“The Panopticon presents a cruel, ingenious cage…for almost 200 years…[it] must be understood as a dream building…it serves to reform prisoners, to treat patients, to instruct schoolchildren, to confine the insane, to supervise workers, to put beggars and idlers to work. It is a location of bodies in space…”

“The Panopticon…has a role in amplification…it arranges power…to make it more economic and more effective…its aim is to strengthen social forces—to increase production, to develop the economy, spread education, raise the level of public morality, to increase and multiply.”

“The practice of placing individuals under ‘observation’ is a natural extension of a justice imbued with disciplinary methods and examination procedures…Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?”

Final thoughts:

What does it mean to be human?Are the humanities (really) humane?