Foucault – Panoptic Schema

Foucault notes, "The panoptic schema, without disappearing as such or losing any of its properties, was destined to spread throughout the social body; its vocation was to become a generalized function. (Foucault 1975:207)" He was right. This underlying organizational structure of “power of mind over mind” surrounds us. Its destiny “to spread throughout the social body” presupposes its presence as primordial structuring structure (Foucault 1975:206). A system of surveillance “is born mechanically from a fictitious relation. So it is not necessary to use force to constrain” (Foucault 1975:202).  Further, “It can in fact be integrated into any function (education, medical treatment, production, punishment); it can increase the effect of this function, by being linked closely with it” (Foucault 1975:206). In recent years, a panoptic schema is readily found in corporate America, which in some ways, characterizes our society as a whole.

Hierarchically, the position of cashier in our society fits in well with Foucault’s description of a “multiplicity of individuals on whom a task or a particular form of behavior must be imposed” (Foucault 1975:205). There is something to be said about the overlooked labor of cashiers in our society and the relation to Foucault’s panoptic schema. The Wall Street Journal article titled “Stores Count Seconds to Trim Labor Costs” directly addresses the increasingly present panoptic schema. In the wake of, what I’m calling, a greater depression, retailers are embracing capitalistic technologies that reveal an eerily similar resemblance to the defining characteristics of a panoptic scheme: closely monitored and evaluated hierarchical observation. Meijer Inc., and several other giant retailers, use software embedded within their cash registers to assess efficiency, trim cost, curb behavior. The article focuses on a cashier at a Meijer megastore in Detroit who is under surveillance from an all-seeing software taking account “everything from the kinds of merchandise he's bagging to how his customers are paying”. Further, “Each week, he gets scored. If he falls below 95% of the baseline score too many times, the 185-store megastore chain, based in Walker, Mich., is likely to bounce him to a lower-paying job, or fire him”.  He is individualized—placed in a state of surveillance, singled out for performance review—for the sake of institutional maximization and efficiency. As Foucault noted Bentham’s Panopticon “makes it possible to draw up differences… makes it possible to observe performances… makes it possible to note aptitudes of each worker, compare the time he takes to perform a task”.   Similar to the cashier software design, the Panopticon, as Foucault points out “thanks to its mechanisms of observation, it gains in efficiency and in the ability to penetrate into men’s behaviour” (Foucault 1975:204).