Subject of Detection, Subject to Inspection

Part II

Subject to InspectionSerhat Uyurkulak

How to identify/read the criminal?

How to visualizeor representthem?

Are there any innate signsrevealing the criminal orcriminal impulses?

How to keep them under surveillance?

Making the Criminal Visible

Mechanism of Observation and Inspection: Panopticon

Gr. Pan: all + opticon: see = Seeing all, everything

Or, the Inspection-House:

Morals reformed – health preserved – industry invigorated – instruction diffused – public burthens lightened – Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock – the gordian knot of the Poor-Laws not cut, but untied – all by a simple idea in architecture!

Jeremy Bentham, Panopticon (1787)

Panopticon and the “Utilitarian” Principle of Surveillance

“[This idea] will be found applicable (…)to all establishments whatsoever, in which (…) a number of persons are meant to bekept under inspection. No matter howdifferent, or even opposite the purpose:whether it be that of punishing the incorrigible, guarding the insane, reforming the vicious, confining the suspected, employing the idle, maintaining the helpless, curing the sick, instructing thewilling in any branch of industry, or training the rising race in the path of education (…).”

J. Bentham, Panopticon

The condition of the inmate, subject to continual inspection

Essential Points of The Panoptic Plan: Perfection of Discipline

“the centrality of the inspector’s situation, combined with the well-knownand most effectual contrivances forseeing without being seen.”

“the persons to be inspected should always feel themselves as if under inspection (…) the greater chance there is, of a given person’s being at a given time actually under inspection, the more strong will be the persuasion – the more intense (…) the feeling, he has of his being so.” (Bentham)

Real or imagined omnipresence and omniscience of the inspector Internalization of discipline, self-disciplining

One of the “realized” panoptic structures

“The Panopticon (…) must be understood as a generalizable model of functioning; a way of defining power relations in terms of the everyday life of men.

The fact that it should have given rise, even in our own time, to so many variations, projected or realized, is evidence of the imaginary intensity that it has possessed for almost two hundred years. But the Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: it is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form; its functioning, abstracted from any obstacle, resistance or friction, must be represented as a pure architectural and optical system: it is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use.”

From Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault (1975)

Making individuals (physical bodies) visible, observable, confinable, accesible, retrievable, available…at all times

Panopticism: Ideal of Disciplining Modern Subjects

Hobbes and Bentham: Panoptic Similarity

Imagining to be under continual surveillance, inspection (or “knowing” that). Sovereign is seen in Hobbes, observation-tower is seen in Bentham.

Holmes’ “panoptic” techniques: Seeing-all

Deceit, according to him, was an impossibility in the case of one trained to observation and analysis. His conclusions were as infallible as so many propositions of Euclid.

From The Sign of Four

[T]he Science of Deduction and Analysis is one which can only be acquired by long and patient study (…) on meeting a fellow-mortal, learn at a glance to distinguish the history of the man, and the trade or profession to which he belongs. Puerile as such an exercise may seem, it sharpens the faculties of observation, and teaches one where to look and what to look for. Making the objects BUT more importantly, bodies, body parts readable texts, files, cases

Holmes’ “panoptic” techniques: Seeing-all without being seen

“It was close upon four beforethe door opened, and a drunken-looking groom, ill-kempt and side-whiskered, with an inflamed face and disreputable clothes, walked into the room. Accustomed as I was to my friend's amazing powers in the use of disguises, I had to look three times before I was certain that it was indeed he. With a nod he vanished into the bedroom, whence he emerged in five minutes tweed-suited and respectable, as of old.”

From “A Scandal in Bohemia”

Amiable Nonconformist clergymanNot “seen” in his true identity, undercover

Holmes’ “Panoptic” Technologies “Some five years ago, during a lengthy visit to Warsaw, I made the acquaintance of the well-known adventuress, Irene Adler. The name is no doubt familiar to you.”

"Kindly look her up in my index, Doctor," murmured Holmes without opening his eyes. For many years he had adopted a system of docketing all paragraphs concerning men and things, so that it was difficult to name a subject or a person on which he could not at once furnish information. In this case I found her biography sandwiched in between that of a Hebrew rabbi and that of a staff-commander who had written a monograph upon the deep-sea fishes.From “A Scandal in Bohemia”

Turning qualities of things and individualsto observable, recordable, measurable data (common aspect, mere alphabetical order)Holmes is a great indexer and filer (if nota profiler), can retrieve information (makes present) on almost anything anytime he wants Network of TRAINS, TELEGRAMS, LETTERS...

19th C. Technology of Recording: Photography

"Then I fail to follow your Majesty. If this young person should produce her letters for blackmailing or other purposes, how is she to prove their authenticity?”(…)“We were both in the photograph.”"Oh, dear! That is very bad! Your Majesty has indeed committed an indiscretion.”From “A Scandal in Bohemia”

Photography is unequalled in recording things, and people as they are The information it gives or knowledge it produces (re-presents) is more authoritative It is indexical – helps attach identities or meanings to objects or persons

Making the Criminal Visible or Criminalizing the Visible?

“Scientific” ideal of modernity (or positivism): Pull, discipline, and file bodies in the field of total visibility, observation, inspection, examination, calculation, and measurement

Anthropometry and Criminal Anthropology:

Cesare Lombroso, L’uomo delinquente (1876)

Francis Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883)

Alphonse Bertillon (invented a system of filing people, perfected 1850-1880)

One of Sherlock Holmes’ clients calls him the second best expert of crime inEurope (Bertillon being the best)

Visually “Fixing” the Immoral and the Criminal

Re-presenting the Criminal and Dangerous Classes

Anthropometric face-masks made by Cesare Lombroso

Robberandmurderer

Rapist

Thief and forger

Corruptor

Images / indices of Inferiority and Lesser Humanness:

Stereotyping or Typecasting

Fig. 20:Inferior race – habitual thief

Fig. 23: Common type thief – habitual

Fig. 24:Common type thief – degenerate

Modern Obsession with Calculation and Measurement

Anthropometry

“Skulls of Criminals”

“Tattoos of Delinquents”

Bodies become surfaces bearing texts and signs of immorality and criminality

Composite Pictures: Reaching the Ultimate, Definitive Image of the Criminal

Francis Galton’s invention

Reaching the Ultimate, Definitive Image of the Sick

Tuberculosis with swellingsPulmonary tuberculosis (and syphilis?)

Filing-Recording the Criminal

Personal Identification “Fiche” and Profiling

Bertillon’s method