Power, Knowledge, Resistance: A Foucauldian Reading on Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children

Abolfazl Ahmadinia

Abstract


This study intends to argue that Mother Courage, the main character of Bertolt Brecht’s play, Mother Courage and Her Children (1941), fails to support her children financially because of a socio-psychological state defined by Foucault as “lack of knowledge”. As a result, she pays a heavy price by losing all her children in quest of profit. Mother Courage is ignorant of the extant power struggle, and gives priority to profit rather than to her children. I think Mother Courage acts as a war profiteer and does not have the required knowledge in order to be able to exercise her own subversive power against the ruling class. This reading intends to offer a study of the two major aspects of “power”– “power and knowledge”, and “power and resistance,”– in selected play.


Keywords


Lack of knowledge; Mother Courage; Power; Profit; Resistance

Full Text:

PDF

References


Alisse, W. (2009). An anthropology of war: Views from the frontline (p.178). London: Berghahn Books.

Barbalet, J. M. (1985). Power and resistance. The British Journal of Sociology, 36(4), 531-548.

Bertolt, B. (1980). Mother courage and her children. In J. Willet (Trans.). London: Penguin Classics Edition .

Bloom, H. (2002). Berthold Brecht (p.39). London: Chelsea House Publishers.

Brecht, B. (1978). Brecht on theatre: The development of an aesthetic. In J. Willett (Ed., trans., p.94). New York: Hill and Wang; London: Methuen.

Brecht, B. (2001). Brecht on theatre. In J. Willett (Ed., trans., pp.140-155). New York: Hill and Wang.

Danaher, G., Schirato, T., & Webb, J. (2000). Understanding Foucault (p.63). Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Eagleton, T. (1991). An introduction to ideology by Eagleton (p.1). London: Verso.

Foucault, M. (1978). An introduction: The history of sexuality (Vol.1). In R. Hurley (Trans., p.95). New York: Pantheon Books.

Foucault, M. (1984). Order of discourse in language and politics (p.129). Oxford: Blackwell.

Foucault, M. (1989). “The question of power” In his foucault live (pp.14-17). New York: Semiotext.

Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. In trans by A. Sheridan (Trans., pp.141-146). New York: Vintage Books.

Fox, N. J. (1998). Foucault, foucauldians and sociology. The British Journal of Sociology, 49(3), 415-433.

Galens, D. (1999). Drama for student (Vol.5, pp.184-188). New York: The Gale group.

Heller, K. J. (1996). Power, subjectification and resistance in foucault. Sub Stance, 25(1), 78-110.

Hill, C. (1975). Bertolt Brecht (pp.74-86). Boston: Twayne Publishers.

James, K. L., ‎& Hans-Peter Breuer, H.-P. (1995). Brecht Unbound (p.246). London: Associated UP.

Jones, D. R. (1986). Great directors at work. London: University of California Press.

Keenan, T. (1987). The paradox of knowledge and power: Reading foucault on a bias. Political Theory, 15(1), 5-37.

Mann, M. (1984). The autonomous power of the state: Its origins, mechanisms and results. Cambridge Journals, 25(2), 34.

Mayr, A. (2008). An introduction to institutional discourse: Language and power (p.10, 14). London: Continuum.

Miller, S. (1990). Foucault on discourse and power. A Journal of Social and Political Theory, 76, 115-125.

Mills, S. (1997). Discourse (p.11). New York: Routledge.

Mills, S. (2003). Michel Foucault (pp.34-25, 58-69). London: Routledge.

Pickett, B. (1996). Foucault and the politics of resistance. Polity, 28(4), 445-468.

Power, M. (2011). Foucault and sociology. The Annual Review of Sociology, 1-25.

Rabinow, P. (1984). The foucault reader (pp.207-209, 245). New York: Pantheon Books.

Schneck, S. F. (1987). Michel foucault on power/discourse, theory and practice. Human Studies, 10(1), 15-33.

Shampa, B., & Sheila, N. (2010). International relations and states of exception: Margins, Peripheries, and excluded bodies (p.169). New York: Routledge.

Stoddart, M. C. J. (2007). Ideology, hegemony, discourse: A critical review of theories of knowledge and power. Social Thought & Research, 28, 191-225.

Thomson, P. (1997). Brecht: Mother courage and her children (p.77). New York: Cambridge UP.

Willett, J. (1967). The theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A study from eight aspects. (3rd ed., pp.53-55). London: Methuen.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/n

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2015



Share us to:   

 

Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/sll/submission/wizard

Please send your manuscripts to sll@cscanada.net，or  sll@cscanada.org  for consideration. We look forward to receiving your work.


We only use three mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: caooc@hotmail.com; sll@cscanada.net; sll@cscanada.org

 Articles published in Studies in Literature and Language are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).

 STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Editorial Office

Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138 
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org 
E-mail: office@cscanada.net; office@cscanada.org; caooc@hotmail.com

Copyright © 2010 Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture