Philipp Loeffler
10/13/04
Michel Foucault,
“The Eye of Power”
The conversation between M. Foucault, J.P. Barou and M. Perrot, entitled “The Eye of Power,” revolves mainly around the question to what extent Jeremy Bentham’s idea of panoptism had given rise to the significant changes of power structures after the French Revolution in19th century Europe. Foucault utilizes Bentham’s architectural blue print of a prison building, the Panopticon, as a generally valid model, perhaps an allegory, to analyze and explain the power procedures in post-revolutionary Europe. In Discipline and Punish(1975) he claims: “The Panopticon, on the other hand, must be understood as a generalizable model of functioning; as a way of defining power relations in every day life” (D & P, 205). Beginning with this assumption, Foucault then argues that the very idea of visibility, the overarching principle of Bentham’s theory, has to be considered the foundation of the socio-political organization in the early 19th century. As he addresses this idea of an all-embracing visibility, Foucault repeatedly emphasizes the crucial role “the gaze” plays as means of total surveillance. This line of thought goes along congruently with Bentham, who regarded the Panopticon as a counter reaction to the 17th and 18th century principle of imprisonment, which mostly disavowed the mere existence of any kind of human morbidness by simply refusing to “gaze” at it. What clearly comes to the fore here is a kind of Post-Enlightenment utopia, that not only aims to lay bare the empirically determinable preconditions of individuality, but also suggests the idea of an anthropological or rather psychological transparency which is realized through monitoring and thereby extracting the innermost parts of the individual itself. It became necessary to fully illuminate not only the dark sides of society, but also the darkness of the human psyche. Essentially this goal lead to the development of an intricate, highly rational system of supervision, designed to capture both body and soul of the subject.
In summary, one could perhaps define the Foucaultian  idea of power and his understanding of how it is exercised as being fundamentally related to the idea of visibility/ a panoptical gaze and, consequently, to the renunciation of individual, physical violence or torture. Once the machinery of complete surveillance is set up, the interplay of various instances of power substitute the mono-directional observer – convict relationship. Logically, the seemingly causal constellation of (physical) punishment and penance becomes unnecessary, too. The way Foucault describes his idea of Panoptism in “The Eye of Power” gives the impression that we are all captured in a self-regulating system without active agents, a system, the (quasi-rationalistic) key words of which are “power through transparency” and “subjection by illumination” (97).
As we concentrate on “M”, there are critics, who suggest reading/watching Fritz Lang’s movie through Foucaultian glasses (e.g. Anton Kaes). And indeed, stressing the integral motif of the gaze, thus the modes of supervision or investigation, there is definitely reason to employ the eye-of-power concept in one way or another in this respect. Most obviously, the methods of inspection as they are invented and correspondingly employed by Schränker on the one hand and inspector Lohmann on the other hand, appear to be closely connected to what Foucault describes as an “immediate, collective and anonymous gaze” ( 96). Though the film may suggest the “dark” underworld and the “bright” authorities of right and justice as standing in an antagonistic relation to each other, the plans of supervising and controlling the city in the search for the murderer are similarly masterminded. We can observe both strategies as being centrally organized – metaphorically indicated by Schränker’s black glove and inspector Lohmann’s dividers on the map of Berlin – and, furthermore, both adhere to the Foucaultian idea of power insofar as they are designed to establish a network of ubiquitous visibility. Bentham’s idea of an omnipresent gaze seems to be transformed into an investigative reality: “It was the dream that each individual, whatever position he occupied, might be able to see the whole society, that men’s hearts should communicate, their vision be unobstructed by obstacles, and that opinion of all reign over each” ( 97).
Interestingly enough, the image of the ubiquitous gaze is given further emphasis, because of its structural reduplication through the camera. As we recall the bird’s eye view of the intersection right before Beckert tries to seek shelter in the warehouse, this feature becomes most evident. For one moment Beckert is unavoidably paralyzed, as the omnipresence of hunters renders all escape routes impassable; “a state of conscious and permanent visibility” (98) has been established. Moreover, the “absolute gaze” is paid tribute to, because the position of the camera itself, consequently the position of the audience, turns out to be the interface and vanishing point of all the supervising gazes on the level of the film. Therefore, it wouldn’t be wrong to regard the camera as a super structural manifestation of the mere abstract idea of the “eye of power”.
It is evident, that these de-individualized, yet all-embracing, power structures could be illustrated in more detail with regard to “M”. One could for instance focus on the way the “eye of power” becomes part of the public awareness, as Foucault conceives of an “apparatus of total and circulating mistrust” (100). (Recall the scene in which an evidently innocent bystander is declared to be the murderer by the mob).
Yet, besides all those apparently striking similarities, there are also some fundamental weaknesses in such a Foucaultian reading. First of all, what remains to be reflected is the question whether Foucault’s presupposition that power is entirely decentralized or de-individualized fits the power relations in “M”. This question is brought to its very essence by J.P. Barou, as he asks: “All the same, does someone initiate the whole business, or not?”(101). Considering Lang’s film with the background of this question, we are constantly required to wonder whether Schränker and Lohmann are really nothing but interchangeable figures at the top of a power hierarchy that has grown out “of local conditions and particular needs” (102). Or are we perhaps better advised to ascribe at least a slight degree of subjective directedness to the chase after Beckert?
Finally, this question gets even more important as one reflects on the viewpoint necessary to describe such a power apparatus. If there is a subject analyzing the whole system from an outside perspective, isn’t it possible that there is a subject that is able to (ab)use this apparatus for a certain end from an outside perspective, as well? As with Jünger’s “Total Mobilization” we are again left to struggle with the insoluble dualism of self-determination and heteronomy. Personally, I would consider this hardly bridgeable gap the fundament and the very strength of the whole film.