Monday, April 23, 2012

A Foucaultian Critique of Crawfordsville's Rotary Jail


Michel Foucault, the famous French philosopher, looked closely at society and attempted to explain, in great detail, the ways in which people cohabitate on this blue planet we call Earth. In our Critical Reading course (ENG 397), our class looked closely at some of Foucault’s works where he describes his concept of "the gaze" and how it regulates power struggles in relationships between groups in society. I doing so, we looked very closely at Foucault's theory behind disciplinary mechanisms and how the gaze is used as a means of regulating behavior in his work Discipline and Punish. One of the concepts that we pulled out of his work to look more closely at was his theory of the gaze and how it works in panopticism. To fully understand panopticism, one must first familiarize themselves with a panopticon. The word derives its meaning from its root –opti, meaning observe, and prefix –pan, meaning all. A panopticon is set up so that an observer, or watchman, is placed in the center inside of a watch tower. Surrounding the tower are the cells of a prison. The idea behind the design is that the observer is able to watch all inmates in the prison at the same time. This puts ALL inmates under constant surveillance, or at least the threat of being watched at all times. This prison also leaves inmates hidden from each other, making it very difficult for them to stage any all out riots or escape plans. The reason that this type of prison was created was because the concepts used to get prisoners in-check revolve around the idea of self-regulation. Inmates believe they are constantly being watched, so they must modify their behavior to the threat of the gaze of a superior, or governing, power at all times.

Studying at Wabash brings with it a few pros and cons. One of the cons is that by attending an all male college in the middle of Nowhere, IN (known by locals as Crawfordsville) students subject themselves to a homogenous learning environment where they are alienated from women and modern society (kidding, but seriously…). But students of Dr. Szczeszak-Brewer’s ENG 397 class were witness to one of the benefits: when talking about the Foucaultian philosophy of “the gaze” and pamopticism, we were able to open the conversation to include a different type of prison. The small Mid-Western city of Crawfordsville is very unique. It offers a very unique history of disciplinary systems. Crawfordsville, IN is home of one of the few Rotary Jails. After reading Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, we journeyed over to The Old Jail Museum to see how a rotary jail works and how it compares to the panopticon Foucault illustrates.

The students were all very surprised by the make-up of the jail. It seemed to work contrary to the panopticon. Rather than place the observer—in this case the Montgomery Country prison guard—in the center of the jail, the design put all of the prisoners in the center. The cells are placed in the center in a cyclical manner, with the face of the cells facing outward. This, like in the panopticon, prevents prisoners from seeing each other. But unlike the panopticon, this doesn’t subject prisoners to the constant threat of surveillance. In fact, many of the students, myself included, noted that this seemed to be the exact opposite of the panopticon—or as Ryan Lutz noted in his blog, an “inverted panopticon.”Because the Foucaultian gaze centered around the threat of surveillance and self-regulation, it seems as though the concept of the rotary jail does not accurately represent his theory/observations. Despite that, the trip was a unique and educational. It was interesting to critique the jail’s effectiveness as a disciplinary tool by using Foucault’s work as a blue print.

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