Topical Guide 725
Mark Dorset
Observation, Surveillance
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 38:
[continuing the entry on Rarotonga from Scented Isles, a guidebook to the South Sea Islands by the Christensen sisters]
Zealous missionaries transformed Rarotongan society by employing islanders to watch over their neighbors for transgressions of religious (that is, Christian) laws, thereby introducing the kind of panoptic system of governmental control of individual life and thought that we have latterly witnessed in the fascist and communist states, citizen spying on citizen, neighbor on neighbor, child on parent.
Michel Foucault, “Complete and Austere Institutions”:
The theme of the panopticon—at once surveillance and observation, security and knowledge, individualization and totalization, isolation and transparency—found in the prison its privileged locus of realization. Although the panoptic procedures, as concrete forms of the exercise of power, have become extremely widespread, at least in their less concentrated forms, it was really only in the penitentiary institutions that Bentham’s utopia could be fully expressed in a material form. In the 1830s, the panopticon became the architectural program of most prison projects. It was the most direct way of expressing “the intelligence of discipline in stone”; of making architecture transparent to the administration of power; . . . In short, its task was to constitute a prison-machine with a cell of visibility in which the inmate will find himself caught as “in the glass house of the Greek philosopher” and a central point from which a permanent gaze may control prisoners and staff.
Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon; or, the Inspection-House; Postscript, Part I:
Each cell is an island:—the inhabitants, shipwrecked mariners, cast ashore upon it by the adverse blasts of fortune: partners in affliction, indebted to each other for whatever share they are permitted to enjoy of society, the greatest of all comforts.
Dancing: Erotic
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 38:
[continuing the entry on Rarotonga from Scented Isles, a guidebook to the South Sea Islands by the Christensen sisters]
Doubtless the missionaries were offended by the dances that Rarotongans performed in their worship of the fertility god Tangeroa, dances that the irrepressible Rarotongans are still wont to perform on a warm night under the light of the moon and the influence of beer or pineapple liquor. We do not think it appropriate to describe the suggestive gyrations of Rarotongan dancing in a guidebook intended for a wide general audience. They are, shall we say, erotic in the extreme.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide. The Substack serialization of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed. The Substack podcast reading of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here.
You can listen to “My Mother Takes a Tumble” and “Do Clams Bite?” complete and uninterrupted as audiobooks through YouTube.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies, Herb ’n’ Lorna, Reservations Recommended, and Where Do You Stop?
You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document), The Origin Story (here on substack), Between the Lines (a video, here on Substack), and at Encyclopedia.com.