Analysis of the Essays by Foucault, Susan Bordo, and Richard Miller about Panopticon - Essay Example

Agency Foucault describes Panopticon as a building that has a tower at the center that allows the supervision of every cell that, incarcerates a schoolboy or a convict. Foucault uses the Panopticon to prompt a particular sense of perpetual visibility, which guarantees operational power. As declared by Bentham, power is supposed to be visible but not verifiable. The tower is always visible to the prisoners but they cannot fathom which specific spot they are being watched from (Michel 201). Foucault brings out the aspect of Agency as explains how the panopticon represents power and the way people are trapped in its visibility.

People in power tend to manipulate those below them by controlling how they think and act. Foucault uses the Panopticon to represent the power laboratory, which uses the staff and the prisoners as experiment specimens. The Panopticon and the town stricken by the plague represent transformational changes in disciplinary measures. The Plagued town scenario is an exceptional case, where power is used to eradicate an unusual evil. While the Panopticon represents a comprehensive prototype of human operation, a feature that defines day-to-day power relations.

The Panopticon happens not to be a dream building structure, but a layout of power minimized to its ideal nature. It perfects power functioning by multiplying the number of individuals under power control and minimizing power operators. Power is made more effective and economical. Considering the works done by Susan Bordo and Richard Miller in their essays Beauty (Re) discovers the male Body and The Dark Night of Soul respectively, several aspects of agencies are being discussed. By using Foucault's way of thinking in the essays of Bordo and Miller, we can be able to deduce how Foucault might treat the particular materials used chosen for their examples.

For instance, taking one example from Bordo in her essay Beauty (Re) discovers the male Body; she discusses how the agency of men as supposed to be masculine and in charge has taken a different route whereby males are assuming ladies' positions. Taking an example from this essay about the advertisement she came across in the New York Times Magazines, in an actual life setting, a male is supposed to have power over a woman in a case depicted (Brodo 169). In this example where a young man poses with a Calvin Klein labeled undergarment but has a posture reserved for women.

The eyes of the young man look down from the camera as opposed to facing the camera as men do. It depicts a power that has given its will to society. This however does not dispute the reality that men still hold a higher position in maintaining institutions where they have a historically dominant position. Foucault treats an individual’s body as something on which other forces can or act, although external forces control the body. Considering the other essay by Richard Miller the Dark Night of Soul, Richard gives an example of columbine high school where two teenagers masterminded a massacre that left a couple of students dead.

What bewildered Richard are the measures taken to prevent such a case from occurring again (Miller 4). Supervisory agencies were increased, more education was induced, and more religious instructions were put in place. These measures would even increase the rate of the massacre. Foucault treats Miller’s example on the power contained in books as courses that provide students with ways or strategies of framing schooling experiences of the students plus opportunities to formulate additional nuanced comprehensions of the social power exercise.