Page 38 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

Changing ordinary life 29

from physical punishment to penal incarceration; second, from ‘torture of the
body to the transformation of the soul’ (p. 216); and, third, the ‘broad histori-
cal change of social order’ (p. 217). Thus, in drawing on Bentham, for
‘Foucault, panopticism represents a fundamental movement or transform-
ation from the situation where the many see the few to the situation where the few
see the many’ (p. 217). This is often taken as the major historical trend that
has led to panoptical surveillance systems characterized by CCTV and so on.
Mathiesen’s argument is that Foucault and the Foucauldian approach are at
best half-correct. Mathiesen argues that actually parallel to the panopticon
and panopticism is the synopticon, where the many see the few, and therefore
a process of synopticism.
For Mathiesen, panopticism and synopticism are parallel processes that
have three aspects. First, he argues that both of the processes have accelerated
in ‘modern times’. Thus, while panopticon-type surveillance has progressed,
so have technological forms and practices that enable the many to see the few
through media including the press, film, radio and TV. The media thus, in
some ways enable audiences to see the processes of power (or at least repre-
sentations of them) and to view the activities of powerful people. Second,
while these processes have accelerated in modernity, they are both long-
established modes of power. Mathiesen argues that, ‘the models of both
systems go back far beyond the 1700s, and that they have historical roots
in central social and political institutions’ (1997: 222). Third, that they
‘developed in intimate relation, even fusion with each other’ (p. 223), as
exemplified by the way that the Catholic Church used surveillance as well as
vast cathedrals. Thus, Mathiesen’s argument is that we are both seen by
power and see it. Both of these processes involve performance and audience
processes.
Documentary filmmaking and recording can be seen as involving both
of these processes in different ways. Thus, the project of Mass Observation as
part of the study of everyday life discussed in the previous chapter, can involve
a small number of people surveying the many, but can then be displayed for a
larger audience. Such ideas can also be seen in the current phase of the devel-
opment of documentary in what Corner (2002) has termed ‘documentary as
diversion’ or ‘popular factual entertainment’. Thus, currently very popular
reality TV programmes often involve surveillance and entertainment, partici-
pation and performance. In Corner’s view we are in a ‘postdocumentary
culture’. Thus, reality TV of this type offers a good example of the interlocking
of performance, spectacle and modes of surveillance.
My argument is that these processes are fuelled by media and techno-
logical innovation and this will be more fully grounded in the next chapter,
but at the current juncture I want to stress how these activities are sedimented
into ordinary life through a range of processes, but also the complex rela-
tions to the way in which power is exercised in different ways and in
different contexts. Thus, power involves the spectacle of display as well as the
surveillance of populations in ways that are intertwined in the ways that
Mathiesen explains. The final process that I introduce in this chapter is
enthusing.