It’s funny how it resembles a heightened version of what people accuse the USSR, PRC, and DPRK of. In gommunist chyna, citizens don’t know what they aren’t allowed to discuss or what words they aren’t allowed to use, so they speak in a contorted code to get past censors [who might not even care] when there is a rumor of a topic or word being forbidden. It’s like a panopticon where you don’t only not know when you are being watched, but you also don’t know what is being watched for.
Good point. iirc and it’s been years and I never actually read the book and just fibbed my way through class, but the whole The panopticon could be watching anyone at any time, so it doesn’t need to watch everyone all the time" was one of the key features of the panopticon regime. Like the whole thing in discipline and punish was that the system teaches people to disicipline and punish themselves, because that’s more efficient than a top down system. The system will always be more efficient if you teach people to censor and punish each other instead of haviung to hire a hundred billion police to do it directly.
And yeah, the every accusation is projection thing. Lenin has some line about who the burgers own the papers, so the papers are censored in the interest of the burgers, so the “free press” and "freedom of speech’ are bullshit bc you can only say what the burger’s editor’s allow to be said.
Also, I am always, always struck by the idea that the STASI would probably be horrified by the level of invasive surveillance everyone is subjected to every moment of every day, but people are totally blase about it, but I was told my whole life for decades after the cold war ended how horrifying it was that the Stasi was watching you pee or your neighbors were informing on you, but now everyone is informing on their neighbors all the time with nextdoor and shit, and anyway apparently when they dug in to the STASI’s archives after the Reich conquered the GDR they didn’t even find evidence that the STASI was murdering dissidents nad thought criminal sanyway?
You definitely have the main idea with the panopticon. I think someone more well-read than I could probably make really interesting points about how, in the original form one has an imagined cop in their head constantly enforcing externally-established rules, and this new version has an imagined cop constantly enforcing imagined rules of imagined scope. The notice for what is banned is replaced by a rumor-mill and the occasional high-profile case where “what tripped the censor?” still remains unclear and manual flagging sullies even this very messy sampling method.
I don’t really know that much about the STASI, but it’s not like West Berlin wasn’t also heavily surveilling its denizens, and deaths in East Berlin get wildly overstated to the point of being a farce. That’s probably something gone over in “STASI State or Socialist Paradise?” but I haven’t gotten to it yet.
This comment too, I hope it makes or helps me read Discipline and Punish. The only exposure I had to Foucault confused me and made me hurt myself in confusion so I decided to stay away…
What you wrote made it sound really interesting, here’s hopin’ I can read it sooner rather than later!
It was so fucking confusing I got much more out of media and video games and shit htat used the concept, and people talking about how panopticon actually works in real life, than I did from teh book itself. Like I stg Kojima has done more to help me understand philosophy than actual philsophers. So ma
It’s funny how it resembles a heightened version of what people accuse the USSR, PRC, and DPRK of. In gommunist chyna, citizens don’t know what they aren’t allowed to discuss or what words they aren’t allowed to use, so they speak in a contorted code to get past censors [who might not even care] when there is a rumor of a topic or word being forbidden. It’s like a panopticon where you don’t only not know when you are being watched, but you also don’t know what is being watched for.
Good point. iirc and it’s been years and I never actually read the book and just fibbed my way through class, but the whole The panopticon could be watching anyone at any time, so it doesn’t need to watch everyone all the time" was one of the key features of the panopticon regime. Like the whole thing in discipline and punish was that the system teaches people to disicipline and punish themselves, because that’s more efficient than a top down system. The system will always be more efficient if you teach people to censor and punish each other instead of haviung to hire a hundred billion police to do it directly.
And yeah, the every accusation is projection thing. Lenin has some line about who the burgers own the papers, so the papers are censored in the interest of the burgers, so the “free press” and "freedom of speech’ are bullshit bc you can only say what the burger’s editor’s allow to be said.
Also, I am always, always struck by the idea that the STASI would probably be horrified by the level of invasive surveillance everyone is subjected to every moment of every day, but people are totally blase about it, but I was told my whole life for decades after the cold war ended how horrifying it was that the Stasi was watching you pee or your neighbors were informing on you, but now everyone is informing on their neighbors all the time with nextdoor and shit, and anyway apparently when they dug in to the STASI’s archives after the Reich conquered the GDR they didn’t even find evidence that the STASI was murdering dissidents nad thought criminal sanyway?
You definitely have the main idea with the panopticon. I think someone more well-read than I could probably make really interesting points about how, in the original form one has an imagined cop in their head constantly enforcing externally-established rules, and this new version has an imagined cop constantly enforcing imagined rules of imagined scope. The notice for what is banned is replaced by a rumor-mill and the occasional high-profile case where “what tripped the censor?” still remains unclear and manual flagging sullies even this very messy sampling method.
I don’t really know that much about the STASI, but it’s not like West Berlin wasn’t also heavily surveilling its denizens, and deaths in East Berlin get wildly overstated to the point of being a farce. That’s probably something gone over in “STASI State or Socialist Paradise?” but I haven’t gotten to it yet.
Strong reccomend on Statsi state etc. It was a really eye opening book.
This comment too, I hope it makes or helps me read Discipline and Punish. The only exposure I had to Foucault confused me and made me hurt myself in confusion so I decided to stay away…
What you wrote made it sound really interesting, here’s hopin’ I can read it sooner rather than later!
It was so fucking confusing I got much more out of media and video games and shit htat used the concept, and people talking about how panopticon actually works in real life, than I did from teh book itself. Like I stg Kojima has done more to help me understand philosophy than actual philsophers. So ma