94A NATURAL HISTORY PANOPTICONabsolute clarity. By the effect of backlighting, an observer placed in the
central tower could survey the captive individuals around it.
Structurally, shelves and cabinets organized on the perimeter of the
room facing toward the center of the cabinet of curiosities propose a
structural precursor of Bentham’s spatialization of surveillance (fig. 2.7).
Like the panopticon, the cabinet of curiosities positioned the observer at
the center of the field of visibility, in a privileged, all-seeing position of
sovereignty. Situated against the neutral background of the cabinets’ walls
and shelves, each object was imparted with an axial visibility. As each
object appeared dislocated from its interlinks with the world, the “uni-
verse” could thus be arranged by the centrality of the sovereign—from
this vantage point, power over creation could be exerted, and dystopias
were aligned into utopias.^67
Similarly, natural history illustration also configured an early form of
spatial panopticism in which the architectural site of the page functioned
as dividing cells. The partitioning of animals inside delimited spaces
FIGURE 2.7 “Panoptic architecture,” inside one of the prison buildings at Presidio
Modelo, Isla de la Juventud, Cuba. Photograph courtesy of Friman, CC BY-SA 3.0.