(no subject)

[melwil]

A gem from Foucault

"Instead of bending all its subjects into a single uniform mass, it [discipline] separates, analyses, differentiates, carries its procedures of decomposition to the point of necessary and sufficient single units."

Huh.

Comments

[warlordkittens.livejournal.com]

i find him unreadable

[melwil.livejournal.com]

So do I. Apparently we have to write an essay based on his ideas.

I hope they've written Foucault for Dummies . . .

[warlordkittens.livejournal.com]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1840460865/002-0929948-0232045?v=glance

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/086316160X/qid=1123986873/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-0929948-0232045?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

[melwil.livejournal.com]

You know you rock, right *g*

Must see if the library has them

[warlordkittens.livejournal.com]

glad to be of service :D

[mandysbitch.livejournal.com]

They have, actually - Foucault for Beginners. It's really cool - it's like this cartoon book. I highly recommend it.

However, the ideas are somewhat extraordinary. I wouldn't expect them to make sense straight away. Perhaps as you think about it, it will kind of sink in and make sense some years in the future.

I take it the quote above is from Discipline and Punish? I hate to do this to you, but that's probably his most accessible text. Still, I would find it difficult to take a quote like that in isolation. Still, I would say that the text itself turns over this idea that the institution (be it correctional or educational) takes from chaos and creates uniformity. Instead it uses structure to create 'knowable' individuals.

Umm... okay, let's try this: suppose you want to tame all the animals in the jungle. You take a zebra, a giraffe and a lion and put them in an institution and make them perform certain uniform tasks by which to tame them. You say, they're tame but all you have done is create certain task that they can do, that are known to you. But they are still, a zebra, a giraffe and a lion and you now have created three separate individuals - the 'tame' zebra, the 'tame' giraffe and the 'tame' lion.

Ahmmm... how was that?

I used to recommend to my students that they just read the text. Reading is not an instant process - sometimes these things sinks in later or as you go along. Don't panic if you don't get it right away.