Diálogos entre Michel Foucault e Byung-Chul Han

Do Panóptismo a Psicopolítica enquanto dispositivos de vigilância nas Cidades Contemporâneas

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze in detail Michel Foucault's panopticism linked to the psychopolitics of the South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han as surveillance devices. The discussions elaborated by Foucault in relation to the disciplinary society, carried out in the panopticon spaces of surveillance, shed light on the power games configured in the social fabric. For Michel Foucault, there is a type of power that is exercised over individuals through continuous surveillance, which ends up exercising control with a view to punishment or reward, a phenomenon that is conceived by this philosopher as panopticism. The result of this type of power is the tendency to transform the individual into what political and social power expects from him based on certain normative requirements. While for Byung-Chul Han, the means of control and subjection exercised through the use of digital communication technologies represent the ability to interfere at the pre-cognitive level, mixing the borders that represent modernity: body and mind, reason and passion, freedom and responsibility. The research was based on the thought of the South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han, exposed mainly in the following works: In the swarm: perspectives of the digital, Society of Transparency and Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and the new techniques of power, seeking to dialogue his thought with the work by Michel Foucault Watch and Punish. The understanding exposed mainly in Watch and Punish, known as panopticism, presents problems in relation to Byung-Chul Han's conception. Therefore, the reflection that follows aims to broaden the knowledge about Foucault's panopticism and Han's psychopolitics as surveillance devices in contemporary cities. The article is bibliographical in nature and aims to analyze to what extent these control or surveillance devices have contributed to reducing individual freedoms in cities.