo notes, "Kleins genius was that of a cultural Geiger counter; his own bisexuality enabled him to see that the phallic body, as much as any female figure, is an enduring sex object within Western culture."
And after turning out billions of dollars in profits, I have to wonder why no one had the guts (or business sense) to appeal to this market before (after all, it's about time the heterosexual male "man up" and admit that the gay man has a more finely tuned fashion sense than he). Bordo posits, "Throughout this century, gay photographers have created a rich, sensuous, and dramatic tradition which is unabashed in eroticizing the male body, male sensuousness, and male potency, including penises. But until recently, such representations have been kept largely in the closet." (I imagine the pun was intended; maybe not.) She goes on to trace the evolution of the male model industry, noting that the first provocative, male centered advertisements embodied a "highly masculine aesthetic." Is anyone else catching on to how pervasive the prevailing gender roles still are? Males are, for the first time, faced with the overwhelming insecurities women have dealt with since the creation of the "women's magazine" and they insist on maintaining their "masculinity" in the form of chiseled muscles and ripped shirts. Most would think that impossible; the sexualization of the male body leaves little room for the maintenance of masculinity. Yet, "masculinity" has endured, and advertising--although intentionally targeted at the gay male--pictures incredibly "straight looking" (whatever that means) men as to not limit the audience or turn off their consistent readership. It's brilliant, really. As surprising it is that a man was the brains behind this operation, it is equally as unsurprising that nothing has changed for the woman because of this "overexposure".
NOTE: This is a response to "Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body" by Susan Bordo. I am certain those two paragraphs made little sense to someone who isn't familiar with the said text. It's also important to note that such a short response scarcely does justice to the highly intelligent (albeit a bit sardonic) text to which this post is responding. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the idea of gender & sexuality, specifically the social construction of the former and the perception of femininity associated with the latter.
See excerpts here.
I initially created this blog for my English 102 class, and our first assignment is due at midnight tonight. It's going to destroy the ambiance of my blog, but it seems to be necessary for passing the course.
This is played out in our lives in a number of different ways, but I want to look particularly at the "choice of subject" by the American Christian. In a survey of self-proclaimed "Non-Christians"-be they atheist, agnostic, or subscribers to an entirely different religion- a mere 3% of perceive Christians as "different from themselves" or "good". That minuscule percentage has devastating implications for the Christian, namely that we are claiming to follow a God who sets us apart and makes us new, while, simultaneously living lives that look exactly like the rest of the world. The every day Christian is not choosing a different subject than the average Atheist; our conversations are largely insignificant, our actions look similarly selfish, and our attitudes reflect the same impatience. And all this sameness distorts the picture that the outsider is getting; she lacks the ability to perceive and appreciate the image because of the limitations on her own empirically based thought processes. That is to say--the non-Christian is unable to conceptualize the Biblical Christian because so few of us are actually projecting that image.
Berger goes on to note that, prior to the invention of the camera, "what you saw depended upon where you were when." (142). Dustin Willis' sermon on the perception of Christians [the outside resource], suggested that, perhaps, it is our inability to consciously choose a subject that is so daring, so bold, and so counter-cultural that we are presenting a picture of Christ that is similar to those brief glimpses of landscapes the world caught prior to the existence of a camera. An outsider could observe that we're "nice" people who try not to cuss and seem to worship something bigger than ourselves if she were to step inside the doors of our churches. But when she steps outside and sees those same people living lives that are contrary to the desires of that same King, she cannot take that original picture with her. Because what she sees in Christians depends on where she sees them.
And then there is this perception of the "mission" of Jesus and it is confused, a lot of the time, with the "American dream". It seems that the world has impressed upon us that our "mission" in life should be to get more money, be in charge of more people, and, ultimately, own a really big yacht. But that does not seem at all compatible with the way Jesus has called his followers to live. And so there begins to emerge this sort of Christian "sub-culture", as Jon Ludavina puts it, where the goal is to go to church every Sunday, to go on mission trips every once in a while, and to smile at people a lot. And neither lifestyle is going to satisfy, and both are antithetical to the life Jesus lived on earth. We see Him entering a hurting world and taking that hurt and brokenness onto Himself, asking His followers to follow Him with their whole lives and to help others follow Him. If Christians started living that way, living like our hearts and our souls are being put back together, maybe "Christian" could mean something different in 2020 than it does today. Because the world will have seen the way people who claim to be redeemed actually live in response to that redemption. And because they've experienced the love radiating from them.
Back at the russell house at about 6:30, the Gamecocks for Barack volunteer team was huge and energized. Come to find out, CNN had been running a countdown timer until the polls closed at seven.
So we went absolutely CRAZY, right there in the middle of the grand market place. Everyone ran outside screaming and jumping up and down, and we proceeded to tell everyone that cared (or didn't care) that Barack Obama had just won South Carolina. All this at, like, 7:03.
Then, we hit up the victory party/speech/awesomeness and it was so incredible. There were thousands of people at the convention center, screaming every time CNN put up another poll he won (i.e. best platform: change). We cheered every time a new precinct reported, and watched his margin of victory get bigger and bigger.
This great band was getting the crowd pumped up and the crowd would sporadically start cheering "YES WE CAN" and "RACE DOESN'T MATTER" (every time the news said something about the white vote, the black vote..) and "O-BA-MA" and "FIRED UP? READY TO GO" (read here: Hakeem and I started that a time or two :D). Then a guy comes on stage with a sign that says "hope" and a sign that says "change" and the two sections of bleachers went back and forth yelling "hope" or "change" depending on their section. Then he comes out with a sign that says "SPEECH IN FIVE MINUTES". The crowd went crazy. :)
My new favorite group of people, which should henceforth be known as the slammin' six, went to dinner with Derek and Amin, our favorite out of state volunteers. We convinced the waitress to change the channel to CNN and had this guy who looked like he was about 16 come up to us to ask for a reason he should vote for Obama that affects HIM. George told him about the $4,000 tax credit he will get for college, I told him he could stay on his parents insurance until he was 25, and Mitch said, "..well, you won't have to go to Iraq because he is getting us out." Cheers erupted and they smiled and walked off.
It was such a freaking awesome night, and it ended with the slammin' six deciding to go to Georgia next weekend to GOTV with nicole. All this hinges on our ability to get George's mom's fresh mini van for the weekend :) We said our goodbyes to the out of staters, and came back to crash. and we've just woken up.
"Hi, Kathryn. My name is Aura Siegel and I'm calling because President Clinton gave the proposal on Darfur to his wife and she signed it today. I can leave it for you in the Hilton if you want to come get it. Just give me a call back. Thanks a lot."
I called her back. and went to the Hilton to pick it up. I just walked up to the desk and said, "Hi, Senator Clinton left something for me at the desk? My name is Kathryn Witzke."
Props to Bill Clinton for telling her all about it.
..and that's the text i received at 10:30pm tonight from my dog hans. and so we dropped everything we were doing and ran to starbucks to meet (former) President Bill Clinton.
Somehow, I ended up standing on a chair in the very middle of the room. Strategically, that put me right in Bill's line of vision. and so i went for it. wearing my giant orange "i vote for darfur" button (and my semi-subtle obama pin), i raised my hand to ask the former president of the United States a question.
I ended up saying something along these lines--"After the Rwanda genocide that happened during your administration, there was a lot of talk about never letting something atrocious like what happened in Rwanda happen again. Now, the same thing is happening again in Darfur. But Senator Obama is the only one who has signed the resolution that the Darfur Action Committee has been asking every candidate to sign for the past six months. Why hasn't Hillary signed it and what will she do about Darfur if she is president?"
He was a little taken aback, to be honest. He apologized to the crowd for not knowing anything about the said resolution and begrudgingly explained that he had no idea why his wife had not signed. He went on to talk for a brief second about her policies towards Sudan, claiming that she was the first democrat to call Darfur a genocide. (WRONG: That was Russ Feingold. Two thumbs up for him.) He proceeded to talk about all the great things he did in terms of foreign policy when he was president. He noted that he was "embarrassed" that he had not heard of the resolution and moved on to the next question.
A little later (it was moving in on midnight here), we decided to leave. Bill noticed I left and said "can you get me a copy of that resolution?" the crowd turned to look at me, and I ended up saying (TO BILL CLINTON!) in my most calm and collected voice, "okay, I'll get you one soon."
Long story short, we went and printed it. And I wrote Bill Clinton a letter. And we went back to give it to him (not without first speaking on the phone to Barack's Iowa policy advisor, Karen Richardson).
Mid conversation with me, I think he began to notice that everyone around him was wearing a bright orange button. He told us about an organization that someone had started in Texas to help with world hunger and explained different aspects of his foreign policy that benefited African countries, noting that currently, neither the U.S. or the AU have enough troops to end this genocide that is occuring in Darfur. We took a bunch of pictures, and he wanted to talk to Matt too, because he had asked what exactly the former president meant when he called Barack Obama's candidacy a "fairytale".
best night ever.
and to think that this week is only going to get better...
welcome to my life.
In order to preface this post, so as to not dissapoint or lose your interest, I find it important to note that: over the past several months (and even more over the next three days), my life revolves completely around Senator Barack Obama (D-Il.) So, welcome to my politically saturated life.
Yesterday, I introduced Michelle Obama to a crowd in a russell house ballroom that quickly became a "standing room only" event. I got to hang out with Auma Obama, Barack's sister from Kenya, while waiting to talk to Michelle for a while after the event. Did i mention that when I welcomed her to our school she rememembered having met me before? Consider it mentioned.
Over the past few weeks, I've gotten to spend time with Kerry Washington, Chris Tucker, Tatyana Ali, Kal Penn, and Samantha Power. I became best friends with Chris Hughes and talked to Michael Cera on the phone for a little bit. No big thing.
i really loathe Mark Sanford, John Edwards, and Mike Huckabee. i don't even want to link to their websites. and THAT is how i feel about that. Governor Romney is on the steady decline with his remarkably unoriginal campaign slogan of "change". cheers, mitt.
Michelle Obama is the most well spoken, articulate, incredible woman I have ever had the opportunity to see speak or speak to. I want to be her as of, oh, yesterday. what a life goal.
Speaking of women, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in one of her finer moments, said-- "Well, yes. I did vote for [that bill]. But I really hoped it would fail."
bloody brilliant.
