is a philosophy and history of art graduate who writes for Philosophie Magazine.
Picture © CP
Haarlem prison, in the Netherlands, in June 2010. The massive dome is 55 metres wide and 36 metres high. © Nils Van Houts / ANP via AFP
In the Dutch town of Haarlem, an old prison is now home to Amazon Web Services – an ironic move, to say the least, and one which calls to mind Foucault’s concept of a “disciplinary society,” inspired by the 19th-century thinker Jeremy Bentham.
Over 1,000 m2 of shared space, 70 private offices, 20 meeting rooms. On paper, Amazon Web Services’ new workplace in Haarlem (Netherlands) is the thing of dreams. But the reality isn’t so glamorous: opened in 2020, the workspace was created out of the premises of an old prison which closed in 2016, due to a lack of prisoners. The building was then renovated, as the website Korii shows in a video which drew a lot of criticism on social media.
Panopticism and disciplinary society
The prison was built on the model of the “panopticon”, invented at the end of the 18th century by thinker Jeremy Bentham, who wanted to revolutionise the penitentiary world thanks to a new building design. He imagined a circular fortress made of two buildings: on the outside, the prisoner’s cells, and in the centre, an inspection tower – “a spot from which, without any change of situation, a man may survey, in the same perfection, the whole number.” (J. Bentham, Panopticon or the Inspection-House, 1791) Bentham believed such an architecture would allow authorities to modify the behaviour and minds of the inmates without the use of force, through the mere presence of the watchful eye of the inspector. The knowledge that they’re being watched, but without knowin…
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