Gaze of power

From Geography

Revision as of 16:15, 9 October 2011

This is the basis of disciplinary practices where the individual actors observe their own behaviour. It requires power and surveillance. An inspecting gaze which each individual under its weight will end by interiorizing to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercising this surveillance over, and against, himself. A superb formula: power exercised continuously and for what turns out to be minimal cost. (Foucault 1980:155) Michel Foucault [1], who linked knowledge with power, related the 'inspecting gaze' to power. An example of the ‘gaze of power’is the Panopticon [2].

Published by Bernard Jansen & Sonny Joziasse