Representation of Panopticon Power in The Four Seasons by Writer Leonardo Padura

Abstract

The article proposes an approach to understanding panopticon power based on its distribution in the police universe of the main character Mario Conde. In the tetralogy The Four Seasons (Past Perfect, 1991; Winds of Lent, 1994; Masks, 1997 and Autumn Landscape, 1998), by the Cuban writer Leonardo Padura (Havana-1955), the territory and speech of the detective Mario Conde, who embodies the Cuban subaltern subject in relation to the hegemonic power, sustains the reality and imagination of the Padurian fictional machine. Which allows Leonardo Padura to analyze in his work the context of the island of Cuba, extremely ideologized, and exemplify in the stories how Mario Conde is subjected to the panopticon exercise carried out by his superiors of the Internal Police at the Havana Police Headquarters. In addition, the resistance mechanisms of the characters to evade surveillance and escape disciplinary control are represented. The research is based on the theoretical references drawn by Michael Foucault regarding power relations in his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975). Studying power in Mario Conde’s police series will reveal a series of interpretations that go beyond the space delimited by the text and will allow a better understanding of contemporary Cuban reality.