“There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge..."

1975 | On the Literary Arena

The year 1975 has been yet another productive year in the realm of literature, spanning a wide array of genres!

1975 was the year when Anita Desai published her novel, Where Shall We Go This Summer?. As is wont with Desai, this novel is also woman-centred, where she beautifully delineates the psyche of the protagonist Sita, a character who is in search of her own self, an extremely sensitive, middle-aged, woman, trapped within the confines of a tangle of family relationships. How she discovers her real self during the course of the novel, forms the course of this novel.

Bharati Mukherjee’s novel titled Wife, was also published this year, in 1975. This is yet another novel that has for its lead character, a housewife who wants to assert her identity and frame her own rules and roles for herself, rather than submit to the norms and curbs imposed by a patriarchal society.

Buchi Emecheta’s novel titled, Second Class Citizen was also published this very year, in 1975.

‘‘The Laugh of the Medusa,” a high-renowned essay by Helene Cixous was also published this year, in 1975.

  

V. S. Naipaul’s Guerrillas was also published this selfsame year, in 1975.

Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, was also published this year, in 1975. In this text, Foucault discusses elaborately on panopticism, and uses the term panopticon as a metaphor proper for the modern disciplinary society.

Some of the most endearing quotes from Discipline and Punish are given below - 

“There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations” 

“Traditionally, power was what was seen, what was shown, and what was manifested...Disciplinary power, on the other hand, is exercised through its invisibility; at the same time it imposes on those whom it subjects a principle of compulsory visibility. In discipline, it is the subjects who have to be seen. Their visibility assures the hold of the power that is exercised over them. It is this fact of being constantly seen, of being able always to be seen, that maintains the disciplined individual in his subjection. And the examination is the technique by which power, instead of emitting the signs of its potency, instead of imposing its mark on its subjects, holds them in a mechanism of objectification. In this space of domination, disciplinary power manifests its potency, essentially by arranging objects. The examination is, as it were, the ceremony of this objectification.” 

“Visibility is a trap.” 

“The examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgement. It is a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to punish. It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them. That is why, in all the mechanisms of discipline, the examination is highly ritualized. In it are combined the ceremony of power and the form of the experiment, the deployment of force and the establishment of truth."

to be continued...

image: amazondotcom