FOUCAULDIAN REFLECTIONS OF AUTHORITY IN SOFTCOPS AND CLEANSED

Year 2025, Issue: 66, 165 - 174

Mehtap Demirtürk

https://doi.org/10.30794/pausbed.1542431

Abstract

This paper discusses how Churchill’s Softcops and Kane’s Cleansed delve deeply into Michel Foucault’s ideas about power and authority by exploring literature’s challenges towards authority, how society enforces control, and its impact on dehumanisation. With this purpose, it tries to analyse Foucault’s ideas regarding authority and power intertwining with the themes of punishment and violence in these plays. In Softcops, Churchill dramatises the absurdities of authority and its more insidious way of punishment by turning public punishment into more invisible control through surveillance and normalisation that resembles Foucault’s panopticon. Cleansed, meanwhile, is a sensory examination of the extreme violence that lies at the heart of contemporary discipline systems with its institution. It presents a microcosm of social control where authority is not just everywhere but in you too. Softcops and Cleansed become important critiques of the processes whereby contemporary societies exercise control over their human populations, highlighting these systems’ dehumanising effects as well as how such authority builds up progressively within society. This paper emphasises how these plays continue to have such enduring significance of power, demonstrating their applicability, and reliability according to Foucauldian ideas in contemporary literature. It also encourages deeper reflection upon themselves within systems of governed powers by hinting at why they challenge audiences long afterwards.

Keywords

Foucault, Softcops, Cleansed, power, authority, punishment, panopticon

SOFTCOPS VE CLEANSED ESERLERİNDE OTORİTENİN FOUCAULTCU YANSIMALARI

Abstract

Bu çalışma, Churchill’in Softcops ve Kane’in Cleansed oyunlarının Michel Foucault’nun iktidar ve otorite hakkındaki fikirlerini nasıl derinlemesine incelediğini, edebiyatın toplumun ve bu fikirlerin insanlıktan çıkarma üzerindeki etkilerini nasıl sorguladığını ve meydan okuduğunu tartışmaktadır. Bu amaçla, çalışma Foucault’nun otorite ve iktidarla ilgili fikirlerini, bu oyunlardaki ceza ve şiddet temalarıyla iç içe geçirerek analiz etmeye çalışmaktadır. Softcops’ta Churchill, Foucault’nun panoptikonunu andıran gözetim ve normalleştirme yoluyla kamusal cezayı daha görünmez bir kontrole dönüştürerek otoritenin saçmalıklarını ve daha sinsi cezalandırma yöntemini dramatize eder. Bu arada Cleansed, kurumuyla çağdaş disiplin sistemlerinin kalbinde yatan aşırı şiddetin duyusal bir incelemesidir. Otoritenin sadece her yerde değil, sizin içinizde de olduğu bir sosyal kontrol mikro kozmosu sunmaktadır. Softcops ve Cleansed, çağdaş toplumların insan nüfusları üzerinde kontrol uyguladıkları süreçlerin önemli eleştirileri haline gelir ve bu sistemlerin insanlıktan çıkarıcı etkilerinin yanı sıra bu tür bir otoritenin toplum içinde nasıl aşamalı olarak inşa edildiğini vurgular. Bu çalışma, Foucaultcu fikirlere göre bu oyunların çağdaş edebiyatta uygulanabilirliğini ve güvenilirliğini göstererek, gücün bu kadar kalıcı bir öneme sahip olmaya nasıl devam ettiğini vurgulamaktadır. Ayrıca, uzun süre sonra izleyicilere neden meydan okuduklarına işaret ederek, yönetilen güçler sistemleri içinde kendileri üzerine daha derin düşünmeye teşvik etmektedir.

Keywords

Foucault, Softcops, Cleansed, güç, otorite, ceza, panoptikon

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