Discipline And Personal Identity

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Discipline and Personal Identity

Introduction

Identity is a recurring theme in the educational field, especially when it is a question, when interest focuses on identifying the author’s identity in his speeches. To do this, then linguistic investigations are made to identify it through textual analysis. However, it rarely investigates how this identity is thought of, how it is constituted or built. Answering all the possible questions that can emerge supposes various toric options from where to address. Among them, that of Michel Foucault, because if it is about responding how identity is formed in the educational field, it is then necessary to think and wonder about the ways as we proceed in school and why we do it in a certain way. This assumes that we turn to see the idea of discipline proposed by Michel Foucault seen by him as a way of educating towards behavior.

The idea of Foucault discipline developed in monitoring and punishing, a work published in 1975, allows us to reflect on how it is present in the author’s identity training that, in the school environment, are the students who try to integrate, belong and comply with thedemands of the school or a specific field and community disciplinary community. Therefore, this essay aims to reflect on identity construction, I understand the proposal of "discipline" by Michael Foucault and the social constructionism of identity.

For this, the constructionist vision of identity is first exposed, compared to the proposal of discipline of Michael Foucault and subsequently reflects how identity is formed and what are the mechanisms involved in this construction, especially in the educational field.

Discipline and social constructionism of identity

Knowing, understanding the identity of an author is not a simple task and has been a topic of constant interest, especially for those who study discourse. Who is the author? It is a complex question to answer. The vision of social constructionism proposes that:

The entities that we normally call reality, knowledge, thought, facts, texts, me, etc., They are constructions generated by communities of pairs of related ideas. Social construction includes reality, knowledge, thought, facts, texts, oneself, and so on as a community and the community is maintained linguistic entities – or, in more general terms, symbolic entities – that define or ‘constitute’The communities that generate them.

This constructionist vision of identity defends the idea that it is not only in the mental interior or intentions of the individual, but is the product of the appropriation of beliefs that are within their social context, which the individual learns and apprehends. It is here that Foucault’s proposal can be found since both positions recognize the influence of dominant ideologies in the construction of the individual and their identity, through control and restriction and therefore give foundations to understand that identity is notdetermined, but socially built. The discipline understood from Foucault’s proposal:

The discipline ‘manufactures’ individuals;It is the specific technique of a power that occurs individuals at the same time as objects and as instruments of their exercise. It is not a triumphant power that from its own excess can be reluctant in its superpower;It is a modest, suspicious power, which works according to the model of an economy calculated but permanent.

Also, Michel Foucault mentions that:

‘Discipline’ cannot be identified with an institution or a device. It is a type of power, a modality to exercise it, implying a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, application levels, goals;It is a ‘physical’ or an ‘anatomy’ of power, a technology.

The constructed identity is latent in the speeches, since it is the discipline the technology of power that guides the behavior of individuals and submits them to build them in a certain way. Individuals conform to a certain domination of disciplines, since they have ‘methods that allow the thorough control of body operations, which guarantee the constant subjection of their forces and impose a relationship of docility-utility, is what is what is whatYou can call ‘disciplines ". Among these are surveillance, sanction, exam.

In educational institutions, certain ways of being are privileged for having the approval of groups that concentrate power or have greater power than others, which causes those who do not have those ways of being approved enter an identity crisis,Not finding apt of being part of a certain group.

The disciplinary communities and the school in general have that character of indoctrination, where the only way in which a learning member of a community can learn to become a full member is copying, adapting and synthesizing the work of other members without reaching plagiarism, especially if writing is about. In academic writing this would be considered extremely dishonorable. Although finally, as Foucault mentions, there are speeches that are consciously or unconsciously repeated and that follow, but that are there and that are the product of their social context: the multiple traditions on which it is based.

Academic communities have a set of speeches that remain and that guide the individual to think with how they and act like them, where selection and exclusion individuals is constant. Therefore, the student strives to build an identity related to that of the community, think like them and act like them;Learn your rituals and wait for approval.

Academic writing is a sample of the demands of disciplinary communities to be part of the group, where the identity reflected in written discourse must comply with certain formal parameters, but also of thought. This in many cases generates an identity crisis. So when writing one, who is who writes. Where is the origin of what words and ideas? Undoubtedly, individuals are framed and crossed by power, their body, mind and soul respond to certain rituals, strategies, actions, practices that allow power over it and that will reaffirm the power of a community:

The human body enters a mechanism of power that explores it, disarticulates and recomposes it. A ‘political anatomy’, which is equally a ‘mechanics of power’ is being born;Define how it can be done in the body of others, not simply so that they do what you want, but so that they operate as they want, with the techniques, according to the speed and effectiveness that is determined. The discipline thus manufactures bodies subjected and exercised, "docile" bodies.

Discipline is then a preparatory technique of the individual to reaffirm the power that results in learning that generates knowledge, a knowledge that in some way or another also acquires the individual by learning and apprehending the rituals of a community.

The surveillance also developed by Foucault, together with the Panoptic, is another of the disciplinary mechanisms that will prosecute the behaviors and thoughts of individuals:

In the previous conference I tried to define the Panoptism that, in my opinion, is one of the characteristic features of our society: a form that is exercised on individuals in the manner of individual and continuous surveillance, as control of punishment and reward and as a correction, that is, as a method of training and transformation of individuals according to certain norms. These three aspects of Panoptism – vigilance, control and correction – constitute a fundamental and characteristic dimension of the power relations that exist in our society. 

Within this understanding the hierarchical inspection and the examination are instruments necessary to indoctrinate the subjects. Disciplinary power makes hierarchical surveillance necessary where knowing the disciplinary field monitors the proceeding of the one who wants to integrate: “disciplinary power, in effect, is a power that, instead of taking out and withdrawing, has as its main function that of’straighten behaviors’;or without a doubt, to do this to withdraw better and get more."And for this, there are structured observation and evaluation mechanisms specifically to be able to carry out this surveillance:“ A central point would be both a light source that would illuminate everything, and a place of convergence for everything that must be known:perfect eye to which nothing is subtracted and center towards which all eyes are turned ”where in the educational scheme and properly in the pedagogical discourse this surveillance is“ inside a unique device three procedures: the teaching itself, theAcquisition of knowledge for the very exercise of pedagogical activity, and finally a reciprocal and hierarchical observation ”.

The Foucault exam is one of the tools that allow surveillance, since it establishes on individuals a visibility through which they are differentiated and sanctioned. To this is due that, in all discipline devices, the exam is highly ritualized. In it the ceremony of power and the form of experience, the deployment of force and the establishment of truth […] to overcome power relations and the relationships of knowledge acquires in the exam, all notoriety visible.

In this sense, the exam is often. Which, as mentioned before, creates tensions within individual, the punishment not only of the body is present, but of the thought and the soul that also define identities, ways and ways of regret and acting.

But this is not just to understand how the body, thought and soul are limited and are disciplined to convenience of certain groups. A critical vision of the social construction of identity invites us to think not only on the influence of the dominant ideologies to control and restrict the meaning that people of themselves have, but also allows us to ask about alternatives. The contradiscourses that can even arise within the same community are a way of thinking other alternatives, since without these possibilities of critically thinking about the dominant constructions of our identities, the perspective of humanity would even enter this limitation that the groups ofPower want me to prevail.

The demands within the disciplinary fields and the school certainly require the adoption of an identity to be recognized as perfectly well established and delimited groups, which implies the constant struggle for power. Therefore, there will always be these means of channeling to enter its dynamics, to its rituals;It is these groups that invade their own forms, modify their mechanisms and impose their procedures. Finally, the similarity, the limits and the differences between the communities play in the process of establishing an identity will always cause tensions in the student or to whom to try to integrate into them.

Conclusions

After the tour made by Foucault’s proposal to reflect aspects about identity that are required to adopt as members of a disciplinary field, educational or social community, it was understood that this identity should be understood beyond the individual’s mind, since there areAn environment, a context that builds these identities, because it only gives it to freeze to choose what has already been established in such a way, that it only reacts to these alternatives, although not everyone really wants to reaffirm the values of discursive communities. Therefore, identity, then, must be understood socially built. When working this constructionist vision of identity, compared to the proposal of discipline of Michael Foucault and subsequently reflecting how identity is formed and what are the mechanisms involved in this construction, especially in the educational field, is that thepurpose of this essay;although Foucaultiana’s proposal is not covered that can influence the compression of identity, leaving this for future investigations.

References

  • Bruffee, k. A. 1986. ‘Social Construction, Language, and The Authority of Knowledge: A Bibliographical Essay’. College English 48: 773-790.
  • Foucault, m. (1976). Watch out and punish. Birth of prison. Argentina: 21st century editors
  • Foucault m. (1978) Truth and legal forms. Editorial By Gedisa, Rio de Janeiro
  • Ivanic, r. (nineteen ninety five). ‘Writer Identity’. Prospect: The Australian Journal of Tesol

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