Özet:

This paper explores panopticonic self-surveillance in Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by employing Foucault’s conceptions of disciplinary power. Foucault believes that power is productive and constructs compliant subjects through discourse. Both the central and the peripheral are constrained in a power situation. Power is not a possession but a strategy executed over a multitude of self-inspecting and self-motivating individuals. In Oregon Mental Asylum, under the panopticonic gaze and control of Nurse Ratched, patients are subject of continuous observation, control and an enforced discipline. Crime is seen as an individual deformity and no expression of self is permitted in the asylum. Be it the therapy sessions or McMurphy playing basketball with other patients, they are under continuous observation and Nurse Ratched ensures order through any means necessary. The method of textual analysis is used to study the text of the novel. The paper establishes that none can transcend the reach of panopticonic power because individuals are not only the targets of disciplinary power but also its carriers. Textual analysis of the novel validates that power is not static because it is disseminated within a human structure through panopticonic self-surveillance.

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