THESE PREMISES ARE PROTECTED BY 24 HOUR VIDEO SURVEILLANCE.” As the original French title rightly conveys, although Foucault’s book is a history of the modern prison, the idea of surveillance is conceptually prior to (or more primordial than) the notion of punishment. When I stand in line at the cafeteria in the building where I have my university office, to pay for my lunch, a sign on the way to the cashier reads: “WARNING. The first thing to be said about Discipline and Punish ( Surveiller et Punir) is that it is vastly more relevant to the world in which we are currently living (a post-9/11 world informed by ubiquitous concerns about security and surveillance) than the book was when first published (1975). Adorno, too, for instance, speaks of “the open-air prison which the world is becoming.” But Foucault surely went further than anyone else in building this conception into a full-fledged political philosophy. To be sure, this view is not unique to Foucault. The work of Michel Foucault shows that while it may be hard, it is not impossible.
It is hard to live in a society while thinking that the society, in virtually every aspect of its being, is a prison.
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