Modes of Power in Technical and Professional Visuals

Abstract

Treating visuals as sites of power inscription, the authors advance a Foucauldian design model based on the Panopticon—Bentham's late-eighteenth-century architectural figure for empowerment based on bimodal surveillance. Numerous examples serve in demonstrating that maximum effectiveness results when visuals foster simultaneous viewing in the two panoptic modes, the synoptic and the analytic. The panoptic theory of visual design is shown to be compatible with many privilegings in the literature of visual design that have hitherto appeared ad hoc and undertheorized, with relations masked by the disparate terminologies employed. The limitations of panoptic theory are located in its neglect of oppositional practices—seen as the most compelling horizon for research on the empowerment of designer and viewer through visual design.