Foucault, Pre Class 4/15/10

I seemed rather comfortable with this reading. Foucault wrote part of the reading, Discipline and Punishment, like a narrative which made it easier for me to understand. Foucault talks about how “Visibility is a trp.” Whether it be during the time of the plague or the Panopticon being able to be viewed makes on vulnerable and gives power to the viewer. Rulers would have much power over their subjects if the viewer knew he could be viewed at all times but did not know when he was being viewed. When Foucault wrote this in the 1970’s he believed, “In a society in which the principal elements are no longer the community and public life, but, on the one hand, private individuals and, on the other, the state, relations can be regulated only in a form that is the exact reverse of the spectacle.”During the 1970’s this may have been true but in the more recent past the internet has brought the public sphere back into the lives of many members of society. Social networking sites such as Facebook are in a sense a virtual form of the public sphere. People can view each other’s virtual selves in the form of a “profile” and have discussions with each other. One again people are making themselves visible to the public. You have no way of knowing who looks at your profile and when they look at it. In this sense by putting yourself on a social networking site you are making yourself an inmate. Those who can view your profile have a certain power over you. Schools can get students in trouble based on what they post on Facebook and bosses can fire their employees. In the past few days a law was passed saying that your emails are no longer private and can be used against you in the court of law. One of the main forms of communication between individuals today, through which many people share private information, is now open to surveillance. Foucault thought that the decline of the public sphere would cause the decline of power due to surveillance but the internet has made surveillance even easier.