The Disciplinary Power in Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

By Alireza Kargar

The present book attempts at investigating the disciplinary power in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in the light of Michel Foucault's theories of power.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781365721212

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The Disciplinary Power in Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

The

Disciplinary of

Power in  Ken Kesey's

One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

in the Light of Michel Foucault's Theories of Power

By: Alireza Kargar

Copyright © 2015, Alireza Kargar

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover design by Day System Research Center Experts;  www.day-system.ir;

ISBN: 978-1-365-72121-2

Abstract

The present research attempts at investigating the disciplinary power in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest in the light of Michel Foucault's theories of power. Michel Foucault, the 20th century French philosopher and theoretician, believes that power exists in any social relation; in other words, he calls any social interaction a power relation in which all its elements emit their forces in a struggle to impose their wills upon others, and accordingly, to win the power. In any power relation, he maintains, all elements can potentially be the agents and, at the same time, the subjects of power. Disciplinary power, in his words, is a type of power in which all elements of a system like the pieces of a machine work to produce power to achieve the system's objectives. The function of the disciplines is to train the subjects; and its ultimate outcome is the docility- utility of all the elements of the system. Ken Kesey, the 20th century American novelist, in his most prominent novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, depicts a disciplinary asylum in which many power struggles occur between the authorities and the patients. The mental asylum is a place in which the authorities aim at training the mad to respect the rules and be obedient to power, and restoring them to their places in society.

Keywords: Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's, Michel Foucault, disciplinary power.

TABLE OF CONTENT

ABSTRACT                                                                   

Chapter I - Introduction                                                               

Overview                                                                   

Statement of the Problem                                                                    

Significance of the Study                                                                      

Methodology                                                                

Limitation of the study                                                                      

Review of Literature                                                                 

Tentative Chapterization                                                             

Chapter II - Introduction to Michel Foucault and His Theories on Power             

A Brief Summary of Theories of Power                                                                 

Michel Foucault                                                                   

Foucault's Major Works                                                                      

Foucault's Theory of Power                                                                      

Discipline and Disciplinary Power                                                                      

Chapter III - An Introduction to Ken Kesey and His Novel                                   

Ken Kesey                                                                      

Kesey's Major Works                                                                      

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest                                                                       

List of Characters                                                                 

A Brief Synopsis of the Novel                                                                      

Chapter IV - Applying Foucault's Ideas to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest      

Segregating the Mad                                                                        

Discipline                                                                 

Partitioning                                                               

Time-Table                                                                 

Surveillance                                                               

Normalizing Judgment                                                                   

Examination                                                                

Accumulation of Knowledge                                                                  

Punishment                                                                 

Punishment of the Soul                                                                       

Power Relations                                                                  

Resistance                                                                 

Chapter V - Conclusion                                                                 

References                                                                 

Chapter One

Introduction

1.1. Overview

One of the concepts which have evolved through history so that it is quite different from what people assumed someday is the concept of power. It attracts the attention of many philosophers and critics of twentieth century, because its mechanism has undergone a great change, especially in recent centuries. Karl Marx influenced the conceptualization of power in all the social sciences; Alfred Adler, following Marx, opened a discussion on power in psychology; Friedrich Nietzsche influenced thought about power in philosophy. (Sadan 34)

Before the classical age, domination over the subjects has been achieved through suppression; but cost much for the ruling class economically and politically to maintain its power over the subjects. From the classical age on, the way in which domination is carried out has undergone a great change so that suppression has been replaced by disciplines. The disciplinary power costs less economically and politically. It is used nowadays in any society and any institution such as workshops, schools, prisons, asylums, etc. to produce useful and docile bodies.

Michel Foucault is one of the major philosophers of the 20th century whose controversial theories are widely read by scholars, and many of his ideas have strongly influenced the development of new historicism (Tyson 284). His writings on power extended the discussion of the concept of power from sociology to all the fields of the social sciences and the humanities(Sadan 37). One of his most influential books, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, elaborates on the concept and mechanism of disciplines. Although this book is dealing with the prison and the criminal, it can also be applied to any human multiplicities. According to him disciplines are the techniques for assuring the ordering of the human multiplicities . . . to increase both the docility and the utility of all the elements of the system. (Discipline & Punish 218)

Disciplinary power operates systematically within a society, not from above; it is the resultant of the force-relations of all the elements of the multiplicity that produces power. It is the moving substrate of force relations which, by virtue of their inequality, constantly engender states of power (History of Sexuality 93). Therefore power is not a possession of some persons, groups or classes, because power-relations are constantly changing on the condition the tactics or strategies adopted by their elements. Foucault points out:

Power is exercised rather than possessed; it is not the 'privilege', acquired or preserved, of the dominant class, but the overall effect of its strategic possession - an effect that is manifested and sometimes extended by the possession of those who are dominated. (Discipline & Punish 26 -7)

The ultimate outcome of disciplines is the 'docility-utility' of all the elements of the system. It means that disciplinary power wants all the elements of the system to be useful, and obedient. In Foucault's terms, Discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies, 'docile' bodies. Discipline increases the forces of the body (in economic terms of utility) and diminishes the same forces ( in political terms of obedience). (138)

The success of disciplinary power is achieved through a perpetual surveillance. The exercise of discipline presupposes a mechanism that coerces by means of observation, and by this coercion it makes the subjects clearly visible (170). There are some techniques that assure the exercise of the power upon the subjects such as 'enclosure' and 'partitioning'. One of the purposes of these techniques is the separation of the subjects of the classified groups for the sake of observing and controlling them easily and constantly.

The disciplinary power is not going to select the subjects which are abnormal just to separate them from the normal, or to punish or torture them. The chief function of disciplinary power is to train (170). So it adopts strategies to normalize and homogenize the subjects so as to converge the forces, and accordingly to suppress the resistance. In any system of power there will be seen some resistant forces, as Foucault says where there is power, there is resistance (History of Sexuality 93). To suppress the resistant forces, power can benefit from punishment; therefore there is a need for a penal mechanism in any discipline. The disciplinary penal mechanism is not universal, but specific to that particular discipline; it means that it is not identical in all disciplinary institutes, because the norms and rules of those disciplinary institutes are not identical although they may have some similarities. This penal mechanism enjoys a kind of judicial privilege, with its own laws, its specific offences, its particular form of judgment and according to it, any resistance to the power and any transgression of the rules is punished (Discipline & Punish: 178). The modern punishment has a major difference with the former types of punishment as Lisa Downing, in Cambridge Introduction to Michel Foucault, calls it a historical shift which may be described as the movement from the punishment of the body to the punishment of the soul. (76)

The contemporary literature is replete with masterpieces dealing with controversial subjects. One of these masterpieces is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a novel by American novelist Ken Kesey, which depicts how, in a mental asylum, the strict discipline treats the mad. The whole novel can be interpreted as a series of power struggles between the authorities and the patients. The Big Nurse is the disciplinary authority who runs the hospital and is going to exercise disciplinary power to train the patients and make them subjected to power. On the other side, there stands R. P. McMurphy, the rebellion patient, who resists the disciplinary power, and is going to save the patients from their terrible situation in the hospital.

1.2. Statement of the Problem

In any society there are some groups which have been marginalized, and better say oppressed, and their voices have been silenced under some powerful voices. One of these groups is the mad who are silenced, and separated from the society because of their incapability to assimilate to the