Colloque « Relire le Panoptique de Bentham aujourd’hui »
Contact : malik.bozzo-rey@univ-catholille.fr
Programme
Jeudi 4 décembre
9h30 : Ouverture du colloque – Malik Bozzo-Rey
9h45-10h30 : Jean-Pierre Cléro – Université de Rouen Le panoptique comme construction transcendantale.
Il fut un temps, dans les années 70 du siècle dernier, où le panoptique a servi d’argument pour rendre plausible un Bentham à la solde du capitalisme, ou au service d’une volonté d’asservir les masses populaires (en allant jusqu’à parler à son égard de « totalitarisme »). Ces accusations sont datées autant qu’anachroniques. Elles nous apparaissent aujourd’hui pécher par trois défauts principaux. Le contournement d’un point central, d’abord : l’utilitarisme est une théorie du plaisir et de la douleur, il n’est pas un plaidoyer en faveur du marché ; ensuite, leur absence à peu près totale d’une réflexion sur ce qu’on pourrait entendre par « calcul éthique, aurique, politique » ; enfin, une impasse sur ce qu’on pourrait entendre par « machine », puisque Bentham tient son panoptique pour une machine. Nous essaierons de revisiter ces trois volets, non pas pour faire de Bentham un philosophe de notre temps, mais pour tenter de l’arracher aux critiques les plus grossières et pour nous instruire de ses analyses.
10h30-11h15 : Claire Wrobel – Université Paris Panthéon Assas Re-reading the Panopticon in the age of digital surveillance: perspectives from contemporary literature
Since its popularization by Foucault’s influential if controversial interpretation in Discipline and Punish (1975), Bentham’s Panopticon has had numerous afterlives in the field of literature, where it has caught the attention of authors and critics alike. It has provided a privileged setting in fiction which seeks to explore the functioning of social control (e.g. Carter 1984; Stross 2006; Fagan 2012), it has become a narratological trope to discuss omniscience (e.g. Bender 1987; Miller 1988), and it is almost systematically mobilized in analyses of Neo-Victorian fiction which stages penitentiaries (e.g. Slettedhal Macpherson 2004; Armitt and Gamble 2006).
This paper argues that with the concomitant advent of surveillance capitalism, increased public awareness of both state and corporate surveillance, and ever-more explicit tackling of surveillance in contemporary literature, the terms of the conversation between panopticism and literature are being reshuffled in ways that prompt new readings of Bentham’s original scheme. It first examines two examples of what may be called satirical dystopias – Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last (2015) and Dave Eggers’ The Every (2021) – which test Bentham’s idea of extending surveillance to political institutions in order to challenge contemporary notions of transparency in governance, and perhaps even the very possibility of establishing the latter. It then turns to three examples of contemporary fiction written by women authors on both sides of the Atlantic – Joanna Kavenna’s Zed (2019); Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers (2022); Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel (2025) – to discuss how surveillance-themed literature, with its emphasis on mind intrusion and prediction, highlights the limitations of the panoptic paradigm to grasp the new shapes surveillance is taking in the digital age.
11h15-11h30 : Pause
11h30-12h15 : Mehdi Ghassemi – ISTC/ETHICS Université Catholique de Lille Panoptic Render Engines: The Inversion of Bentham’s Democratic Platform in NEOM’s Aesthetic Politics
The PANBentham project posits that Jeremy Bentham’s Constitutional Panopticon was intended to function as a democratic tool, allowing the public to police the state. This presentation argues that the Saudi megacity, NEOM, represents the ultimate perversion of Bentham’s ideal—a realization of the Panopticon’s technical capabilities stripped entirely of its democratic purpose. Through an analysis of NEOM’s visual discourse, I identify a specific regime of futurism—a mix of platform aesthetics and spectacle designed to frame the city’s future as inevitable and non-negotiable. This case study demonstrates that when Bentham’s « safeguard against misrule » is replaced by an aestheticized « user interface, » the city becomes a high-resolution trap. By diagnosing this inversion, we can better understand the urgency of recovering Bentham’s original theory.
12h15 : Repas
14h-14h45 : Emmanuelle De Champs – CY Cergy Paris Université Le Panoptique éducatif : des Panopticon Letters à la réforme de l’éducation au début du 19e siècle
Dès les Panopticon Letters, Bentham présente les déclinaisons pédagogiques de l’architecture panoptique. L’un des seuls bâtiments panoptiques construits par Samuel Bentham à Saint-Pétersbourg, destine à la formation des apprentis des métiers de la construction navale est d’ailleurs exclusivement destiné à cette fonction. En 1816, dans Chrestomathia, Bentham adapte ce système pour l’adapter à l’école chrestomathique, celle des savoirs utiles, dont il soutient la création.
Si Anne Brunon-Ernst compte le « panoptique éducatif » comme l’un des 4 panoptiques de Bentham (Brunon-Ernst 2007), son fonctionnement et son inscription dans les projets éducatifs contemporains a été peu étudié (Cléro 2007). Cette présentation appelle à combler cette lacune et à replacer le panoptique éducatif, ses méthodes et ses objectifs, dans les expérimentations pédagogiques du premier 19e siècle en Europe.
14h45-15h30 : Michael Quinn – Universität Münster Formative Influence in the Poor Panopticon: Cui Bono?
This paper will first very briefly outline Bentham’s proposals for the accommodation and employment of those claiming the provision of subsistence from the state in an initial 250 panoptic industry houses. It will then discuss that proposal in relation to its likely positive and negative effects on those committed to the care of the National Charity Company, and in particular on children, in comparison with the children of the ‘independent poor’. Bentham explicitly argued that, notwithstanding the very limited sphere of liberty allowed the Company’s apprentices, such a comparison conclusively demonstrated the superiority of socialisation as a ‘foster-child’ of the country to that experienced by the offspring of the independent poor. Bentham’s claim will be evaluated in the areas of health, education and skills, economic prospects and liberty, and, by applying Mark Haugaard’s model of the four dimensions of power, the exercises of power and influence on the part of the Company will be classified. Given that Haugaard identifies his fourth dimension of power with the ontological self-perception of individuals through the Foucauldian process of subjectification or socialisation through discipline, Foucault’s model of ‘panopticism’ will necessarily be addressed. In the light of the late Bentham’s commitment to a ‘Constitutional Panopticon’ or ‘panoptic democracy’, the paper will then examine methods available in Bentham’s poor law proposals for ‘guarding the guards’. The paper will conclude with some remarks on similarities and differences between the operation of surveillance and influence in the poor panopticon, and its operation in contemporary ‘information societies’.
15h30-16h15 : Tim Causer – University College London ‘What I am painting in history’: A Picture of the Treasury, 1798–1802
This paper will attempt to do two things. First, to talk a little about A Picture of the Treasury, Bentham’s semi-autobiographical account of his negotiations with the government from 1798 to 1802 over the panopticon penitentiary scheme, why he wrote it, and what (if anything) he intended to do with it. Second, it will suggest where the forthcoming publication, for the first time, of Picture leaves us for what we know (and what we do not) about the history of the panopticon scheme as well as Bentham’s life during this period.
16h15-16h30 : Pause
16h30-17h15 : Anne Brunon-Ernst – Université Paris Panthéon Assas Colonial Panopticon
Twenty years ago, I identified four Panopticons. The prison-Panopticon, the pauper-Panopticon, the chrestomatic Panopticon and the constitutional Panopticon. These are not copycat versions of the 1790-1791 Panopticon, but amended version of the prison-Panopticon as they are adapted to new uses and users.
In the same research paper, I had noted a fifth context in which the Panopticon was discussed: Bentham’s writings against the penal colony of New South Wales. At the time, on account of the fact that this discussion did not imply new panoptic features or uses, it did not qualify for a separate entry.
However, the recent edition of Bentham’s Writings on Australia (Bentham 2022), and its companion Bentham and Australia (Causer 2022) by the London-based Bentham Project, sheds a new light on Bentham’s writings on colonies and make it possible to reconsider the role of the Panopticon in a colonial context. Bentham’s panoptic writings on New South Wales now need to be critically reassessed.
A fifth Panopticon type, named colonial Panopticon, could be of use to explore panoptic features in a colonial context. The purpose of the present paper is to flesh out this concept and draw meaningful conclusions for the study of Bentham, classical utilitarian position towards colonialism as well as for surveillance studies.
17h15 : Clôture de la journée
Vendredi 5 décembre
9h-9h45 : Elsa Besson – ENSA-Marseille Usages ou mésusages ? Le Panoptique et les architectes contemporains de Jeremy Bentham
Suivant une partie de l’historiographie de la prison, l’influence du Panoptique ne fait pas de doute, notamment auprès des architectes, dès les années 1790. Ces derniers, en Angleterre et ailleurs, auraient à la fois mobilisé le terme et décliné le principe panoptique, pour projeter et construire la prison moderne, objet d’enjeux d’égalité autant que de sécurité et porteuse des impératifs d’une profonde réforme. L’intervention propose de réévaluer la place du Panoptique dans l’histoire de l’architecture contemporaine à Bentham, de la fin du XVIIIe siècle aux années 1830, afin de saisir au plus près les formes et les déformations de l’« idée d’architecture » panoptique dans les premières réformes de la prison occidentale.
9h45-10h30 : Daniel Hotard – Université Paris Panthéon Assas Representations of transparency and mandate in American whistleblower biographies
American whistleblower narratives in the defense industry (Ellsberg, 2002; Kiriakou, 2009; Scahill, 2016; Snowden, 2019; Manning, 2022), in the medical industry (Rost, 2006; Bass, 2008; Barry, 2015), and in the tech industry (Fowler, 2020; Haugen, 2023; Wynn-Williams, 2025) tend to play upon similar representations of opacity and transparency in their attempt to construct a personal mandate (Hotard, 2025) to act in the name of the public interest (Boot, 2020), for its greater good. From a sociological point of view (Heinich, 2017, 2022), what criteria do whistleblowers use to evaluate the transparency or the opacity of organized action? How do these criteria reflect Bentham’s “panoptical” ideal of democratic surveillance (Brunon-Ernst, 2012)?
10h30-11h15 : Maria Ruiz Dorado – Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha From Bentham’s panopticon to today’s government spyware.
This presentation examines the evolution of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon as a foundational metaphor for surveillance technologies and its most extreme contemporary manifestation: governmental spyware capable of controlling personal devices without the user’s knowledge or consent. Starting from Bentham’s original design – an architectural mechanism conceived to guarantee permanent and asymmetrical observation – the analysis explores how States have transposed this principle into the digital realm through intrusive tools that enable the total monitoring of communications, movements, relationships, and behavioural patterns. The presentation studies how these systems replicate and amplify the panoptic logic: the invisibility of the observer, the powerlessness of the observed, and the normalisation of control. It further reflects on the implications for fundamental rights, including privacy, freedom of expression, the secrecy of communications, and democratic participation, in a context where national security is invoked to justify opaque and often disproportionate practices.
11h15-11h30 : Pause
11h30-12h15 : Guillaume Tusseau – Sciences Po Debating digital constitutionalism: a Benthamian perspective
The research explores the concept of digital constitutionalism, drawing on the thinking of Jeremy Bentham to offer a critical and constructive interpretation. Digital constitutionalism refers to all initiatives aimed at regulating digital technologies through constitutional principles such as the protection of fundamental rights or the limitation of power. This phenomenon is not limited to a simple interaction between law and digital technology, but reveals a profound transformation of normativity, where technologies themselves become vectors for the production of norms.
Two main dynamics have been identified: on the one hand, the influence of digital technology on constitutional institutions; on the other, the influence of constitutional law on digital technology. Digital constitutionalism is structured around two major axes: the protection of fundamental rights and the reinvention of the separation of powers. This involves both adapting traditional rights (freedom of expression, privacy, equality) to the challenges of digital technology and recognising new rights specific to the digital environment, such as the right to disconnect, data portability and neuro-rights. At the same time, digital technologies are disrupting the traditional functions of public authorities. Artificial intelligence is used in the justice system, in administration and even in legislation. These developments are challenging traditional institutional balances. Some private actors, such as digital platforms, are developing quasi-constitutional structures. These entities are adopting mechanisms for governance, control and protection of rights without going through states, illustrating a self-constitutionalisation of the digital world.
Research also emphasises the normativity specific to computer code. Unlike traditional law, which can be broken, code imposes irreversible technical constraints: what is not permitted by the software architecture is simply impossible. This normativity of necessity, or “anankastic”, replaces the normativity of duty, or “deontic”. This calls into question the very possibility of disobedience, which is essential in a constitutional democracy. Power is now exercised not through the law, but through the technical design of systems, which poses a major risk to individual autonomy and the separation of powers.
Digital platforms combine the functions of legislator, executive and judge. This confusion of powers is contrary to the fundamental principles of constitutionalism. It is all the more problematic because it is exercised by private actors motivated by economic interests. Algocracy, or government by algorithms, refers to this opaque, centralised and unaccountable power. It is a form of technological despotism, where citizens have neither control nor effective recourse.
Contrary to expectations, Jeremy Bentham, often associated with surveillance and panopticism, offers conceptual tools for thinking about digital constitutionalism. He considers constitutional law to be a binding law, based on moral and popular sanction. The power of the sovereign rests on the people’s habit of obedience and disposition to obey, which can be withdrawn. Bentham proposes the idea of a Public Opinion Tribunal, capable of controlling those in power through criticism, transparency and publicity. Transposed to the digital realm, this court could take the form of citizen campaigns, ethical labels or co-regulation mechanisms.
The article thus envisages co-regulation involving all stakeholders: states, businesses, citizens, NGOs and experts. Initiatives such as trusted flaggers, moderation boards and ethical labels are attempts to reintroduce democratic control mechanisms into the digital space. Finally, approaches such as digisprudence aim to integrate constitutional values into the design of technologies, making code more transparent, contestable and respectful of rights. Digital constitutionalism, although still under construction, deserves to be considered in the light of Benthamian philosophy, which emphasises the limitation of power, transparency and citizen participation.
12h15 : Clôture du colloque – Malik Bozzo-Rey
12h30 : Déjeuner
