Architecture of Power
Essay # 2
4-5 pages inclusive of Works Cited, 1 inch margins, double spacing (even between paragraphs), MLA citation form, quotations integrated with signal phrases, and attention to both Higher Order and Lower Order Concerns.
Peer Review (hard copy, full rough draft required) November 7, 2022
Revision Due: November 16th, 2022
Reading and writing are ethical processes that influence our perception, self-consciousness, and agency (Orwell, Gallop, and Foucault). Like Ishiguro, Danticat believes that fiction (art) provides readers with a vicarious experience that fosters empathy and moral self-reflection through attention to language. Further, Danticat suggests that art might help us navigate “real” world moral crises (our response to immigration, genocide, civil violence, police brutality and prison policy, and systemic racism).
Prompt
In “Panopticism,” Foucault describes the way in which,
He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection. By this very fact, the external power may throw off its physical weight . . . the more constant, profound and permanent are its effects: it is a perpetual victory.
Prompt: How and why does Danticat challenge Foucault’s notion of panopticism’s “perpetual victory” in her exploration of cross-generational trauma? The inevitable effects of civil violence on those who have not experienced it directly as adults? To what purpose or end? Choose three or four paragraphs from one short story and perform a close reading (Gallop’s “Ethics of Reading”) in the context of Foucault’s claim. Choose ONE character as the focus of your analysis:
Ka “The Book of the Dead”
Nadine “Water Child”
Dany or Claude “Night Talkers”
Aline “The Bridal Seamstress”
Michel “Monkey Tails”
Please remember your essay’s audience (a reader of Foucault, Gallop, Orwell and Ishiguro).