| Description |
Enlightenment philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed the Panopticon as an idea: a theoretical prison wherein the constant implied surveillance of the condemned was the primary mechanism of a power relation based on self-regulation and self-monitoring. Hundreds of years later, Michel Foucault extracted Bentham's mechanism and applied it to sociological theory, posing questions regarding the implications of political and social systems that worked according to similar processes. At the very center of Bentham's Panopticon and Foucault's Panopticism is an image, one that is ubiquitously visible and one that sees everything. This paper attempts to link the panoptic system of power to an image that is inherently linked to discourses of punishment, judgment, and omniscience: Romanesque tympana scenes adorning pilgrimage churches, with the Last Judgment scene at the Church of S. Foi at Conques providing a specific example. Chapter 1 focuses on how this connection fits into the history of art historical scholarship of the High Romanesque. I contend that an effective way to deconstruct traditional criticisms of Romanesque art is to open it up to new methodologies and interpretations, such that the reader may consider both the social implications of the image as well as the effects of public religious imagery on the viewer/image dynamic. Chapter 2 introduces the connection between the content of the image and the politics of pilgrimage, a process dependent upon images to function. I discuss how a single image can affect social and religious practices by drawing from various cultural sources; iv in appropriating material from these sources and merging it with iconographic/symbolic content, the image can impose upon the psychological framework of the viewer and subject him to a desired set of moral/ethical responses. Chapters 3 and 4 engage the roles of mediation, identity, and both real and implied surveillance in establishing how the image is used to promote power and authority and constrain the viewer to a set of desired responses. Tympana scenes, via their interaction with the public sphere and through their blend of Christian apocalyptic narratives and medieval cultural content, are intrinsically aimed at reminding the viewer that he is both viewer and viewed. |
