A FOUCAULDIAN STUDY OF POWER, SUBJECTIVITY, AND CONTROL IN THE BEATS’ LITERATURE AND LIFE
A FOUCAULDIAN STUDY OF POWER, SUBJECTIVITY, AND CONTROL IN THE BEATS’ LITERATURE AND LIFE

Summary/Abstract: According to Foucault’s ideas, power produces discourses and the clash of discourses leads to the change of subjectivities or consciousnesses and also to the internalization of a particular discourse. In other words, it is via creation of subjectivities that power dominates human beings. The Beats knew that the subjectivity that people assign to themselves is imaginary and illusory; it has been given to them by their culture or society and accordingly, they define themselves and only imagine that they are that sort of persons independently and take it as ‘truth’. This paper strives to show that the Beats were completely cognizant of this process and through resisting the power, subjectivity, and control that society had imposed upon themtried to create new and different subjectivities, as Foucault had recommended.

• Details
• Contents