It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
It appears as though Charles Dickens may have had insight into the future of literary theory when he sat down to pen The Tale of Two Cities. First of all, there is the address to the binaries of life, which thanks to the ideas of Derrida have now split into quadnaries, then octonaries, then decatetranaries..... Please do not bother to reach for that dictionary; I decided to make up my own terms in order to address the massive division process that correlate to the destabalization process.
Then, on to Foucault, where he demonstrates how the pretense of the establishment or restoration of order can easily be abusive power under the guise of protection. Dickens once again comes to the rescue, just a little farther down the page, in his description of France: "Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards." This idea of power that separates, confines, marks, alters, and all in the name of a well ordered society is an emblematic theme that is pervasive in the arts. The image that immediately comes to mind is any science fiction that labels the alien, or the other, as unfit to cohabit with man. The recent movie District 9 is the perfect example. However, other movies and books are just as relevant. The movie Snake Pit or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's as Nest with the abuses in the mental institutions, the proliferation of novels and movies that dedicate themselves to prison reform, such as The Green Mile, are all predicated upon Foucalt's thesis. There is also the point of those in power seeing only binaries. However, there are so many degrees that lie between the polar opposites, that reality discredits the simplicity of a binary system that is as simplistic as good/bad, man/woman, light dark. Below is a clip from 1984, which seems to clearly exemplify the ideas in "Discipline and Punishment" with the elements of the Panopticon, isolation, punishment, and the mindless acceptance of the state's offer of "beneficial" remediation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4rBDUJTnNU
It appears as though Charles Dickens may have had insight into the future of literary theory when he sat down to pen The Tale of Two Cities. First of all, there is the address to the binaries of life, which thanks to the ideas of Derrida have now split into quadnaries, then octonaries, then decatetranaries..... Please do not bother to reach for that dictionary; I decided to make up my own terms in order to address the massive division process that correlate to the destabalization process.
Then, on to Foucault, where he demonstrates how the pretense of the establishment or restoration of order can easily be abusive power under the guise of protection. Dickens once again comes to the rescue, just a little farther down the page, in his description of France: "Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards." This idea of power that separates, confines, marks, alters, and all in the name of a well ordered society is an emblematic theme that is pervasive in the arts. The image that immediately comes to mind is any science fiction that labels the alien, or the other, as unfit to cohabit with man. The recent movie District 9 is the perfect example. However, other movies and books are just as relevant. The movie Snake Pit or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's as Nest with the abuses in the mental institutions, the proliferation of novels and movies that dedicate themselves to prison reform, such as The Green Mile, are all predicated upon Foucalt's thesis. There is also the point of those in power seeing only binaries. However, there are so many degrees that lie between the polar opposites, that reality discredits the simplicity of a binary system that is as simplistic as good/bad, man/woman, light dark. Below is a clip from 1984, which seems to clearly exemplify the ideas in "Discipline and Punishment" with the elements of the Panopticon, isolation, punishment, and the mindless acceptance of the state's offer of "beneficial" remediation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4rBDUJTnNU
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