Phantom architecture: Jeremy Bentham's haunted and haunting panopticon

Abstract

Drawing upon Jacques Derrida’s notion of hauntology and the nascent field of ghost criminology, this article explores the spectrality of Jeremy Bentham's panopticon. This frames the never constructed building as an example of ‘phantom architecture’. It can be seen as both haunted and haunting. Here, we use Beaumont’s ‘architectural parallax’ to examine this building that is ‘out-of-joint’. It is at once of the past, yet profoundly present, as well as prefiguring the future. We turn first to the spectral presence of an abandoned building designed by Samuel Bentham, Jeremy's brother. We see how Samuel's experiences in Krichev in the 1780s left traces in the prison design that the brothers would work upon. This saw them develop an architecture that would hold in its centre a surveillant ‘entity’ that would haunt those being observed at the building's periphery. Having explored the ‘no longer’, we turn to the ‘not yet’ to see how the panopticon has come to inspirit thought and architectural practice. In tracing these varied spectralities, both within and of the panopticon, we can reveal its enduring impact on the criminological imagination.