A dear friend of mine, Michael Tyler, is an outstanding photographer and an all around creative and free-thinking man. He's been writing stories for as long as I've known him (a long time), and he's made a lot of them into full-length indie films that he directed. About a year ago, he sent me a story called Post Everest.
The basis of the plot is a world in which governments, agencies, businesses, and citizens were made completely transparent. They were recorded, videotaped, and broadcasted. People were even recorded in the bathroom. No place was private. It's not that someone was watching them at all times, but rather that someone could be watching them at all times. The result was nuclear disarmament and peace.
Michel Foucault, in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, argues that this type of "disciplinary mechanism" is not so far fetched. In fact, it's already instituted in post 1800 society, just not for governments. The goal of the transparency of individuals is already functioning to a large extent in the modern/post-modern world.
Ok, don't write me off as a conspiracy theorist and check out another website just yet. I am not saying that we are being videotaped and recorded right now. Just take Jeremy Bentham's idea for a Panopticon - a circular building with a tower in the center. The building is divided into cells in which one isolated person would dwell (this person could be a prisoner in the case of a prison, a student in the case of a school, a worked in the case of a factory, etc.). The isolated subject could not see their neighbor. They could only see the tower in the center. The tower would be the place where the guards/teachers/supervisors/etc. would sit. Through the use of backlighting, they could see into each cell perfectly well while the inhabitant of each cell could not see inside the tower - they could not see if anyone was really in it or not.
Foucault writes, "By the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery. They are like so many cages, so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible" (200).
Bentham never built the thing, but he wanted to, and he came close. Despite the fact that it was never constructed, it still represents real power relations and existing theories of social manipulation. Foucault writes, "the Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: it is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form; its functioning, abstracted from any obstacle, resistance or friction, must be represented as a pure architectural and optical system: it is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use" (205).
Foucault's work illuminates a mechanism of power unique to the 1800s and beyond (still in effect today). This is a power that maintains control through the excessive individuation of subjects. Mechanisms of power today test us, rank us, seek to cure us, aim to normalize us, try to discipline us each, individually. Michael's book is inspired by WikiLeaks, which adds an interesting twist to the modern world. WikiLeaks founder, and Michael in his book, ask, what if this "technology of control" and this "apparatus of knowledge" that individualizes each subject and makes him/her transparent was placed in the hands of "the people" themselves? What if the soldier looking at us from the tower in the world Panopticon was exposed and people, living in cells in the periphery, watched him on the internet? Would the world finally stop blowing itself up? Would justice ensue - the same justice that already binds the individual subjects in the modern world?
This is the vision of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Leaders must be as transparent as their citizens. So long as they are not, a citizen's votes are not made with full knowledge and democracy does not work. WikiLeaks, of course, flooded the media with the greatest leak of confidential information ever, exposing the internal memos of ambassadors and military leaders. The US panicked - the veil they looked out from was lifted. Citizens briefly saw them.
Taking from Foucault, it seems Assange wants to take modern means and methods for creating a disciplined and obedient population to its logical conclusion: applying those same means and methods to create a disciplined and obedient group of world leaders. Michael's book explored the possibility that, if there were no closed door meetings, no classified memos, no anonymous super pacs, no top secret missions, etc. that the result would be a peaceful world.
The idea is totally intriguing. This type of transparency already exists for the masses, just not the leaders. Note Foucault's study: As power became less centralized in monarchies, reforms to the law ensued. From punishment as excessive example (the scaffold, the public torture, the public confessions) came punishment as regulated, involving time limits, and as increasingly private (punishment happens now behind walls). At the same time, punishment became increasingly common. Crimes and their corresponding punishments proliferated and came to increasingly involve violations or private property (as opposed to pre-modern crimes which were most commonly violations of rights). At the same time, punishments were focused less and less on the crime and more and more on the subject. Punishments were less about adequately responding to the injustice done and more about healing an evil tendency in the criminal. Pleads of insanity ensued. Criminals started serving time in mental hospitals instead of prisons. Timeframes for sentences were justified by scientific research - how long until the criminal is ready to return to society healed, ready to remain peaceful?
As you would expect, studies on individuals become more and more detailed. Research identifies "normal" behavior - goals for normalcy are identified, school children are monitored and ranked. They are individualized and scrutinized.
In the end, we have a radically individualized way of perceiving society that thrives as a result of each individual's discipline and obedience. A high level of transparency, as a mechanism for ascribing power relationships, can be attributed to such disciplined, obedient masses. Even Occupy Wall Street is obedient - protestors seek city permits and permissions, facilitate (usually) efficient vacancies, refuse to react violently even as they're systematically and methodically pepper-sprayed or imprisoned. These docile, obedient bodies are perceived as heroes (and I won't say they aren't brave - they are far more brave then me!). The perceived heroism of remaining docile even in the face of violence is part of a whole apparatus of power that pervades modern society.
So, what of Michael's idea? What if the degree of individualization and transparency no longer eluded the highest echelons of power? So the person providing the order to pepper spray the masses was watched and recorded and understood by the masses... Would that person, like the occupiers, become more manageable? Would the same levels of obedience and discipline apply to exposed leaders no longer able to close a door or stamp a document 'classified'?
I will follow up on this with a book review of "WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy" by David Leigh and Luke Harding of The Guardian. After reading Michael's book, I realized I knew very little about WikiLeaks and the greatest leak of classified information in history. So, when I saw the book on sale at Powell's, I grabbed it. I'm so glad I did (just as I'm glad I was able to read Michael's awesome work!).
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House, 1995.
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