Foucault: Panopticism

In re-reading Foucault's Panopticism, I was reminded of the dystopian society depicted in Orwell's 1984. In 1984, totalitarianism has all but eliminated people's individuality and privacy. They are constantly being watched by Big Brother. Even their thoughts are controlled. In Foucault's prison, Big Brother is replaced by an invisible presence: prisoners are constantly watched by an unseen judge, a punishing and omnipresent God, who knows one's every move. Foucault describes how "the vast mechanism [of incarceration] established a slow, continuous, imperceptible gradation that made it possible to pass naturally from disorder to offence and back from a transgression of the law to a slight departure from a rule, an average, a demand, a norm" (p. 307). Is prison a place created to protect society from violent criminals or is its real purpose to silence anyone who deviates from a norm, a rule, established and enforced by the power elite?

Another totalitarian image that comes to mind from our semester readings/viewings is the swaying, automaton-like workers in Metropolis, stripped of individuality, watched constantly. They inhabit a hellish world created solely for the profit of the elite who reside high up above their world.

All of the above authors--from Orwell to Foucault--were writing before the advent of the Internet. While the Internet opens up new lines of communication, it also is subject to hacking, cybercrime, and identity theft. At a seminar about promoting the arts on the internet, a prominent PR person boasted that soon his company would be able to track every website visited and purchase made by consumers. For a monthly fee, even a modest-sized company could find out the habits and preferences of potential consumers. If small nonprofit organizations have access to this kind of information, imagine what corporate giants can do! Do we know what information is being gathered, stored and disseminated to government agencies and employers about us? And how do we address this invasion of our privacy, other than by avoiding the Internet?

Mythologies April 9, 2008

Mythologies

In Myth Today, Barthes describes myth as a type of speech chosen by history; it is a system of communication that cannot possibly evolve from the nature of things (p. 109). The elements of its form are related to place and proximity (p. 122). Myth belongs to the province of semiology; it is defined not by the object of its message but by the way in which it utters this message (p. 111). Semiology postulates a relation between two items—a signifier (image) and a signified (concept). The third item, the sign, is the associative total of the other two items.

Barthes compares the trilogy of semiology to that of Freud’s theory of dreams: a dream, to Freud, is the functional union of manifest meaning (signifier) and latent meaning (signified). In Freud’s New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1933), he states:

What has been called the dream we shall describe as the text of the dream or the manifest dream, and what we are looking for, what we suspect, so to say, of lying behind the dream, we shall describe as the latent dream thoughts. Having done this, we can express our two tasks as follows: We have to transform the manifest dream into the latent one, and to explain how, in the dreamer’s mind, the latter has become the former [p. 8-9].

We ask the dreamer to free himself from the impression of the manifest dreams, to divert his attention from the dream as a whole on to the separate portions of its content and to report to us …what associations present themselves to him if he focuses on each of them separately [pp. 9-10].

Freud goes on to state that associations are not the same as latent meaning. To discover the latent meaning, one has to uncover the fixed meaning of symbols within the dream. Likewise, Barthes speaks about the meanings we attach to certain symbols. For example, the image of a Black soldier saluting the French flag on the cover of Paris Match symbolizes the greatness of France as an empire where all men serve faithfully regardless of their race (p. 116).

According to Freud, in a dream, as in the formation of a neurotic symptom, there is a compromise between the unconscious wish and the prohibition of the unacceptable wish. The dream work creates a situation where the unacceptable wish gets expressed but in a disguised form. Behind every manifest content there is a latent content. Thus, the manifest content is always in the service of a defense against the underlying wish or affect. For example, a man develops paralysis of his arm without any physical evidence for it. Investigation reveals that the man intended to hurt someone. The paralysis is the compromise formation. The paralyzed arm shows the wish and the restraint.

Barthes notes that in mythology, unlike in psychoanalysis, signifier and signified are both manifest; one is not hidden behind the other. Myth hides nothing; there is no need of an unconscious to explain myth (p. 122). Barthes states that the function of myth is to distort: “Just as for Freud the manifest meaning of behavior is distorted by its latent meaning, in myth the meaning is distorted by the concept” (p. 122).

The myth is a double system—“a language-object and a metalanguage, a purely signifying and a purely imagining consciousness” [p. 123]. In myths there are two semiological systems, one embedded in the other. The system of language, or myth as a language-object, results in a sign, which serves as the signifier for the system of myth. (See p. 115.) The signifier can be looked at two ways, as (1) the final term of the linguistic (language) system, and (2) the first term of the mythical system. On the plane of language, Barthes calls the signifier “meaning”; on the plane of myth, he calls it “form.” Signifed means “concept” in both systems. In the mythological system, the “sign” or “signification” has two functions: to point out and notify us, and to make us understand something by imposing it on us.

Barthes states that, in myth, meaning and form coexist but will never be at the same place. He compares this situation to looking out a car window at the passing landscape. The viewer can focus either on the window or on the passing scenery, never on both at the same time. “At one moment I grasp the presence of the glass and the distance of the landscape; at another, on the contrary, the transparence of the glass and the depth of the landscape; but the result of this alternation is constant: the glass is at once empty and present to me, and the landscape unreal and full” (pp. 123-124). It is this constant game of hide-and-seek between the meaning and the form which define myth (p. 118).

Habermas and Papacharissi

Habermas described what he saw as the "refeudalization" of the public sphere. He noted that there was an "interweaving of the public and private realm [in which] political authorities assume certain functions in the sphere of commodity exchange and social labor, [and] social powers now assume political functions...Large organizations strive for political compromises with the state and with each other, excluding the public sphere whenever possible" (p. 354). This comment is reminiscent of Mills' views on our democratic system as "weakened," with power wielded by "the military capitalism of private corporations." Mills noted that "Not only their money, but their friends, their interests, their training...are deeply involved with ...this corporate world" (p. 276).

Habermas wrote his book in 1974, before the advent of the internet. Papacharissi, writing 28 years later in the digital age, noted that "the power of our political system is negated by the influence of special interests, and generally by a growing dependency on a capitalist mentality" (p. 387). In her view, corporations have co-opted the internet as another source of profit making: "For a vast majority of corporations the internet is viewed as another mass entertainment; its widespread and cheap access being a small, but not insurmountable obstacle to profit making." Further, "Advertising revenue has more impact on programming than democratic ideals" (p. 386).

Papacharissi also questions whether we ever had the kind of idealized democratic society Dewey envisioned: "It is ironic that this pinnacle of democracy was rather undemocratic in its structure throughout the centuries, by not including women or people from lower social classes, a point acknowledged by Habermas himself" (p. 380). On a more positive note, she points out that the internet reflects the multiple public spheres that exist in contemporary America, reflecting our collective identities and interests. While not every household in our country has internet use, schools and libraries make the internet universally accessible to those with at least some education (children are introduced to the internet in elementary school). On a global scale, however, with only an estimated 6% of the world's population having internet access, the internet remains the purview of the privileged elite.

Papacharissi questions the quality of the information being transmitted on the internet: "Access to more information does not necessarily create more informed citizens, or lead to greater political activity" (p. 384). In fact, she shares Lanier's views that "Often, online communication is about venting emotion and expressing what Abramson et al. (1988) refer to as 'hasty opinions', rather than rational and focused discourse" (p. 385).

Despite the caveats mentioned above, Papacharissi believes that the internet "does possess the potential to change how we conceive ourselves, the political system, and the world surrounding us" (p. 388). She is hopeful that "groups of netizens brought together by common interests will debate and perhaps strive for the attainment of cultural goals." She concludes that the internet 's virtual sphere is currently "is a vision, not yet a reality" for effecting political and social change.