An Utterly Dark Spot

Abstract

Relating the panopticon writings to Bentham’s utilitarianism, the author shows that the panopticon’s internal structure is that of a spectacle, or a stage effect, aimed at achieving the greatest effect of the punishment on others, i.e. society at large, with the least inflicted pain on the prisoners themselves. This end involves the “fiction of punishment,” an appearance that functions successfully precisely because reality itself is already structured like a fiction. There is thus a critical distinction to be made between the role of fiction in the panopticon (to deter the prisoners from transgressing) and the deterring role of fiction for the innocents outside the prison. Focusing on the role of the inspector in the panopticon’s central tower rather than on the prisoners in the cells, the author shows that it is the very absence of the inspector that sustains his (fictional) omnipresence for the prisoners; he thereby effectively takes up the place of God, who exists only insofar as we (the prisoners) imagine Him (the inspector) looking at us. God (or the inspector) is thus “an imaginary non-entity” without which, however, the universe (the panopticon) would collapse. In turn, the fear of— or, by extension, the belief in — God paradoxically rests upon the very fact of his fictionality or nonexistence.