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Postscripts to Technology of Domination and Aesthetics of Resistance Or, the Present-day Model of Disciplinarity, and Counter-hegemony

Jayson C. Jimenez

Discipline: Philosophy

 

Abstract:

Technologies of dominations, forms of disciplinarity, panopticism, control, punishment, and power relations were common themes of penological conditioning brought by systems of power and hierarchy of disciplinarians. Michel Foucault explored these themes under scientific complexity of human nature. Hyped by the intellectual climate of the 1968, student demonstrations, and series of protests on educational reforms concretized Foucault’s theory on power relation and visible systems of domination. For example, France under the Charles de Gaulle’s rule administered an educational system whose framework was to construct educational institutions that will cater the demands if globalization. Student, hindering his true potential namely the real nature of the self, will be forged by this stricter rules imposed by these institutions. The human loses his notion of self, not merely identity, but his authentic and original formation viz. the core of his rationality and freedom. Since he is subjected to systems of laws, he loses his grasp to what really constitute freedom hence, “not a substance but a form, not always identical to itself.” There is a society to be examined, a subject to be saved, and in doing so, a form of resistance should be developed. How to develop forms of resistance in this time (not on only Foucault’s concentration on 18th century-20th century) when society designed technologies of domination in which freedom was distributed without a price, as a result, an expanding power relation where subjects possessed an artificial freedom, namely by means of virtual relations? This paper aims to examine Foucault’s theory of disciplinarity and domination in light of the present-day fascination to beautifully design virtual spaces and cyber-freedoms in codes and algorithmic forms, and his revival of Socratic virtue as a form of resistance where philosophy can intervene. Relating to this, I will employ a certain twist on resistance where Foucault is aware but never explored, the possibility of resistance in a model of counter-aesthetic, in a form of a postscript.