Cunningham

Kira Cunningham

Amy Flick

Seminar in Composition

October 11, 2019

Rhetorical Analysis of Michel Foucault

In the essay Panopticism, the author Michel Foucault presents the idea of individual

influence within society and what drives it forward as a whole. He starts with describing how

aspects of the plague and the panopticon initiated by Jeremy Bentham move people to act as one

based on conditioning. With these two references presented throughout the essay being the basis

of past societies, Foucault is able to paint a picture of modern society. He focuses on three main

ideas to what influences an individual's behavior within society and drives great attention to

them in his piece. The ideas that transfer from past to modern society as forces that shape the

societies are those of discipline, power, and control. Foucault implies that society as a whole

conditions individuals to be disciplined through consequences, to recognize acts of power

through authority figures set in place, and to follow society’s model structure as a mechanism of

control. This message is conveyed from Foucault to the audience through the use of the two

rhetorical strategies, pathos and metaphor, as methods of showing the connections that past and

modern societies share. With this, the author demonstrates how society in itself is influenced by

individual actions that occur from the forces being described.

In his piece, Foucault designs an atmosphere to establish a sense of discipline. He does this

by describing seventeenth- and eighteenth-century societies, specifically during the plague and

the Panopticon, where individuals were controlled through consequences of doing wrong. During

the plague, consequences to individuals consisted of “everyone locked up in his cage, everyone

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at his window, answering to his name and showing himself when asked—it is the great review of

the living and the dead (Foucault, 329).” Foucault depicts this scene to his audience with the use

of pathos, precisely fear, to show how not following the orders will have an outcome with the act

of being disciplined. The reader responds to his strategy of fearing one as they learn what occurs

to individuals who undergo consequences from not doing right by the society. The Panopticon

reference in the essay also uses fear as a method to discipline both the readers and individuals of

the society. With Foucault’s statement “hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the

inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of

power (334),” people are taught to follow the rules by being surveilled at all times. Fear relates

to the audience as they do not want to give up their sense individuality which is a consequence

the Panopticon presents. Through disciplining, society is able to condition individuals to follow

what is right rather as they are exposed to a consequence when they commit to do what is wrong.

This conditioning is met with a sense of fear in both societies as the individuals want to avoid

consequences therefore making them adjust their behavior according to what is being asked or

shaped.

Another force that is presented to the audience and individuals of society in Panopticism

is that of power. There exists an authority figure that stands over all people so that they follow

rules and expectations. Within the society that Foucault first refers to, the plague is theoretically

the authority figure and the metaphor to power of the seventeenth century. All inhabitants are

met with the plague’s power and ability to establish change which can be seen when it’s stated,

“each street is placed under the authority of a syndic, who keeps it under surveillance; if he

leaves the street, he will be condemned to death (Foucault, 328).” This shows how not only are

people of the streets under rule but as are the authorities that society puts in “power” because

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themselves are also susceptible to loss and change that the plague has the ability to do. In the

Panopticon of the eighteenth century, the authority figure is within the tower, but the metaphor to

power is the Panopticon itself. Foucault says, “by the effect of backlighting, one can observe

from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cell of

the periphery (332).” This distinctly describes the mechanisms of the Panopticon and how it

serves the authorities in the central tower to be aware of the inmates around him. Power is met

just through the workings of the building and the overall goal to oversee all individuals. Through

the power of the plague and the Panopticon, authorities and society itself are under control and

forced to obtain the goals of rules and expectations. Foucault’s use of metaphor is very effective

to the audience as they can see the overall force that drives individuals forward to act.

Lastly, the piece shows how Foucault uses control as an end factor to each situation in

which he presents. With this being said, it can be seen how the author shows that both the plague

and the Panopticon work to establish an overall concept of order and control in each society. In

the first reference, the plague shows control through both a metaphor and a sense of fear in just

the very first sentence of Panopticism. Foucault’s uses the metaphor of control as also being the

plague itself because it works towards a distinct management where the town and districts are

closed, stay animals are killed, and amongst all, the town is divided into distinct quarters with

intendants governing them (328). The audience sees this society through a lens of fear as the

plague controls all aspects therefore taking away all that an individual has. This is due to the fact

that the less one has, then the more alike they will become with another in society. In the

Panopticon scene, the audience can see control as a metaphor because the building itself will

“also set out to show how one may ‘unlock’ the disciplines and get them to function in a

diffused, multiple, polyvalent way throughout the whole social body (341).” This alone is

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describing order among individuals which promotes once again, a sense of fear to the audience

because all of society would be alike. Both metaphors of control create a fearful model of society

because the people of society within Foucault’s piece and outside of it, as readers, are forced to

follow what is being ordered.

Each matter of conditioning that is presented in Michel Foucault’s essay, Panopticism,

can be broken down to explain why and how individuals are shaped to behave. The author

implies that society itself consists of conditioned individuals that arise through the forces of

discipline, power, and control . This is accomplished through structures within a society such as

the plague and the Panopticon because they are the metaphors of the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries that constitute to the atmosphere of their existing societies. Foucault conveys his

message through his uses of these metaphors as well as the use of pathos but more exactly, the

appeal to fear, as a way to influence his audience to follow the implications of the essay as well.

With past societies represented, the readers can see how disciplinary measures, authority figures,

and an overall societal control have been contributors to how individuals behave and can be

manipulated. Because of this, modern societies are then taken into account to how they can be

established; so, the recognition of Foucault’s implications by his audiences that conditioning is

applicable to a society can potentially prevent manipulation to occur.