The panopticon and Orientalism: the bridge

One of the very noticeable things that have been observed for the past decades is the constant discrimination of the west to eastern culture, or to make things simple, to a culture of Orientalism. Because of this certain form of discrimination, what is happening to the East culture now is that they have this tendency to be over-influenced by the Western culture, and this is very evident in our own country.
In the Philippines alone, it is evident of how we are overly influenced over the American culture: the preference for McDonalds over Jolibee, Starbucks over Figaro, Levi’s over Bench, and many more countless examples. Also, this mentality that we have possessed affects us Filipinos such that we think very low on ourselves and on our abilities to make world-class products. Our basis of having world-class products are based on how the Americans do it.
This is how capitalism makes the world go round; like the panopticon that Michel Foucault has discussed in his book Discipline and Punish, the panopticon monitors every prisoner it has within the complex such that each prisoner is very conscious of his actions. Going back to the panopticon, the structure of it is circular, with the watchtower located at the center of the circle and the prisoners’ cells are arranged in a way that the watchtower and the person inside the watchtower can see everyone inside the structure, evaluating their every move inside their cells.
The same applies to the Orientalism that Edward Said has presented to us. In his discussion on Orientalism, Said points out that because of the domination of the Western culture over the Eastern culture, a bias was developed that the works from the Western culture are deemed to be superior over the works of the Eastern culture; hence, causing the Eastern culture to conform to the standards of the Western culture to maintain a status of superiority.
Due to the non-recognition of the Eastern works of the Western culture, the competition of the best work, in the literary, movie, scientific, medical, and in other various fields has become always towards to the western culture, of which would not be the case all the time since there are Eastern works that are proven to be greater than those of the Western works, but are, unfortunately, not recognized.
The panopticon, therefore can be applied in a larger, more global scale with the discussion of Said on Orientalism. From our previous discussion of the panopticon, we have said that it is applicable in the Philippine setting as we are given the norms of what it means to be “in” at the fashion scene, and on what it means to be ideally beautiful through the constant persuasion of the capitalists to the masses by telling them to buy their products so that they can be accepted into the societal norm.
Being able to maximize the effect while minimizing the costs, the panopticon concept makes the most of what is expected from the prisoners, which is to make the prisoners docile enough so that he can be productive and of use to what society needs from him. As the prisoner becomes conscious of his acts, he is then trained and exercised to become beneficial and hence, become a norm of society.
As for Orientalism, the application of the panopticon concept is very applicable such that it promotes monopoly on a global basis through removing the competition between the West and the East, making the East docile enough to adapt to Western culture and beliefs, and thus the Western people make the Eastern people docile enough so that they can be of greater use for the West, and hence, creating monopoly on a global scale.
Yet, although the panopticon concept can be well integrated into Said’s Orientalism, there still remain one distinct difference: the panopticon makes the prisoners docile enough for the benefit and for the good os the society, while Orientalism on the other hand makes the Eastern culture docile enough for the benefit of the Western culture, which then arise to racial discrimination.
This, therefore, is the problem of Orientalism that Edward Said wants to point out.
In his work, he emphasized that what is needed to be corrected is that that Western culture should understand that the Eastern culture is not to be considered an inferior culture as both cultures have their unique traits. For Said, it does not mean that what the Eastern culture believes is different from that of the Western culture does not necessitate that the Eastern culture is inferior to that of the Western culture. After all, the Western culture has its good and bad sides.
With this in mind, I believe that although the panopticon is a very useful concept for reforming convicts and prisoners to make them useful to society, the application of the panopticon has its limits, as it is evident with the rise of Orientalism and the West’s discrimination over the East.