Abstract

RAMOS, Hugo Filipe. Sauron’s Panopticon: Power and Surveillance in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. OBS* [online]. 2013, vol.7, n.3, pp.129-152. ISSN 1646-5954.

This article is dedicated to Surveillance Studies and their application to Tolkien’s literary work, Lord of the Rings. A historical introduction to Surveillance Studies, a historical and social contextualisation of the author, identifying, in the discussed story, the reflections of a troubled society, and, finally, a theoretical and social framework that relates Surveillance Studies to the "secondary world" of Middle Earth are presented in this analysis, demonstrating the parallels between Bentham's and Foucault's theories and the social relations of power in this region of the metaphysical world of Tolkien's imagination.At the end of the article, two aspects of the theories of power are also analysed, those being the power of rhetoric and resistance or counter-power, also present in Middle Earth, assuming, just like power relations, several symbolic representations.

Keywords : power; surveillance; panopticon; Eye of Sauron; rethoric; resistance.

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