Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans
Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Ankara Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Türkiye
Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2019
Tezin Dili: İngilizce
Öğrenci: Nur Çürük
Danışman: SILA ŞENLEN GÜVENÇ
Açık Arşiv Koleksiyonu: AVESİS Açık Erişim Koleksiyonu
Özet:Contemporary British Drama presents a considerable amount of plays dealing with the theme of mental illness as a socio-political issue. In these plays, mentally ill characters usually appear to be either labelled as ‘mad’ or ‘mentally ill’ due to their deviations from the commonly-held norms and expectations of mainstream society, or driven to mental and psychological disorders as a consequence of their exposure to unfortunate experiences such as discrimination, oppression, and abuse due to their behaviour and ideas deemed ‘abnormal’. In the plays, most of these characters are involuntarily incarcerated in psychiatric institutions and subjected to some disciplinary and punitive practices in order to be transformed into ‘docile’ and ‘obedient’ individuals for the benefit of the prevailing social order. All these details make these contemporary plays a significant source for the examination of the disciplinary function of psychiatry and its institutions over the individuals falling outside of social norms in line with Foucault’s analysis of ‘psychiatric power’. In this thesis, Tom Stoppard’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1977), Sarah Daniels’s Head-rot Holiday (1992), and Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange (2000) have been studied for the analysis of the use of psychiatric procedures – diagnosis, treatment, and hospitalization – for the purposes of social-control. These plays have been specifically chosen because each play both takes place in a psychiatric institution and focuses on characters stigmatized as ‘mentally ill’ due to a different experience of ‘otherness’: In Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1977), the ‘mentally ill’ character, Alexander Ivanov who has been imprisoned in a Soviet mental hospital is a political dissident; in Head-rot Holiday (1992), the inmates of Penwell Special Hospital are three women, Dee, Ruth, and Claudia who have either violated the hetero-normative social roles, or suffered from mental disorder as a result of their experiences of oppression and abuse; 188 and finally in Blue/Orange (2000), the mad character, Christopher who has been compulsorily placed in a mental hospital through the criminal justice system is a young coloured man subjected to racial hatred and discrimination in the community due to his ethnic minority identity. This thesis has first begun with a brief history of psychiatry within the frame of its social-control function, anti-psychiatry perspectives of mental illness and psychiatry, and with a detailed examination of psychiatric power. After providing a historical and theoretical background, the thesis has then moved on with a brief survey of the contemporary British plays which highlight the disciplinary function of psychiatry through the characters deemed ‘mad’ or ‘mentally ill’ due to their differing social deviances and exposed to the correctional and normalizing operations of psychiatric institutions. The last three chapters of this thesis have studied Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1977), Head-rot Holiday (1992), and Blue/Orange (2000) in relation to Foucault’s analysis of ‘psychiatric power’. Chapter III has analysed Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1977) in relation to the use of psychiatric procedures for the control and the suppression of political dissidents. Chapter IV has studied Head-rot Holiday (1992) within the frame of the normalizing and correctional functioning of psychiatric institutions over the women who deviate from the widely-held norms of hetero-normative society. Finally, Chapter V has examined Blue/Orange (2000) in terms of the disciplinary role of psychiatric institutions and professionals over a young coloured man who does not meet the dominant cultural expectations of society. The analyses of these three plays have been enriched through the examination of the specific strategies, methods, and techniques whereby the disciplinary power in psychiatric institutions is systematically exercised over such ‘deviant’ members of society with the help of Foucault’s ‘psychiatric power’.