Cordon sanitaire: an observation post at the Shankill Falls divide in Belfast

This article investigates the monitoring of a “Peace Line” between the Falls and Shankill areas in Belfast in 1972. It considers how observation posts created what photographer Frankie Quinn has called a cordon sanitaire, resulting in social division. Observation posts used disciplinary techniques to manage the social conduct of large groups, and operated according to Michel Foucault’s principles of panopticism. State institutions could monitor populations through inspections and recording procedures. Considering surveillance from the perspective of military observers, entire regions could be appropriated by these spatial mechanisms, which codified territories and controlled movement. This paper critically questions assertions that hierarchical observation gave rise to panoptic discipline and conditioned the population into docile acquiescence. Rather, the cordon sanitaire provoked subversion and invisible resistance, prompting its re-conception as a postcolonial space.