THE EXHIBITIONARY COMPLEX

-Tony Bennett

Summary
The following text proves how museums come under institutions of confinement ripe. It is also explained
how meaning of power changed over the time.

The 18th century was a spectacle of punishment where the scaffold displayed power. The message of
power was initially carried by the body of the condemned but then due to omnipresent forms of
surveillance the lessons of power were written for others to read. The scaffold represented the force of
the sovereign. The representation of punishment was later replaced by hierarchized structure of the
government. On the other hand, institutions comprising of exhibitionary complex involved transfer of
bodies and objects from enclosed and private domains to more open and public areas where they
broadcasted the message of power.

Opening of prisons was using a coercive technology of behavior found in different places like school,
cloister, regiments, etc. at one place served as a guide. Whereas, The Great Exhibition brought disciplines
and techniques within the museums, art galleries, etc. Doing so allowed the public to inspect it to have a
lasting influence on development of the museums and the art galleries. To understand the interrelation
between the museums and prison the author puts forward Foucault’s suggestion that the penitentiary
with moving surveillance and disciplinary mechanism spread over a new political economy of power.
Whereas in the exhibitionary complex the complication of surveillance techniques produced more
complex and nuanced set of relations through which power was expressed.

The exhibitionary complex was a response to the problem of order. It had to win hearts and mind of bodies
as well as discipline and train them. Instead of mapping the social body to know the populance, the
exhibitionary complex by showing power allowed people seeing themselves the side of power. The
principle of self-surveillance allowed the public to know themselves as known by the power. The author
proposed the formation of exhibitionary complex as a set of cultural technologies concerned to organize
a self-regulating citizenry. Late 18th century penal reformers put forward punishment as a clear lesson
imagined in school. It was also proposed that the convict would repay twice. Once by labour and second
by improving his behavior. Children would visit these places and learn lessons in civics where as the adults
would relearn the law. It was suggested that places of punishment would be conceived as garden of the
laws. But with the development of carceral systems, punishment was removed from public gaze and put
behind the closed walls. The punishment now aimed at calculated transformation in the behavior of the
convict. Thus, the body of the offended was no longer a medium to display power. Now it was the target
of the disciplinary technologies which modified the behavior through repetition. Foucault later argues
that the form of observation developed in the carceral systems, ‘modifying the behavior according to the
need so that it is visible to the eye of power’ would be a tendency to discharge early from prison. According
to Foucault the society now, is of surveillance but not of spectacle but antiquity had been a civilization of
spectacle. Now in this society, the principle elements are the private individuals and the state instead of

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community and public life. This relation could be regulated only in a form that is exact reverse of this. The
crystal palace was designed so that everyone could se. The Panopticon was designed so that everyone
could be seen. The crystal palace also consisted of an arrangement where the vantage points could see
everyone seeing the exhibits. This is stated as combining the spectacle and surveillance. In 19th century,
efforts were made to open the city for public inspection. The reason behind this wasn’t gaze of power but
making the eye of power available to all.

In international exhibitions, by assembling people and objects together they metonymically they brought
together past and present. The state increased its involvement in the provision of such spectacles. The
exhibitionary complex provided a context for permanent display of power and knowledge whereas in the
19th century the expositions dispensed magnification of power through its excessive display. The scene of
trial that was removed from public gaze in the 19th century was made public later as a part of new judicial
system, in order to function as truth, it should be known to all.

Parallelly the museums from closed and restricted moved towards open and public contexts. As a part of
profound transformation, it was necessary to withdraw punishment from public gaze or make
penitentiaries open for civics lessons as such lessons consisted not in display of power but by placing the
people conceived as nationalized citizens. A power made to demonstrate not its ability to inflict pain but
to organize and coordinate order of things. By flattering the people this power placed itself on side of the
people.

Even if the museums may have set to win hearts and minds of people they were no longer built to be seen
but to permit an control on peoples conduct to carry the effect of power right to them.

The exhibitionary complex posed a new demand that everyone should see and not just luxurious facades
but also the content. Thus, the emphasis shifted from organizing spaces of display for private pleasure to
an organization of space as per public instruction. The peculiarity of exhibitionary complex is in forming a
vision which served to regulate the crowd not dispense it by making the crowd itself, the spectacle. Making
the crowd the part of the show. Further the museums created viewing positions to observe other visitors.
The author states this as ‘to survey and yet always be under surveillance’. Comparing it to the penitentiary,
there is a hierarchical system where each level of looking in monitored by higher one.

The museums had a fear of crowd. Even the public museums had a limited conception of public. The
thought that the unruliness of the mob would mar the ordered display of culture and knowledge. The
South Kensington museum proved it wrong by dedicating it to undifferentiated public and by maximizing
the opening hours to maximize its accessibility for the working class. Later the museum bill empowered
the local authorities to establish museums. This resulted in a development of a relation between the state
and the people because of which the public demanded the great exhibition to be free. This arose a
question that ‘should the labour class allowed to rub shoulder with the upper class?’. The great exhibition
sorted this out by providing different days for different classes regulated by various prices of admission.
It successfully transformed a many headed mob into a orderly crowd. The working class was also stressed
to change their working clothes so that the become a part of the show. This movement helped to form a
new public inscribed in new relation of sight and vision the significance of formation on exhibitionary
complex was providing new instruments for moral and cultural regulation of working class. Museums and
expositions brought working class and middle class together and taught them forms of behavior. Due to
this the popular fairs were perceived as obstructions to the rationalizing influence of the restructured
exhibitionary complex. Mechanization of entertainment was promoted by industrial civilization. The fair

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zones created buffer regions between official and popular culture. The public no longer had to play the
role of impressed spectator. Order and instructions were replaced by jumble and entertainment. An
attempt was made to turn the amusement park into an educational institute but it failed, it remained a
site for illicit pleasure. The link between the expositions and their adjoining fair zones provided a route
through which the exhibitionary complex acquired a wider and more extensive social influence.

In the museums the space of representation brought together an array of discipline but in carceral
archipelago reduced aggregates to individuality. In the 18th century the architectural styles were displaced
to show permanence rather than change and development. Emergence of historial frame for display of
exhibits was thus a significant innovation. Now, the museums constituted of new space for representation
to depict developmental stages. The prospect of universal history of civilization was opened up to thought
and materialized in the archaeological collections. Significance of geological and biological development
was that of allowing for organic life to be conceived as a temporary ordered succession. They also allowed
the cultural series to be inserted within the longer developmental series of geological and natural timing.
In context of late 19th century anthropology connected histories of western nations and civilizations to
those of others by providing people and races. The still living examples of primitive people in human
development represented the transition between ape and man. In 18th century human remains were
viewed as testimony to the rich diversity if the chain of universal being whereas in 19 th century it was
displayed as a part of the evolution.

Dynamic exhibitions injected new life into the exhibitionary complex. The basic signifying currency of the
exhibitions consisted in arrangements of displays of manufacturing processes and products, ranging from
raw products in nature to the highest form of fine or applied art. The great exhibition shifted the stress of
processes to products. The influence of classification in the exhibition was based on nations rather than
stages of production. This transferred the rhetoric of progress from relations between stages of
production to relation between nations and races. A progressivist taxonomy was laminated on to a racist
conception of relation between people and races. The effects of the technology of vison are embodied in
Eiffel tower. It is a gateway which affords a dominating vision. It was used for surveillance of the fairs. By
end of century when fairs were no longer symbol of chaos the tower had become the ultimate spectacle.

The museums subtly provoked the people in behaving in a particular manner. They were successful in
regulating the people to a greater extent by the keeping them under surveillance.

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Plan for Assignment 2.

– a work title
Behavioral change due to architecture.

– a topic
How certain architecture subconsciously tells you about how to behave in that space.

– description of the part/argument/message to which you are going to respond

The exhibitionary Apparatus and Seeing Things.

– the main argument/hypothesis/message you want to bring across in your response

How prisons and museums bring a change in the behavior of the people.

– list of at least 1 academic source you wish to use, in proper MLA (or similar) style
Architecture as crime control by Neal K. Katyal.

– at least one example that you are going to use in your argumentation.
The success of South Kensington museum.

0975644 | Siddhi Patil