Depiction Of Panopticon In Nerve By Jeanne Ryan

Abstract

This paper intends to familiarise Jeremy Bentham’s architectural prison design, Panopticon, which was adopted by Paul- Michel Foucault in his work, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975). According to Foucault, Bentham’s idea was to be applied upon societies with power as the key to discipline. The novel, Nerve (2016), by Jeanne Ryan, depicts how teenagers and young adults fall into digital traps without their knowledge. This research utilises the novel to showcase the lens of digital panopticon upon people via Internet. Thus, it is realised that people tend to believe themselves as safe and leading a secure private life, while in actuality, they have very limited privacy. Hence, this research highlights how the society is constantly surveilled by the government, corporations and other powerful entities with people’s ignorance and acceptance of normality in being monitored.