I am in the middle of reading “Panopticism” by Foucault, and I’m certain I’ll be using this for my paper on punk pedagogy. Punk is about breaking discipline, about fighting discipline, and this essay is exactly about discipline, and it’s so true (it’s scary!):
The disciplines function increasingly as techniques for making useful individuals….They become attached to some of the great essential functions: factory production, the transmission of knowledge, the diffusion of aptitudes and skills, the war-machine. (211)
Why should individuals be useful? Why are people reduced to their uses, instead of viewed as whole beings? When we view others as how they can be useful to us, we cease to see them as whole entities and instead see them as things, not separate from our solipsistic views. It seems like discipline is something to be questioned and fought against in all the above functions.
