The Pathology of the Uncoupling of System and Lifeworld and the Formation of Surveillance in The Castle

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Lecturer/ Imam Sadiq [PBUH] University

2 Dean of the Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran

3 The Head of British Studies Department, Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran

Abstract

Enlightenment in the Western societies, by giving credence to the instrumental reason, justified man’s dominance over his world around and led to the construction of modern structures in the Western societies. Among the critics of Modernity, Michel Foucault by genealogical study of the formation of the Western subject analyzed the procedures through which the modern power technologies are formed. Also, Jürgen Habermas by the study of the Western instrumental reason, establishes his pathological solutions on the grounds of inter-subjectivity. Moreover, Howard Barker, in his play, The Castle, depicts a dystopian society in which a medieval crusader, accompanied with a rationalist engineer, destroys people's communal and intersubjective relations by constructing a panoptic castle. This article aims at analyzing the surveillance society of The Castle by Foucault’s genealogy of power relations in the Western societies and Habermas’s theories about the uncoupling of lifeworld and system. The researchers of this study concluded that the uncoupling of lifeworld from system can be the main reason for the demolition of the play's symbolic society.

Keywords

References

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Research in Contemporary World Literature
Volume 23, Issue 1
September 2018
Pages 103-122

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