What Is To Be Expected Of Us
“By the late eighteenth century, the soldier has become something that can be made; out of a formless clay, an inapt body, the machine required can be constructed; posture is gradually corrected; a calculated constraint runs slowly through each part of the body, mastering it, making it pliable, ready at all times, turning silently into the automatism of habit; in short, one has ‘got rid of the peasant’ and given him ‘the ask of a soldier’”
— Michel Foucault
In Docile Body, Foucault is talking about how humans are becoming more trained, taught to become something. This something can be a student, a child, a good citizen, or like in his example, a soldier. He explains that soldiers become mechanical, they become just a soldier. This is the best example to use because in this world today, we are being trained everyday to become something we might not have wanted to become or do in life. Students for example, some students might not want to go to college, but feel like they have too because they are taught that college is the only way to go. This is so much invented in their heads that some even go through great debts to do so. In today’s world people are feeling like they are forced to do something, like college, in order to live in a comfortable life. When they become college students, if they want to be successful, they need to study their asses off, miss hours of sleeps, and be overly prepared for a single test.
They start becoming mechanical, this starts becoming a routine, losing from freedom. Sure some students are doing what they love and would not want to change that, but of course the docility does not end by the end of the college years.
After you leave college, you are expected to be a good citizen. This is done by showing us that if we do something bad, we get punished for it, go to jail, get sued, etc. We become so well trained to becoming a good citizen throughout our whole lives, but of course I am not saying this is a bad thing.
People would do anything out of curiosity, but because of this trained mind that we have, most people do not do these things because they will be punished. But what if there was no punishment? What would happen.
Marina Abramovic is an artist who used her body to show how cruel people can be. She stood outside in many places and left 72 items to use on her. Some of these were weapons.These items could be used on her in any way possible and people would not get punished for it. Every time she went out she would always have articles of clothing removed from her and cuts. Each time she ended in blood and tears. This shows that there is lots of curiosity within people and because they are trained that their would be punishments for these things, they resist doing it. When those punishments are removed, people let their curiosity take over and you end up with things like this. So it is good that people are being trained with the knowing that there will be consequences. Humans alone have so much potential to change the world and if there were consequences who knows what kind of world we would live in.
It is good that humans have docile bodies, in a way, it protects us from us and there is no harm there. Being able to teach someone on how to become something is great, too some extent of course. It is a trade some of our freedom, for protection, but for a good life as well. Not everyone becomes a student or a good citizen, but everyone is taught to become something, whether it is a good or bad thing that was taught is a whole other story though.
