Subjectless post/non/management: experience of prisons

Abstract

As Ukraine’s development is undergoing a period of transition, which is characterized by an increase in the role of uncontrolled tendencies, it encourages people to social transformations in all fields, including management. One of them may be the expansion of the experience of working in prisons, where management turns into a purely technological (programmed) activity, resulting in a new phenomenon – information management with its inherent subjectless post/non/management. The article analyzes the projects of prisons – Panopticon by Michel Foucault and Superpanopticon by Mark Poster, and it has been concluded that they were created in order to determine the boundaries of routine and monotony of human movements and actions, which are characteristic of the economy of an industrial society. It has been confirmed that with the help of the information of the Superpanopticon database (banking system) that is testified by the solvency of the client, it obtains various advantages. It has been proved that the main function of Panopticon is to provide the presence in carefully guarded space, and the primary task of the database is to guarantee that no outsider could enter it; Panopticon aims at implanting discipline to the residents as a means against unusualness and difference from others, as well as the right of choice and any variety. It is emphasized that Thomas Mathiesen, investigating the process of observing the minority by the majority (the mass media development), contributed to the creation of Synopticon. As to Panopticon it is described as a local mechanism of immobilization of people whereas Synopticon as the one of global character (observers are ‘detached’ from their location during observation); meanwhile those who are observed turn into observers. It has been noted that Panopticon forcibly creates the situation where people can be observed, while Synopticon proceeds from the method of temptation. “Pelican Bay” is a factory of isolation (immobilization – as an indicator of rejection in the era of space-time constraints). Having compared Panopticon of Michel Foucault and Craig Minogue’s “Marngonet”, it has been proved that the latter is a ‘machine for transforming the mind’ and ‘producing subjectivity’, and these technologies are aimed at determining the limit of space-time constraints of a man (“Pelican Bay”).