Policing Paris Through Reflections

Elizabeth Carlson

Large architectural mirrors were hung and installed both inside and outside of Paris’ commercial establishments, such as cafés, department stores and dance halls along the modern boulevard. It has been well documented that Napoleon III appointed Baron Georges Haussmann to reorganize the city, heightening display through widened boulevards and electric streetlights, but the incorporation of mirrors into these new spaces was also integral to the success of his remodeled Paris. Both Haussmann and Napoleon III made several official visits to Paris’ Saint-Gobain mirror factory in the 1850s and 1860s and mirrored glass accounted for four percent of new construction costs. My paper argues that mirrors were strategically used to police and control Paris’ growing population under the guise of entertainment.

Mirrors multiplied every angle, creating endless kaleidoscopic vistas, and imaged the individual into the urban environment. This duality of reflection allowed for the hidden surveillance of the growing population of Paris. Using Michel Foucault’s model of the Panopticon, I will complicate Foucault’s analysis by looking at how reflections open up the Panopticon and dramatize the boulevard. Since mirrors produce images of the public, they are important tools in the formation of subjectivity. My paper argues that this dual vision inherent in reflection creates a space where the viewer (the subject) can no longer differentiate between seeing and being seen. Therefore, power is more ubiquitous as it is hidden; we don’t know where it lies, who is subject to it or how to respond to it. Multiplied vision creates dispersed power that more deceptive as its boundaries are blurred through fragmentation and disintegration.