Electricity Towers In Nepal In The New Society Of Control

With Nepal's purchase of electricity, new electricity towers will be built to support the newly added energy. The new electricity towers mark a shift in the kind of society that Nepal is: Nepal has moved away from a “disciplinary society” to a “society of control”. In a disciplinary society, the tower is a “Panopticon,” which is a tower made for surveillance of human beings that reside around the perimeter of the tower. The main Panopticon in Nepal is the apartment tower, which is situated in the midst of a city and provides a view for surveillance purposes. But in the new society of control, the relation between elevation and discipline breaks down, and a new punishing actor replaces the elevated human being, as control replaces discipline to achieve a higher severity in punishing.

The electricity tower is more dangerous and can lethally punish with electric shock if one comes too close to it. The necessity of human judgment to decide on who should be punished is thereby outdated, the electricity tower is always ready to punish whoever comes too close, whoever trespasses the “Danger” sign. The punishment is lethal, no longer is there the hope of rehabilitation, it is simply a matter of removing from this society the ones that cannot read the sign. The “Danger” sign beneath the electricity tower is, in Deleuzian terms, a test/examination of someone's literacy and aptitude, and the punishment is the taking of life, which is an intensification of the classroom punishment. The stakes of being literate or illiterate are very high in societies of control. Hence the the intense prioritization towards being literate, and the seeking out for dismissal of those that cannot be literate.

This society of control is difficult to problematize because there is no human being directly controlling others, and also because the punishment is so severe that critical voices find it very difficult to associate it to a real human being. Rather, the punishment is considered an accident by a dangerous but non-living force, or the result of a “mistake” on the part of the dead human being. The incidents of punishment by electricity tower need to be carefully recorded by research and the press, and the fact that there are real human beings behind the punishment needs to be displayed/clarified. The human element to a punishing object needs to be emphasized; how the electricity tower has been designed to act just like a punishing human being needs to be shown and problematized. The idea that punishment is not the most important purpose of the electricity tower is not true: for the various rural populations close to whom these electricity towers may be found, the supply of electricity is less important than the danger of electric shock. This new tool of control in Nepal has more reach and thereby the whole of Nepal should be considered a society of control because electricity towers are not only found in cities but are built in many marginal places.