Monday, September 25, 2006

Caught up in the panoptic gaze of the outside

I have always been wondering about “Why can’t I loop into the emerged circles of real+ virtual worlds in EFL teaching like other webheads.I know now I am “Caught up in panoptic gaze of two outside communities” .Explanation?
On a course I am taking with Vance about multiliteracies, I went through Warschaures’ Electronic Literacies”.On page38,he writes about Mary ,who worked with him in a project on new technologies in college language and writing classes.He writes:“Mary’ reactions can be explained in part by the metaphor of the panopticon (Foucault 1997.) Foucault selected Jermey Bentham’s circular prison, with the prisoners on the periphery under potentially constant but unverifiable gaze from the guards in a central observation tower, as a metaphor for how power is wielded and knowledge shaped in the real world. According to Foucault, the guards too are always subject to unverifiable gaze, not only from their supervisors but even from outside society, thus guaranteeing the control of the controllers.”
Warschaure continues: ”Mary found herself caught up in …two competing panopticons -that of her college and church, with its own set of values, and that of the outside university research community with a different set of values” .Only then I found the answer!(my two panoticons are the webheads themselves and my research community!)That feeling needs more than competency to vanish !

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