Power &amp; Surveillant Gaze in Howard Barker’s The Gaoler’s Ache

Ramin Farhadi,Mohammad Amin Mozaheb

doi:10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.7n.1p.239

Abstract

One of the goals of Howard Barker’s Theatre of Catastrophe is to challenge conventional view of historical events and writing of history. Barker’s historical approach is to first identify the repressive power institutions and their destructive effects on the lives of characters, then take up an uncompromising stance against the discourse of authority that tries to construct history according to its ends and attitudes. The Gaoler’s Ache (1998) is a play by which Barker represents the post-Revolutionary France and the exercise of disciplinary mechanism of power in a society that by means of surveillance and domination over the body, the revolutionaries cast off the monarchy and make the imprisoned queen an abject, an object of gaze and disgrace. Yet the abject queen by expressing her sexuality openly attempts to subvert the patriarchal and authoritarian society of the revolutionary State. In this respect the researchers, by using Foucauldian analysis and close reading, explore the way in which Barker makes use of the two notions of surveillance and abjection coined by the French thinkers Foucault and Kristeva respectively to stage how under the pressure of history and its constitutive discourses modes of resistance such as sexual self-making are anticipated.

Highlights

Howard Barker’s early theatrical works were mostly focused on socialist themes and England’s state of affairs
The abject queen by expressing her sexuality openly attempts to subvert the patriarchal and authoritarian society of the revolutionary State. In this respect the researchers, by using Foucauldian analysis and close reading, explore the way in which Barker makes use of the two notions of surveillance and abjection coined by the French thinkers Foucault and Kristeva respectively to stage how under the pressure of history and its constitutive discourses modes of resistance such as sexual self-making are anticipated
One of the most effective strategies has been employed by Barker is history in a way that he attempts to forge a link between present and past so as to bring the forms of political resistance to light, and to consider the “constitutive discourses” of history and “their deleterious effects on the individual” (Megson, 2006, p. 495)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Howard Barker’s early theatrical works were mostly focused on socialist themes and England’s state of affairs. Barker presents that the French Revolution, in order to be successful, requires the demonization of the royal family, especially Queen Caroline, and this would be likely achieved by using simultaneously two strategies: surveillance and abjection The former is used by Foucault to explain the birth of disciplinary power from the French Revolution, and the latter is expounded by another French thinker Julia Kristeva. The evidence of French literary and philosophical thoughts on Barker can be seen in the two collections of essays on his theatrical practice, Theatre of Catastrophe (2006) and Lamb’s full-length study of Barker Notable among these thinkers are Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva whose notions of surveillance and abjection, respectively, run through in many of Barker’s dramatic writings (notably, The Early Hours, The Bite of the Night, and The Gaoler’s Ache). The two notions of surveillance and abjection, and sexuality as a mode of dissent self-making are going to explore in detail on Howard Barker’s The Gaoler’s Ache by using Foucauldian and literary analysis in the two sections below

DISCUSSION

CONCLUSION