Bentham claimed the inspection principle fits every institutional setting, not just prisons.
Evidence
To say all in one word, it will be found applicable, I think, without exception, to all establishments whatsoever, in which, within a space not too large to be covered or commanded by buildings, a number of persons are meant to be kept under inspection. No matter how different, 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 the willing in any branch of industry, or training the rising race in the path of education: in a word, whether it be applied to the purposes of perpetual prisons in the room of death, or prisons for confinement before trial, or penitentiary-houses, or houses of correction, or work-houses, or manufactories, or mad-houses, or hospitals, or schools. — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 95
Categorization
- XREF: Bentham’s universality claim is precisely what lets Foucault generalize panopticism across the disciplinary society — and lets Orwell place telescreens in every home, not just government buildings.
- SEED: The catalog of institutions (schools, hospitals, mad-houses, manufactories) is the concrete list of where panoptic logic colonizes everyday life — a skeleton for an essay mapping which institutions Orwell explicitly extended the gaze into.
Related
- Bentham sought to diffuse disciplines through the entire social body (similarity 0.83)
- Bentham’s inspection principle aims to make students visible at every moment of their time (similarity 0.82)
- The panopticon amplifies whatever institution it is applied to (similarity 0.79)
- Bentham believed the inspectors themselves needed surveillance to prevent tyranny (similarity 0.78)