Who Watches the Watchmen? According to Foucault, We Do.

When we imagine a society in which we can be watched at any time, we throw a fit. Certainly such a state can only result in the complete loss of individual rights, in total fascism, in tyranny. This is certainly the case in Orwell's 1984 - the members of the party are rarely out of view of a telescreen, the screens are in their homes and at their work. They can be watched at any time without ever knowing if they are being watched or not, and those who doubt the Party at all are terrified of being caught in any tiny way by the screens.

In Foucault's work, though, he proposes that a watched society would be immune to tyranny, which I found to be an interesting concept. His reasoning is that because anyone can be the observer, they can know how things work: "any member of society will have the right to come and see with his own eyes how the schools, hospitals, factories, prisons function". The watched society is completely open and thus no one person or group is capable of controlling everything.

This openess is something that we have never experimented with, and is possibly why we cannot imagine a watched society without tyranny. In 1984, the idea that any member of the party is allowed to see "the big picture" is laughable. I wonder if this is something we SHOULD investigate. We are being watched already - employers install software allowing them to "spy" on employees' computer usage, parents can track their children's movements via cell phone. The idea of letting the reverse occur seems preposterous, but you never know until you try!

As a small end note, Foucault's idea of complete openness brings to mind "Watchmen". There is a question of "who watches the watchmen" - costumed heroes are running around being vigilantes without oversight, which the public throws a fit about. As a result, the government puts a stop to non-government sanctioned costumes and most of them retire rather then become part of an agency. The comic/movie never really resolves the big question that comes to mind, though. In the end, a costume acting unsupervised kills millions, in order to prevent a war. He was NOT being observed, and took it upon himself to decide the fate of the world. In this way, he is a tyrant. And yet he did arguable save the world from destroying itself, so was he really wrong? Should he have been observed, or did an individual acting alone end up doing the greater good? Would a the world of Foucault, where people can be watched at anytime (including the watchers) really work out for the best?