A complete and austere institution, according to Michel Foucault, in its general form is intended to "render individuals docile and useful, by means of precise work upon their bodies..." (Foucault 214). In these institutions, the persons having the "work" done to them are constantly being observed and those observations are recorded in order to better push each individual to a desired outcome. Examples of such places are prison, school, a hospital, etc.
In "Love's Labour's Lost" the first act is about setting up such an institution so that "the mind can banquet, but the body pine (Act 1 Scene 1 Line 27). These men are to dedicate three years of their lives to study, and are given a strict set of rules to follow (fast once a week, no women for three years, and only three hours of sleep a night).
Why do we subject ourselves to such kinds of institutions? There are always going to be people who fight against an institution they are placed into, but what makes them so powerful that it generally doesn't matter if you don't care for the institution you're in because they are already such a powerful force in your life and in society. I feel like this is a case where society creates something in their minds and then in the outside world and it begins to control their outside world and how they think. These aren't negative things all the time, and often produce positive results (going to school for four years where you are required to obey a certain about of rules and at the end you gain a degree/a record proving what you did for four years).
What will happen in "Love's Labour's Lost" when they decide to break away from the institution they have created? Will it eventually be a positive or negative decision?
Foucault, Michel. "Complete and Austere Institutions", The Foucault Reader. Pantheon Books, New York. 1984.
My question is for the people who do fight against the institution. Why do they get involved with it at all? Sometimes it's not optional(such as prison maybe), but for the people who fight against the honor code, why come to BYU at all? And why did the king and his lords commit to this when I'm sure they know there's not much hope to seeing it through?
ReplyDeleteMichel Foucault, if I remember right, didn't he also research the question of who ultimately decides what is moral and what is not it society? I think that has a lot to do with what you are saying. Is it immoral, ultimately, to allow ourselves to follow that code of conduct prescribed to us or is it immoral not to do so?
ReplyDeleteI think that Institutions that we deem as powerful have a significant influence on what we think is right and what is wrong simply because they say so.
In my art curriculum classes right now there is a lot of talk about "enabling constraints," a term coined by Brent Davis. If there are no constraints put on someone, then they usually do not have the best results. However, the constraints have to be ones that do leave some room for interpretation and to move around in, which I don't think is the case in this play...
ReplyDeleteI don't eat, cause I don't have time to grocery shop; I get three hours of sleep if i'm lucky, and I pretty much don't even talk to boys... I don't know what everyone's complaining about!
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