Panopticism and Our Secrets
... The two essays were written by: Michel Foucault - “Panopticism” and Susan Griffin - “Our Secrets”. ... “Panopticism” deals with how you can train the mind to self-impose restrictions on itself by becoming the unconscious enforcer of how one acts and behaves. “Our Secrets” deals with how “hidden forces” (Griffin 395) can influence and brainwash you into allowing one to give over the control of their life without even questioning the means or the motives of the enforcers. ... In the essay “Panopticism”, Foucault documents the measures taken when a city was quarantined because of an outbreak of the plague. ... In the essay “Our Secrets, Griffin writes about the Holocaust and World War II (Griffin 396). ... At an early age, Himmler learned to keep his personal feelings to himself and to live a life of secrets (Griffin 352). Later on in his life, he became a keeper of secrets (Griffin 362). ... In my quest to understand both essays, the most significant thing that tied them both together for me was how Foucault’s “Panopticism” and Griffin’s “Our Secrets, yielded the same results. Although their styles for implementation were different, the methods of disciplinary control used in “Panopticism” were obvious and exposed.