workspace on the run

Contemporary panopticism of the self

“Like Bentham’s Panopticon we have taken on board - within ourselves - the language games and associated subjectivities of Foucauldian “guardians” of all kinds, inciting ourselves to display and communicate the selves expected of us and that we assume others, in turn, share with us.

This contemporary panopticism is a massive set of language games we engage in virtually every day. Their various terms locate and discursively ground the construction of the empirical self.”

J.A. Holstein and J.F. Gubrium. The self we live by.  Oxford University Press, 2000.