'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年）将全景望远镜（panopticon）--全方位观察的地方--设想为一个圆形建筑，体现了“中央检查原则”，所有活动都可以从一个中央位置进行监督。为了回应英国政府在运送到美国结束后对监狱的需求，边沁在《环形监狱;或检查所》（1791年）中建议建造一座环形监狱，监狱长可以在中央检查塔上查看周围牢房中的所有囚犯。假定他们在持续的监视下，囚犯将学会自律和热爱工作，进行改造，并最终释放为有用的公民。圆形监狱已经成为人文和社会科学中最具标志性和最具争议性的象征之一，因为法国哲学家米歇尔·福柯将其确定为现代国家的典范。在福柯看来，圆形监狱供奉着资本主义自由民主国家用来约束和征服人民的机制。圆形监狱的概念在建筑学、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--监视研究。全景监狱被记者和评论员用来比喻数字时代的压迫性、全方位的监视，并继续被艺术家、音乐家和作家重新诠释。然而，这一巨大的学术、智力和创造性努力是基于边沁著作的不充分和不完整版本。福柯的工作和随后的学术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，这项研究的核心将是一个具有里程碑意义的资源：边沁的“财政部的图片”的权威版本，广受好评的《杰里米·边沁文集》，以及一系列以出版和开放获取格式出版的解释性文章。“财政部的图片”将构成一个持久的贡献，在人文和社会科学的未来研究出版的第一次边沁自己的亲密帐户，他参与和最终无果而终的谈判与财政部和内政部官员之间的1798年和1802年建立的panopticon监狱。当边沁意识到政府有意搁置圆形监狱计划时，尽管议会批准了几年的谈判，规划，以及公共资金的支出，他怀疑官员们正在密谋要么在经济上毁了他，甚至逼他自杀。这项研究将第一次以权威的形式进入公共领域，这本书可以与让-雅克·卢梭的《忏悔录》（1782年）和约翰·斯图尔特·穆勒的《自传》（1873年）等著名著作相媲美。《财政部的一张照片》，此外，将大大有助于我们理解行政和立法之间的关系，并在十九世纪之交的英国政府的主要行政部门的内部运作，因此构成了一个现实生活中相当于查尔斯狄更斯的迂回办公室在荒凉山庄，并增加了一个新的层面，以及-关于自由国家的出现及其知识背景的辩论。