Uploaded March 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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Historian of Science Simon Werret on Michel Foucault, the Grigory Potemkin’s estate and theatricality of Samuel Bentham’s panopticon.

Read the full text on our website: serious-science.org/panopticon-in-russia-10503

'Foucault said that modern society is panoptic: it involves a situation where we behave ourselves because we never know whether we’re being watched or not, we’re being surveyed all the time by the police, by cameras on the streets, by forms and examinations, and so we’re caught in this visual web that makes us behave ourselves.'

Senior Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Science, University College London

Science and Spectacle in the 18th Century Russia: serious-science.org/science-and-spectacle-in-the-18th-century-russia-9245
Russian Voyages and James Cook: serious-science.org/russian-voyages-and-james-cook-8975

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