Abstract:
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ABSTRACT
Though totalitarian governments appear to have ceased to exist, totalitarian control is still exercised in ways that are not particularly traditional and constitutional. The authority has moved from being inforced physically to being enforced psychologically. To exercise its ideology, a totalitarian government needs to utilise different fields of science and arts. Architecture is one field that is able to serve the aims of government. The Model of the Panopticon suggested by Jeremy Bentham, is theorised by French theorist Michel Foucault into Panopticism, leading the panopticon to transcend its physical being and be that of a metaphorical one. Since literature mirrors to a certain degree the real state of societies, a work of fiction will be analysed to better examine how totalitarian governments function in disguise. Therefore, this research examines the subtle ways modern ruling powers follow to indoctrinate and make docile bodies out of their subjects in Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go using Foucault’s theory of panopticism.
