![]() The panoptic mechanism arranges spatial unities that make it possible to see constantly and to recognize immediately. ![]() They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible. By the effect of backlighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small captive shadows in the cells of the periphery. All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy. We know the principle on which it was based: at the periphery, an annular building at the centre, a tower this tower is pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole width of the building they have two windows, one on the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower the other, on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to the other. Bentham's Panopticon is the architectural figure of this composition. ![]()
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