Historically, power was used to physically separate and divide populations. The implementation of power was visible, for example, public executions in medieval times were visible to the public. However, Foucault argued that modern power resembles the panopticon. The Panopticon is characterized without visible banishment or punishment. Instead, power is exercised through a system where individuals are visible through the observation tower and monitored. However, the power is not visible, unlike in medieval times. People are monitored and forced to follow rules without any explicit and visible action. Furthermore, sovereign power is by nature visible and can be resisted, unlike disciplinary micro-power which is intangible. As a result, disciplinary micro-power manipulates, through panoptic mechanisms, the capacity to resist power due to the absence of a central node of identifiable power. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayPower through the panopticon mechanism is deployed in colonial and postcolonial contexts. Medicine in a colonial and postcolonial context is a manifestation of disciplinary micro-power, where power is used through the objectification of the human body, surveillance and enforcement of the civilization of a population. Medicine was restructured at the same pace as colonization. Africans in the context of colonialism were objectified by their colonizers through the field of medicine. The medical gaze was used to reproduce the “African patient like a piece of flesh”. According to Megan Vaughn, these colonial medical sites served as medical laboratories to photograph and document their patients to serve economic and political motivations. The colonial medical gaze studied and divided the African body in relation to the European body. Observing and reducing the body to “flesh” allowed European settlers to examine and justify the development of racial hierarchies. Racial hierarchies based on medical observations fueled the power imbalance and inequality seen during colonialism. By placing the African body at the bottom of the chain through observation and objectification, European colonizers also used information from the colonial medical gaze to justify their action. For example, the British used research conducted in British colonial medical clinics to justify their slave trade. Their studies conclude that the African body is different from the European body and better adapted to tropical environments. Thus, the reduction of the African body justified the slave trade to exploit Africans as workers in tropical climates. The objectification of the African body also facilitated the exploitation of humans in the service of colonial economic interests. Medicine was used in a colonial context to ensure a more productive workforce rather than to serve humanitarian health care. Where brute force was once used, disciplinary micropower has normalized health as a commodity to ensure a productive workforce. Additionally, power has been used strategically through medicine to dismantle notions of resistance. Emerging medical practices incorporated indigenous African healing traditions to circumvent and "undermine African distrust of European medicine." Taking African traditions into account was not intended to develop positive relationships with the community.