I have used Foucault in my AP English classes and and am currently
applying tFoucault to film studies. My understanding is that F tries to
have us recognize how the concept of the Self, the Individual, The
Person (whatever we have called it), hitherto understood by philosophers
as a unfied being, is in reality a construction. How does this Subject
get constructed? Who and what constructs it? Freudian psychoanalysis
might argue that the Ego is constructed through a struggle with the
demands of the Id and the realities of the Superego. Foucault, I
believe, sees the Subject as a construction of various Institutions
which over the past centuries have become more and more
powerful/knowing. So, the Subject is defined differently by different
institutions. Those definitions are the discourses of that institution.
When the Subject goes to an Educational Institution he/she is defined,
constructed, as STUDENT, measured by that definition. Placed in the
right classes, tested, whether the student-subject is an A or D student,
special ed or AP, the areas of competence and deficiencies, all these
measure and define the way the student is as student, disciplined,
constructed. The whole day is spent going from class to class in this
process of constructing this Student-Subject, teaching him/her how to
think, what to say, how to say it, what is proper English what is not,
where to sit, even the bodily functions of eating and excreting and
controlled and disciplined the whole day. If they resist, they are
punished, become discipline problems, are given detention, parents are
called, all as part of this panoptic control over every move they make.
We know exactly in the course of a day where they are and what they are
doing. So, I taught "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Elephant" with these
ideas in mind, seeing how the disciplinary control and teaching and
construction of the Subject operate in these and many other films about
School and Education.
There are also other institutions that do similar things to the Subject and have different discourses to define the Subject. If the individual goes to a Hospital, they become Patients, in a prison they become Inmates, for a lawyer they are Clients, in marriage they are Husbands and wives, children, in mental institutions ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Girl, Interrupted," "The Snake Pit," "Gothica," they are defined and constructed by the discourses of that institution: depressed, impulsive, manic, Oedipal, passive-aggressive, delusional, and so on. Each Institution brings defines the individual through different discourses, defining their thoughts, their body, their emotions, down to the cellular biological functions.
The question is: What Insitutions operate in the narrative? How is the individual constructed, obliged to behave, feel, be, within those instiutional discourses? Many narratives are about "Marriage as an Insitution" or Family, and characters may encounter medical, legal, penal, psychological, education, military institutions within the story.
These are just some thoughts. There is always in some way an intersection with some Instiution. "Long Day's Journey into Night," for example, raises these issues, of doctors and psychiatrists and medications, and Family. These Instutional definitions of the Subject are all part of the text and the subtext.
Webster Garrett Erin L. wrote:
There are also other institutions that do similar things to the Subject and have different discourses to define the Subject. If the individual goes to a Hospital, they become Patients, in a prison they become Inmates, for a lawyer they are Clients, in marriage they are Husbands and wives, children, in mental institutions ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Girl, Interrupted," "The Snake Pit," "Gothica," they are defined and constructed by the discourses of that institution: depressed, impulsive, manic, Oedipal, passive-aggressive, delusional, and so on. Each Institution brings defines the individual through different discourses, defining their thoughts, their body, their emotions, down to the cellular biological functions.
The question is: What Insitutions operate in the narrative? How is the individual constructed, obliged to behave, feel, be, within those instiutional discourses? Many narratives are about "Marriage as an Insitution" or Family, and characters may encounter medical, legal, penal, psychological, education, military institutions within the story.
These are just some thoughts. There is always in some way an intersection with some Instiution. "Long Day's Journey into Night," for example, raises these issues, of doctors and psychiatrists and medications, and Family. These Instutional definitions of the Subject are all part of the text and the subtext.
Webster Garrett Erin L. wrote:
Dear list,
I am currently teaching a course on Victorian literature that focuses specifically on discourses of race, empire, and sexuality. My graduate students and I have just read History of Sexuality Part I. Here is my problem—I don’t understand all that he is saying or all the implications of his argument, so I’m entirely at a loss as to how to teach others about 1) what he’s saying and 2) how to apply it to the literature we are reading. I can show them outtakes from scholars who have “done Foucault” but that is just a report—not a structured opportunity to grapple with the ideas as tools for understanding. I resist simply summarizing the book (which any number of online sites do much better than I could anyway) but without that lecture based approach, it’s been almost impossible to jump start conversation because we don’t have an established set of terms and ideas and shared knowledge to work from. At least not one that has been articulated in class. I know I should go back and give them a key to the text but that doesn’t seem as effective to me as getting them to apply what they’ve read and thereby understand what they’ve read in a more visceral way.
So, my question is this: for those of you who have taught or are planning to teach this text, what strategies and activities do you suggest? Is there a resource guide somewhere with teaching ideas?
Many thanks for any help you can provide ….
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Dr. Erin Webster Garrett
Radford University
http://www.radford.edu/~ewebster2 <http://www.radford.edu/%7Eewebster2>-
540-831-5203 (office)
540-230-3579 (cell/voice mail)
"Without a metaphor I cannot live!" MWS
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