Daniel Barros Grez’s panoptic system. National literature and penitentiary regime in Chile at the turn of the 20th century

Abstract

This article is framed within research on the relationship between novel and panopticism, literary discourse, and disciplinary discourse as features that would define modern Chilean literature and society. It proposes the analysis of an essay by renown writer Daniel Barros Grez, entitled “Utilización de los delincuentes y criminales” (Use of delinquents and criminals) written in 1898, where he resumes the debate started during the first decades of the 1800s by eminent founders of the nation in order to insist and deepen the panoptic model as the most adequate surveillance structure and logic for “human domestication” in Chile.