Contextual & Theoretical

Task ONE/// reflection of panopticism

The sign up sheet could be an example of panopticism. It is a daily register which is otherwise known as a "collection of separated individualities" (Foucault, 1977, 65). It is unknown as to weather it will be up on the board for students to sign in everyday during a particular time period which seems to get earlier and earlier. This uncertainty is to induce "a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power" (Foucault, 1977, 65), as the student self regulates themselves to be in early for registration and most other course related engagements. This is a technique of installing fear on a possibility not a fact. Day in day out they "never know weather he is being looked at at any one moment, but he must be sure that he may always be so" (Foucault, 1977, 65). That is to say that it may be that the register is left up all day allowing students to freely enter at any time but it may not, making them make a choice as to weather they take a chance in thinking that their attendance is or is not being assessed. The power and control is now mentally driven not physical leading to warnings and exclusions from the course.

Exclusion also plays a role in the sign up sheet. If that day the sign up sheet has been taken down and the docile (in both senses) student missed the specific sign up time, a thick black marker line is then placed through their name, allowing all the staff and fellow class mates to "judge at a glance, without anything being concelaed" (Foucault, 1977, 67) as to weather or not they have conformed to playing the role in which the student are in a "power situation of which they are themselves the bearer" (Foucault, 1977, 65). The structure of the sign up sheet also shows exclusion which also implies that they are not conforming to playing a productive and devoted role on the course. The expectations and characteristics of normality are preached from the first day, setting a standard where the docile bodies around it stand out like a sore thumb.