Discipline and Power. Much harsher than anything else we've read. Quite morbid actually. Focault has done an outstanding job of turning the pretty green numbers of the matrix that have been created for me by every other theorist we have read thus far in the semester and turned them into dark, intimidating and horribly depressing grey brick walls of the "Panoptic Machine". Mr. Focault I'm well aware of the symbolic imprisonment I suffer in being part of the social order, but you didn't have to be quite so kind in manifesting that image so literally in your comparative analysis. Let me comparatively analyze you.
In the final paragraph of the Discipline and Power excerpt we had to read Focault greatly elaborates on a plentitude of binary oppositions that define society, power and the individual. In doing so he nearly ticks off theorists we've read:
-society is not spectacle it is surveillance (buh bye Zizek)
-under the surface of images one invests in depth (adios Jameson)
-under exchange lies useful forces (sounds like some Jenkins to me)
-communication is the accumulation of knowledge (Macherey perhaps? DeSaussure?)
- play of signs define power (Very DeSaussure)
-individual is fabricated in social order not repressed (Althusser and so many more)
-(not from this section but let me add) lepers being victimized and excluded (Hebdige)
We live not in simulacra, not in the desert of the real, not in the matrix, not in anything but the Great Machine- the automatization and disindividualization of power. He talks about the architectual structure of the Panoptic (much like someone talked about the architectual structure of education) as the tower of power being visible to all, all being on roll call at any time, being plagued, victimized, excluded, controlled.
Mr. Focault I was quite content with my invisible ISA and RSA, my marxist structures of control. Big Brother is watching, I'm aware, but for those of us carrying the leper-some disease of the plague, "all along the watch tower" remains outside barbed wire. I'd very much like Focault to watch an episode of "Superjail".
There's nothing left to discuss regarding Discipline and Power (which i am so thrown by I don't feel like discussing the next Focault piece). He touches on everything we have learned just in an absolutely horrible way. If no one has gotten the concept we are "imprisoned" by the social order yet, then welcome to the slammer kids, courtesy of Focault.
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1 comment:
I really enjoy your writing and how your critically look at our theorists. My only note is that you may want to double check your theorists before the final exam. :)
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