'A Picture of the Treasury': The Panopticon Penitentiary, Bureaucracy, and Autobiography in the Writings of Jeremy Bentham

《金库图》：杰里米·边沁著作中的圆形监狱、官僚机构和自传

• 批准号: AH/X008274/1
• 负责人: Thomas Schofield
• 金额: $ 49.22万
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FX008274%2F1
• 关键词: Picture; Treasury; Panopticon; Penitentiary; Bureaucracy

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the philosopher and reformer, conceived of the panopticon-the all-seeing place-as a circular building enshrining the 'central inspection principle', whereby all activities could be supervised from a central location. Responding to the British government's need for a penitentiary following the end of transportation to America, in 'Panopticon; or, the Inspection-House' (1791) Bentham proposed to build a panopticon prison, where the governor in a central inspection tower might view all the prisoners housed in the cells on the periphery. Assuming that they were under constant surveillance, the prisoners would learn self-discipline and love of work, be reformed, and eventually released as useful citizens.The panopticon has become one of the most iconic and controversial symbols in the humanities and social sciences as a result of French philosopher Michel Foucault's identification of it as a paradigm of the modern state. In Foucault's view, the panopticon enshrined the mechanisms employed by capitalist liberal democracies in order to discipline and subdue their populations. The idea of the panopticon has resonated in architecture, economics, history, law, management studies, philosophy, political science, and psychology, and has given rise to a whole new subject area-surveillance studies. The panopticon has been adopted by journalists and commentators as a metaphor for oppressive, all-encompassing surveillance in the digital age, and continues to prove fertile ground for reinterpretation by artists, musicians, and authors.This enormous scholarly, intellectual, and creative endeavour, has, however, been based on inadequate and incomplete editions of Bentham's writings. Foucault's work and the subsequent scholarship has relied on inadequate or partial versions of Bentham's texts, while further hugely important manuscript material has never before been made available in an authoritative or accessible format. Hence, the centrepiece of this research will be a landmark resource: an authoritative version of Bentham's 'A Picture of the Treasury' for the critically acclaimed edition of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, together with a collection of interpretive essays, in both published and open-access formats. 'A Picture of the Treasury' will constitute an enduring contribution to future research in the humanities and social sciences by publishing for the first time Bentham's own intimate account of his involved and ultimately fruitless negotiations with Treasury and Home Office officials between 1798 and 1802 to build the panopticon penitentiary. As Bentham came to realize that the government were minded to set aside the panopticon scheme, despite Parliamentary approval and several years of negotiations, planning, and expenditure of public money, he suspected that officials were conspiring either to ruin him financially or even drive him to suicide.The research will bring into the public domain for the first time, in authoritative form, a text that will bear comparison with such celebrated works as Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions (1782) and John Stuart Mill's Autobiography (1873). 'A Picture of the Treasury', moreover, will contribute significantly to our understanding of the relationship between executive and legislature and to the inner workings of key administrative departments in the British government at the turn of the nineteenth century-and so constitute a real-life equivalent to Charles Dickens's circumlocution office in Bleak House-and add a new dimension to well-established debates concerning the emergence of the liberal state and its intellectual context.

哲学家和改革家杰里米·边沁(Jeremy Bentham，1748-1832)将全景观景台(Panopticon)--无所不在的地方--构思为一座圆形建筑，体现了“中央检查原则”，所有活动都可以从一个中心位置进行监督。为了回应英国政府在结束对美国的运输后对监狱的需求，边沁在《圆形监狱》(1791年)中提议建造一座圆形监狱，在那里，中央检查塔的总督可以查看外围牢房中关押的所有囚犯。假设他们处于持续的监视之下，囚犯们会学习自律和热爱工作，被改造，并最终被释放为有用的公民。由于法国哲学家米歇尔·福柯将其视为现代国家的典范，圆环已成为人文和社会科学中最具标志性和最具争议的符号之一。在福柯看来，《全景式》将资本主义自由民主国家用来约束和征服人民的机制奉为神圣。全景式的概念在建筑学、经济学、历史学、法学、管理学、哲学、政治学和心理学中引起了共鸣，并产生了一个全新的学科领域--监督研究。新闻工作者和评论家们用圆形眼镜来比喻数字时代压抑的、包罗万象的监视，并继续为艺术家、音乐家和作家的重新诠释提供肥沃的土壤。然而，这种巨大的学术、智力和创造性的努力，是建立在边沁作品的不充分和不完整版本的基础上的。福柯的工作和随后的学术一直依赖于边沁文本的不充分或部分版本，而更重要的手稿材料以前从未以权威或可访问的格式提供。因此，这项研究的中心将是一项里程碑式的资源：为广受好评的杰里米·边沁作品集版本提供边沁《国库图景》的权威版本，以及出版和开放获取格式的解释性文章集。《财政部图景》首次发表了边沁自己的私密记录，讲述了他在1798年至1802年期间与财政部和内政部官员为建造圆形监狱而进行的谈判，最终无果而终。该书将对未来人文和社会科学的研究做出持久的贡献。当边沁意识到政府有意搁置圆形监狱计划时，尽管得到了议会的批准，经过了几年的谈判、规划和公款支出，他怀疑官员们正在密谋要么毁了他的经济，要么甚至迫使他自杀。这项研究将首次以权威的形式将一本文本带入公共领域，可以与让-雅克·卢梭(Jean-Jacques Rousseau)的《忏悔录》(1782)和约翰·斯图尔特·密尔(John Stuart Mill)的《自传》(1873)等著名作品相比较。此外，《国库图》将有助于我们理解19世纪之交英国政府行政与立法之间的关系以及关键行政部门的内部运作--因此构成了相当于查尔斯·狄更斯在《荒凉山庄》中迂回演绎的办公室的现实生活--并为有关自由国家的出现及其知识背景的老牌辩论增添了一个新的维度。