Comments

• • Joshua Evans@jevans

  

  Joshua Evans August 17, 2011 - 11:18am

  Great image! It is quite provacative if you consider the juxtoposition of the camera and the building in the background. Architecturally speaking, modernist office towers have 'Benthamite' qualities, internally  in terms of their segmented array of cubicle workspaces (albeit the 'boss' is usually have the outside office with a view) and externally in terms of the thousands of eyes they cast on the streetscape. Also, if you imagine the building in the background as a ghostly presence haunting the present the image could be read as an errie 9/11 memorial ('lest we forget').

• • Mark A. McCutcheon@mccutcheon

  

  Mark A. McCutcheon August 17, 2011 - 7:42pm

  I can see elements of panopticism in Taylorist office spaces, but there are important differences: the corner office obscures management, but not in the same literally and symbolically pivotal way; and, more significantly, be-cubicled workers don't get to surveil each other. What distinguishes panopticism is the privatization and internalization of surveillance labour, so that it changes from unilaterally imposed to multilaterally assumed -- that is, so that the inmates (or in this case the workers) are architecturally and culturally disciplined into policing each other.

  As William Burroughs says, a functioning police state needs no police.

• • Joshua Evans@jevans

  

  Joshua Evans August 18, 2011 - 9:48am

  Yes, I think you are right, there are important differences, thanks for pointing this out. Makes me wonder what principle/practices of control are exercised through the Taylorist office space? Why do managers occupy the corner offices rather than a central location? This sounds like a reasonable excuse to watch 'Office Space' again...

• • Joshua Evans@jevans

  

  Joshua Evans August 18, 2011 - 9:49am

  To reiterate this image is a great segue to these themes and conversation...

• • Heather Clitheroe@heathercl

  

  Heather Clitheroe August 18, 2011 - 9:52am

  Trust me: be-cubicled workers are always surveilling each other, whether they can see each other over the walls or not. 

• • Mark A. McCutcheon@mccutcheon

  

  Mark A. McCutcheon August 18, 2011 - 9:53am

  This sounds like a reasonable excuse to watch 'Office Space' again...

  Uh, yeah. Why don't you go ahead and do that.

  But seriously: there might be material in James Beniger's The Control Revolution about the modernization of office space. It's a handy, widely applicable book.