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Patrick Gear
Dr. Mark Madigan
African American Autobiography
4/6/13
The Panopticon and the Resistance of the Mind: Observational Dynamics in African American
Autobiography
Contained within the history of the United States is a centuries-long narrative of
oppression and hegemony, the endpoint of which is still out of our cultural reach. We are
fortunate to be in possession of documentation of this tradition of discrimination in the form of
literature – biographical and fictional – by those among us most victimized by slavery and its
more subtle variations. African American writing, especially autobiography, is frequently used as
a means to convey stories that would not otherwise be available to us: the slave narrative; the
literature of the Jim Crow south; and the rhetoric of the urban poor in the latter half of the 20th
century. This essay is concerned with the systems implied but rarely made explicit in African
American works – the structure of disenfranchisement that lends a constantly changing power
differential to the narrative: from outright human trafficking in the time of Frederick Douglass to
the quieter economic and social disruption visible in the writing of John Edgar Wideman. To that
end, I will explore the philosophical conception of power and its abuse through subjugation,
especially the tenets of Foucaultian observation and self-imprisonment as defined by his panoptic
theory. By understanding the framework of oppression at its most basic level, we can ascertain
what form our resistance to it must take.
As a general historical trend, discrimination towards African Americans has moved from

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a physical to a social paradigm as society has grown more intolerant of overtly racist behavior:
after slavery was outlawed by the 13th
amendment, oppression took the form of the economically
and politically disenfranchising Jim Crow laws. Likewise, as public opinion for the Jim Crow
laws waned, oppression lived on as cultural segregation: African Americans were marginalized
long after they were legally freed and protected – to the point that scholars note that post-slavery
autobiographies frequently embody the tropes of the slave narrative (Fast 6). Blatant abuse of
power becomes untenable in the wake of a dissenting public, so it is replaced by a secret abuse of
power. This principle explains both the increasingly negative reaction our culture has had to
discrimination as a whole and the fact that, in a meaningful way, African Americans remain
enslaved by less obvious means.
The most subtle and most effective form of oppression we have been able to conceive of
is what Michel Foucault calls the panopticon, literally translated as “all-seeing,” a term borrowed
from English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. In principle, the panopticon deals with self-
imprisonment: without the application of force or even its threat, those under its rule will
regulate their own behavior to fit the standards of their oppressors – the panopticon creates “a
state of permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power … in short, that the
inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers”
(Foucault 201). In its most sinister form the panopticon allows this to occur without the
knowledge or even with the consent of those oppressed. The panopticon has existed in some
form or another since long before the institution of slavery (Foucault 195-198). Now, rather than
simply being a large part of the culture of imprisonment, it is its last and most difficult to destroy
remnant; with overtly racist sentiments diminishing, the most important step to genuine equality

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for African Americans is dismantling the panopticon as it exists in society today. Of course, this
gives shape to the first question we must ask: in what way does the panopticon manifest? How
can we see it so that we can resist it?
The panopticon under Foucault's conception contains several mechanisms relevant to
enslavement and oppression. As its name implies, it involves an all-seeing entity whose presence
is felt in the middle of a metaphorical prison, looking outward on the inmates with searchlights.
A person in the center of the panopticon may remain invisible while surveying the entire prison
and its residents – those inside the cells have no way of knowing whether the center or even the
other cells are occupied or not, because the searchlights are active regardless. This is a crucial
distinction: Foucault notes that prisoners' behavior – and even their sensations – will be modified
even if they are not observed, as long as the impression of surveillance remains intact: “the
perfection of power should tend to render its actual use unnecessary” (Foucault 201). In this way,
those in the center of the panopticon can influence and discipline whether or not they are actually
present: a disabled security camera makes just as good a deterrent as an active one. In terms of
physical mechanism, this is the entirety of panoptic theory: the prison's real effect is
accomplished by establishing a very powerful gradient of authority through observation.
Contained within the panoptic theory is the notion that surveillance alone is enough to
alter behavior. Foucault notes that “he who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it,
assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon
himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles;
he becomes the principle of his own subjection” (Foucault 202-3). In other words, the act of
seeing – and its privation, in the case of the inmate – is an expression of power: the act of

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viewing one who cannot view back is by definition an objectification: “visibility is a trap”
(Foucault 200). The overseer's power over the slave is not in the whip but in the eyes – by
observation alone he can keep those under his watch in line. Among the most salient examples of
this principle can be found in slave- and post-slave narratives.
Applying Foucaultian principles to literature is a simple matter of identifying elements of
surveillance and the resultant objectification of an individual or group. Because many African
American autobiographies operate within the paradigm of the slave narrative with its tropes of
perseverance and success in the face of institutional adversity, the Foucaultian power structure is
typically found in an antagonistic role that the narrator will overcome (Fast 16-7). We can track
the presence of the panopticon and its effects by the protagonist's path towards self-expression
and autonomy: no matter the situation of his rebellion, the panopticon is what he is rebelling
against, operating as it does invisibly and at the center of other forms of oppression. Even post-
slavery narratives fulfill this structure to some extent, meaning that our analysis need not end
with the passage of the 13th
amendment (Fast 1-2).
Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass explores the
Foucaultian power relationships inherent in the slave enterprise from the bottom up: although the
most overt display of authority comes from the beating of slaves by their masters, their
subjugation begins long before they are whipped – Douglass as a narrator is under constant
supervision, restricted from even exercising the basic intellectual pursuits of reading and writing:
“it was necessary to keep our religious masters at St. Michael's unacquainted with the fact … that
we were trying to read the word of God; for they had much rather see us engaged in those
degrading sports than to see us behaving like intellectual, moral, and accountable beings”

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(Douglass 55). Of course, in retrospect Douglass's owners were wise to keep him from the
developing his mind: Douglass characterizes the fulfillment of the questioning impulse as the
first step toward his freedom, saying of being denied the opportunity to learn to read: “I now
understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty – to wit, the white man's power to
enslave the black man … from that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom”
(Douglass 29). Douglass also asserts that speaking is the final expression of his autonomy: “I
spoke but a few moments, when I felt a degree of freedom, and said what I desired with
considerable ease” (Douglass 75). The path of object to subject aligns exactly with panoptic
theory – not only is Douglass constrained by Foucaultian power dynamics, but he frees himself
through the application of the very same principles: rather than being observed, Douglass
becomes an observer; rather than being spoken to, he becomes a speaker (DeLombard 246).
In “The Politics Of Language In Frederick Douglass's Narrative Of The Life Of An
American Slave,” Lisa Yun Lee explores the relationship between speaking and seeing,
specifically in the context of narration and self-expression. She notes that the early sections of
Douglass's Narrative focus almost entirely on observation, both from Douglass and his masters:
he is silent as events happen around him and it is only after he learns the importance of language
that his narration begins to reflect an autonomous voice (Lee 52-3). She connects voicelessness
with impotence: “Douglass focuses on others, including abused black women who suffer in
anguished silence … the black women are tortured and humiliated yet denied any means of
expression or escape” (Lee 53). She also notes that much of the contemporary attacks on African
American autobiography involve infringements on narrative authority: “in the book's two
prefaces, it is white men who must introduce and authenticate Douglass's work” (Lee 58).

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Although I agree with the assertion that there is a connection between expression and power, and
that the first half of the Narrative is spent largely silent, Lee neglects to extrapolate on the nature
of Douglass's observation and the ways in which his owners curtail it; it is not simply expression
but its antecedent – inquiry, and specifically Foucaultian inquiry – that defines the limits of
power, so it is in the best interest of the slaveholder to deny the slave's ability to question, learn,
and gather information: “I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a
thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to
annihilate the power of reason” (Douglass 64). This assertion points us in a different direction,
away from Lee's vocalization-as-power, to something else: sight. It is this that is most challenged
and stymied by Douglass's masters.
Because Douglass is what Jeannine DeLombard calls an “embodied subject” – a narrator
who strives to give his story a sense of corporeality rather than objectivity – he is assailed on all
sides by threats against his body and its ability to observe (DeLombard 248). Consider the
passage in which Douglass is beaten so badly he is afraid that his eye will burst from its socket:
“one of their number gave me, with his heavy boot, a powerful kick in the left eye. My eyeball
seemed to have burst. ” (Douglass 63). Any sensation in the Narrative is contingent on the
presence of Douglass's physical being, meaning that the abuse of the body is by definition an
abuse of the senses (Baker 269). Thus, Lee's characterization of the Narrative as moving from
voicelessness to autonomous self-expression is incomplete: it is Douglass's ability to observe, not
to speak, that enables him to absorb knowledge and gain his freedom: “the silver trump of
freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no
more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing” (Douglass 33). Before there

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were assaults on Douglass's authority as a writer, there were attacks on his physical being – more
specifically, a denial of his right to see: he is not allowed to read; his subjective being is
constrained by the limitations of his physical existence; he cannot indulge in curiosity without
angering his masters to violence (Douglass 31). The ability to self-express is contingent on the
ability to see and understand, and Douglass's owners know it – the denial of Douglass's basic
rights is not simple cruelty, but a calculated effort to disrupt the curiosity and drive for
knowledge inherent in human nature. This is the panoptic principle defined, hidden behind
physical abuse: a person who is not allowed to see the circumstances of his imprisonment has no
ability to rebel; thus, the jailer keeps his prisoner ignorant of his incarceration: “this invisibility is
a guarantee of order. If the inmates are convicts, there is no danger of a plot … if they are
patients, there is no danger of contagion” (Foucault 200-1).
As mentioned, the presence of the panopticon is hidden behind more obvious methods of
oppression in the antebellum south: slaves being whipped into submission have more pressing
worries than the philosophical power dynamics operating behind the scenes around them. In fact,
Lee's misdiagnosis of power-dynamics in the Narrative as being dependent on vocalization
rather than observation proves my point: the panopticon is so adept at disguising itself behind
other forms of subjugation that it is invisible even to scholars. It is only as the overt modes of
oppression begin to fall away in the 20th
century that the once-obfuscated panoptic principles
behind slavery come to the forefront (Foucault 209). As African Americans obtain more and
more civil freedoms and come ever closer to genuine autonomy, the layers of institutional
resistance are stripped away by an angry populace until only the most basic tenets of oppression
remain. By the time John Edgar Wideman is writing, millions around the country would be

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incensed by the kinds of overt violence that Douglass described in his Narrative. Very few,
however, seem to notice that the more subtle enslavement that has been in operation since prior
to the Narrative is still intact: the public is vehemently opposed to racially-motivated violence,
but seems unaware of the dynamics of power-observation that underpin it. This defines the next
step that must be taken to break the panopticon's hold on society: the population must be
informed of its presence in some way.
John Edgar Wideman's Brothers and Keepers tackles the panoptic problem head on for
this very reason: despite being the most encompassing expression of power against African
Americans still in use, the general population acts as if oppression died with lynching. He notes
that “prison is more perverse. Inside the walls nothing is certain, nothing can be taken for granted
except the arbitrary exercise of absolute power” (Wideman 183). Society outside the prison
remains either uncaring or unaware: “the keepers decide what time prisoners must awaken, when
they may clean themselves, when they may eat, to whom they may speak … they exist in a
political, ethical limbo via-à-vis free-world people. Out of sight, out of mind” (Wideman 188).
Wideman's condemnations of the American prison system outline the panopticon in all but name:
“Separation must be absolute … the moral and ethical principles that bind society don't count
inside prison. You, the custodians, formulate whatever rules, whatever system you require to
keep the prisoners in captivity … a chasm, a wall, a two-sided, unbreakable mirror” (Wideman
189, emphasis mine). The book's main character and secondary narrator, Wideman's brother
Robby, is kept in a prison that wholeheartedly embraces Foucault's power philosophy in order to
keep inmates controlled and docile, to the point of disrupting their sense of time: “for one thing,
when you're in jail, you don't control your time. Somebody gives you a linear time sentence – so

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you are trapped in someone else's definition of time” (Baker 268). This should come as no
surprise to us – Foucault's Discipline and Punish, the volume in which the panopticon was first
espoused, was written explicitly about correctional facilities. It is not enough to discuss the
prison system alone, however: in order to dismantle the panopticon we must understand the way
in which it permeates society.
Judith Butler writes of Foucault's philosophy that if “we understand power as forming the
subject … then power is not simply what we oppose but also, in a strong sense, what we depend
on for our existence … Subjection consists precisely in this fundamental dependency on a
discourse we never chose but that, paradoxically, initiates and sustains our agency” (Butler 2).
This statement, particularly the use of the phrase “discourse we never chose,” strongly echoes
naturalist rhetoric concerning poverty: those who are born into certain circumstances are bound
by forces beyond their control and have their freedoms checked. No matter what we like to say
about the American dream, a person with a successful father is far more likely to be successful
than an individual from a poor family: “the 'we' who accept such terms [the conditions
surrounding us] are fundamentally dependent on those terms for 'our' existence” (Butler 2). We
can include in this analysis conditions like poverty, lack of education, and abuse: the entirety of
life for a massive number of African Americans is based on these factors, which Butler ascribes
directly to the construction of a Foucaultian power structure (Butler 2-3). Wideman comes to the
same conclusion: Robby's path to prison began much earlier than his criminal career – it began in
Homewood, where he grew up (Wideman 19). Society, we must conclude, is itself a panopticon.
Wideman's triumph in Brothers and Keepers is twofold. He not only exposes the
panopticon's existence and omnipresence in our society, but also makes and enacts the

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beginnings of a plan to resist it. Let us return to the revelation attained by Frederick Douglass in
the Narrative: the most powerful ally of enslavement is the ignorance of the slave (Douglass 64).
Looking at its contrary – that the best way to disrupt oppression is to become educated – and we
find Wideman's resistance: the best way to combat the panopticon is to notice its presence.
Wideman accomplishes this by simply pointing it out in a well-publicized work: by getting
people to read and educate themselves about the nature of power in society, the panopticon is
weakened even before social action is taken. Wideman's act of writing is not simply an act of
expression but an act of resistance. This is true of all literature of the disenfranchised: “precisely
because it has been the fate of numerous black Americans to have been systematically prevented
from creating history, the impulse to write historical autobiography remains strong in this era of
alienation” (Hoem 243). To this I would add simply that it must remain strong if the era of
alienation is to end at all.
The panopticon has so thoroughly imposed a disenfranchising structure onto African
Americans that the last recourse against it is to call attention to it through writing. Until it is
dismantled, any autobiography written by a member of the disenfranchised is a de facto slave
narrative, whether or not it is identified as one – those in the position to write them are still
enslaved (Fast 16-7). The panopticon is present in our society, and powerful by virtue of its
subtlety – any deconstruction of the Foucaultian power structure must begin with its
demystification. In the words of the great orator Christopher Hitchens, “Charles Darwin was
born in 1809, on the very same day as Abraham Lincoln, and there is no doubt as to which of
them has proved to be the greater 'emancipator'” (Hitchens 111). Education and inquiry are, as
they have been since the time of Frederick Douglass, the only ways out.

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Work Cited
Baker, Lisa. “Storytelling And Democracy (In The Radical Sense): A Conversation With John
Edgar Wideman.” African American Review 34.2 (2000): 263-272. MLA International
Bibliography. Web. 3 Apr. 2013.
Butler, Judith. “The Psychic Life of Power: Theories of Subjection.” Stanford University Press
(1997). Web. 10 Apr. 2013.
DeLombard, Jeannine. “'Eye-Witness To The Cruelty': Southern Violence And Northern
Testimony In Frederick Douglass's 1845 Narrative.” American Literature: A Journal
Of Literary History, Criticism, And Bibliography 73.2 (2001): 245-275. MLA
International Bibliography. Web. 3 Apr. 2013.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written
by Himself. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. Print.
Fast, Robin Riley. “Brothers And Keepers And The Tradition Of The Slave Narrative.” Melus
22.4 (1997): 3-20. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 3 Apr. 2013.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 2nd
ed. New York: Vintage
Books, 1995. 195-227. Print.
Hitchens, Christopher. God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. 1st
ed. New York:
Hatchette Book Group, 2007. Print.
Hoem, Sheri I. “Recontextualizing Fathers: Wideman, Foucault And African American
Genealogy.” Textual Practice 14.2 (2000): 235-251. MLA International Bibliography.
Web. 3 Apr. 2013.
Lee, Lisa Yun. “The Politics Of Language In Frederick Douglass's Narrative Of The Life Of An
American Slave.” Melus 17.2 (1991): 51-59. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 3
Apr. 2013.
Wideman, John E. Brothers and Keepers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Print.