Gear

Isabel Perez del Pulgar

France

The machine is a system of systems. And the system is an ordered module of elements. All these form a body, a machinery that works to the extent that there is integration and coordination between all the ordered systems that make it up. For this coordination it is necessary the acceptance, on the part of each element that builds the system, of its role within the gear that moves the machinery. Control, submission, acceptance. Each element watches and is watched.

Symptoms of a panoptic machinery, which creates and sustains a relationship of power without relevance to the element that exercises it. In this way, power remains without a face that identifies it, being blurred. Giving the general appearance that each element, individualized, conducts itself in full freedom of choice, under the surveillance of a great eye that sees and controls everything. 

Foucault points out: "our society is that of surveillance; under the surface of images, bodies are reached in depth (...) the meticulous and concrete training of useful forces is pursued (...) we are in the panoptic machine, dominated by its effects of power, which it seeks to prolong in ourselves, since we are one of its gears" (Foucault, Surveillance and Punishment: 1980).