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

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References


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

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