(Post)modern Discipline

Foucault introduces Bentham's Panopticon in the context of a plague-ridden society:

The plague-stricken town, traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilized by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies--this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city. The plague (envisaged as a possibility at least) is the trial in the course of which one may define ideally the exercise of disciplinary power. (198)

I wonder whether the U.S. government, in an "exercise of disciplinary power," constructs or attempts to reify imagined "plagues" to keep our society in order. "Panopticism" created an interesting dialogue with "The Body of the Condemned" to show the institutionalized rhetorical control over the way we (can) think of crime and criminals themselves. Two examples that come to mind are the war on drugs and increasing legislation meant to control digital piracy. We are brought up to believe in the power of police/authoritative oversight on illegal transactions. Pervasive supervision incurs the threat of incarceration for the purchase of illegal drugs or peer-to-peer file-sharing, for example. Obviously, this surveillance is imperfect, since drugs are bought, files shared, and even, against Foucault's illustration of "power reduced to its ideal form," exam answers shared in school.

This begs the question of whether--and when--Panoptic power ceases to be useful (say, according to certain institutional limits of size and influence). Certainly power no longer functions at the lowest possible cost, nor does it function at "maximum intensity" (218), as evidenced by relatively easy workarounds (either within institutions, as in drug trades in which providers are complicit, or illegal file/information sharing for ostensibly "allowable" purposes, within educational or governmental structures).

As resistance continues to bubble up from inside and between these complex structures of institutional and discursive power, one must wonder whether a policy of complete visibility at the threat of incarceration or defamation is the best for either party, watching or watched.