The panopticon principle had been invented by Jeremy Bentham, the English philosopher, who in 1792 had been declared an honorary French citizen by the Legistlative Assembly in recognition of his works on colonial administration and penal reform.
His main idea was to replace the dungeon-dark underground, a place of oblivion-with the panopticon, a sort of glass hive in which all the drones (the prisoners) would be visible to the queen (the centrally placed quard). Transparent, the cell becomes a suitable unit for study. The panopticon may have been based on Louis XIV's menagerie in which all animal cages surrounded the king's salon.
No longer is the prisoner punished for past crimes: now he's studied as a subject of future misdeeds. No longer is the body alone held captive; now the mind is also invaded.
-Edmund White, "Genet"
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