| Andrew Bird – Measuring Cups Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I think he's been reading a bit of Michel Foucault, "Discipline and Punish" (or someone's rehashed version of it). Foucault: Since the late 18th century, the individual (soul, personality, etc.) has increasingly become a product of a set of disciplinary techniques found in modern institutions like schools. (in the classroom "we'll measure your brain, give you a complex, and we'll give it a name"). These same disciplinary techniques can be found to greater or lesser degree in other modern institutions like hospitals, factories, prisons, and the barracks. So Bird's connection between school and barracks: "put your backpack on your shoulder be the good little solider." The most important of these techniques is the "examination" (for example a math test, a medical exam, a productivity report, etc.), designed to create a norm, measure ("measuring cups") human beings against it, classify them, and put them in "their" place. ("take your places now, cause we're all predisposed"). And this measuring of human beings masquerades as unquestionable knowledge/truth. ("it's no different when you're older, you're predisposed, that's all for questions, now, the case is closed"). The "truth" of this way of measuring people then serves to keep existing power structures stable. I'm not sure how the "de-clawed" literature/culture verse fits? | |
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