Like have you ever heard of Foucault’s theory of the panopticon. Foundational to queer theory as a discipline. So imagine you are a prisoner and you are in prison. You and your fellow prisoners are confined in individual cells. These cells are arranged in a circle, with a single watchtower in the center. The walls between you and your neighbors are solid and opaque. You cannot see them. The wall facing the watchtower is transparent, as is the wall directly opposite it. Your body is strikingly dark against the daylit background; the overseer can see every single move you make. You cannot see into the watchtower, prisoner that you are. The tower is too high, and the windows are mirrored.
You are a prisoner in the panopticon. Somebody is always watching you. You can feel their eyes upon you, their gaze stretching all the way back to that distant tower, even if you can’t see who’s inside. Every time you step a toe out of line, you are punished. Every time you try to speak to your neighbors, you are punished. You are not allowed to touch the glass, or the door. You are not allowed to break things, or huddle beneath your blanket and hide from the watching eyes. They punish you until, eventually, you stop doing these things. You never know when the eyes are watching.
So you sit there, on your cot, and sometimes you stare at the world outside. You see all sorts of things out there; everyday people with ordinary lives, who live in houses and have terrible jobs and perfectly average, delightfully messy families. You think you hate the people outside, but the truth is that you’re so terribly jealous you can hardly stand to look. But you keep looking, every single day, because the only other thing you can look at is the watchtower, and the watchtower makes you afraid.
Suppose there is no one inside the watchtower. Suppose the overseer lies slumped over in his chair, dead. Suppose his corpse has rotted away and his bones have turned to dust. How are you supposed to know? You cannot see inside the watchtower. You can still feel the overseer’s eyes long after he died, but then again, you don’t even know he’s dead. How long would you sit there, afraid of eyes that have rotted right out of the overseer’s corpse? How long will you stay there, terrified of the wrath of a man who has been dead for years?
The truth is you will stay there forever. And you will not touch the door, which is unlocked, or attempt to speak to your neighbors, who have all escaped a long, long time ago. You will sit there and watch the outside world, sick with jealousy, fantasizing about plucking one of those tiny little people from their tiny little life and holding them close in your tiny little prison. Sometimes you fantasize about being one of the tiny little people outside, with a tiny little life and a tiny family you love. The fantasy makes you tremendously afraid, because the outside is deceptive. It’s not safe out there, where things can touch you. Where you are vulnerable and the whole world is unfamiliar. So. You will sit there in your cell, and when someone finally opens the door you will leap up and cry get out! Get out! Don’t you know he’s watching?! Don’t you know it’s not safe for me outside?! And you will push your would-be rescuer away until you can close the door in their face. It doesn’t matter how persistent your rescuer is, or how persuasive they might be. You will not leave your prison, your safe haven, until the day you die.
Anyways. Foucaultnatural. Go read discipline and punish.
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