Cunningham

Kira Cunningham

Amy Flick

Seminar in Composition

December 2, 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 the idea that society conditions individuals towards normalization by expecting their

behaviors to follow set rules and standards of the time. 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 fear of

consequences, to recognize acts of power through metaphorical authority figures, and to follow

society’s modeled structure as a metaphor through fear 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

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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

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 to show how

not following orders will have an outcome of being disciplined for not doing what is expected

which is using pathos, precisely fear. The reader responds with fear because they learn what

occurs to individuals who undergo consequences such as exclusion from society or not

answering nor showing oneself like in the plagued 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. It exists through an authority figure, conveyed as a metaphor, 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

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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 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 helps the authorities in the central tower to be aware of the inmates

around him which is achieved just through the workings of the building. The Panopticon’s

overall ability to oversee all individuals and control them is why it’s the metaphor to power.

Through 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 the power 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 is able to work 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

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

which leads to unwanted control over everyone. 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 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, the plague and the Panopticon, create a fearful model of society because

the those 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 considered 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.