The panopticon gaze is an ideological phrase, a metaphor. The panopticon gaze is the idea of a silent, unknown overseer in the society such as the government that subconsciously controlled all aspects of life. It symbolizes extreme transparency within the society where the rulers or leaders can look down and know, being able to see exactly what is going on, influencing the actions of every individual.
Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera , born 1 April 1929, is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in...

used this idea in his fictional novel about the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.