Key Arguments

• Foucault identifies the military camp as the ‘almost ideal model’ of these observatories: ‘the short-lived, artificial city, built and reshaped almost at will; the seat of a power that must be all the stronger, but also all the more discreet, all the more effective and on the alert in that it is exercised over armed men.’
• In the ‘perfect camp’, he writes, ‘all power would be exercised solely through exact observation; each gaze would form a part of the overall functioning of power’, making visibility and the distribution of gazes the core of its power structure.
• He details the geometric layout—paths, tents, streets, distances—culminating in the formulation: ‘The camp is the diagram of a power that acts by means of general visibility.’
• Foucault then states that ‘For a long time this model of the camp or at least its underlying principle was found in urban development, in the construction of working-class housing estates, hospitals, asylums, prisons, schools: the spatial “nesting” of hierarchized surveillance. The principle was one of “embedding” (“encastrement”).’
• He contrasts this to older architectural aims: ‘an architecture that is no longer built simply to be seen (as with the ostentation of palaces), or to observe the external space (cf. the geometry of fortresses), but to permit an internal, articulated and detailed control – to render visible those who are inside it’.
• Foucault emphasizes that this architecture is intended ‘to act on those it shelters, to provide a hold on their conduct, to carry the effects of power right to them, to make it possible to know them, to alter them’, and summarizes this with the striking claim: ‘Stones can make people docile and knowable.’

Source Quotes

Side by side with the major technology of the telescope, the lens and the light beam, which were an integral part of the new physics and cosmology, there were the minor techniques of multiple and intersecting observations, of eyes that must see without being seen; using techniques of subjection and methods of exploitation, an obscure art of light and the visible was secretly preparing a new knowledge of man. These ‘observatories’ had an almost ideal model: the military camp – the short-lived, artificial city, built and reshaped almost at will; the seat of a power that must be all the stronger, but also all the more discreet, all the more effective and on the alert in that it is exercised over armed men. In the perfect camp, all power would be exercised solely through exact observation; each gaze would form a part of the overall functioning of power.

These ‘observatories’ had an almost ideal model: the military camp – the short-lived, artificial city, built and reshaped almost at will; the seat of a power that must be all the stronger, but also all the more discreet, all the more effective and on the alert in that it is exercised over armed men. In the perfect camp, all power would be exercised solely through exact observation; each gaze would form a part of the overall functioning of power. The old, traditional square plan was considerably refined in innumerable new projects.

The rear tentpole is eight feet from the last soldiers’ tent and the gate is opposite the captains’ tent … The captains’ tents are erected opposite the streets of their companies. The entrance is opposite the companies themselves.’1 The camp is the diagram of a power that acts by means of general visibility. For a long time this model of the camp or at least its underlying principle was found in urban development, in the construction of working-class housing estates, hospitals, asylums, prisons, schools: the spatial ‘nesting’ of hierarchized surveillance.

The entrance is opposite the companies themselves.’1 The camp is the diagram of a power that acts by means of general visibility. For a long time this model of the camp or at least its underlying principle was found in urban development, in the construction of working-class housing estates, hospitals, asylums, prisons, schools: the spatial ‘nesting’ of hierarchized surveillance. The principle was one of ‘embedding’ (‘encastrement’). The camp was to the rather shameful art of surveillance what the dark room was to the great science of optics.

The camp was to the rather shameful art of surveillance what the dark room was to the great science of optics. A whole problematic then develops: that of an architecture that is no longer built simply to be seen (as with the ostentation of palaces), or to observe the external space (cf. the geometry of fortresses), but to permit an internal, articulated and detailed control – to render visible those who are inside it; in more general terms, an architecture that would operate to transform individuals: to act on those it shelters, to provide a hold on their conduct, to carry the effects of power right to them, to make it possible to know them, to alter them. Stones can make people docile and knowable.

A whole problematic then develops: that of an architecture that is no longer built simply to be seen (as with the ostentation of palaces), or to observe the external space (cf. the geometry of fortresses), but to permit an internal, articulated and detailed control – to render visible those who are inside it; in more general terms, an architecture that would operate to transform individuals: to act on those it shelters, to provide a hold on their conduct, to carry the effects of power right to them, to make it possible to know them, to alter them. Stones can make people docile and knowable. The old simple schema of confinement and enclosure – thick walls, a heavy gate that prevents entering or leaving – began to be replaced by the calculation of openings, of filled and empty spaces, passages and transparencies.

Key Concepts

• These ‘observatories’ had an almost ideal model: the military camp – the short-lived, artificial city, built and reshaped almost at will; the seat of a power that must be all the stronger, but also all the more discreet, all the more effective and on the alert in that it is exercised over armed men.
• In the perfect camp, all power would be exercised solely through exact observation; each gaze would form a part of the overall functioning of power.
• The camp is the diagram of a power that acts by means of general visibility.
• For a long time this model of the camp or at least its underlying principle was found in urban development, in the construction of working-class housing estates, hospitals, asylums, prisons, schools: the spatial ‘nesting’ of hierarchized surveillance. The principle was one of ‘embedding’ (‘encastrement’).
• an architecture that is no longer built simply to be seen (as with the ostentation of palaces), or to observe the external space (cf. the geometry of fortresses), but to permit an internal, articulated and detailed control – to render visible those who are inside it;
• Stones can make people docile and knowable.

Context

Middle of ‘Hierarchical observation’, where Foucault uses the example of the military camp and its precise geometry to articulate a general principle of disciplinary architecture and its diffusion across modern institutions.