https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i2.080
Bullying as Capillary Power: Disciplinary Spaces in Fish in a Tree
MS. K.M. SHAHNAZ
Research Scholar
Department of English
Farook College (Autonomous), Kerala
Affiliated to the University of Calicut
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-0761-8518
DR MUFEEDA T
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Farook College (Autonomous), Kerala
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0697-1994
Abstract: Lynda Mullaly Hunt’s Fish in a Tree (2015) reveals schools as Foucauldian disciplinary spaces where power is used to generate docile, yet productive bodies. For Foucault, schools are among the first disciplinary spaces to institute “enclosure, the specification of a place heterogeneous to all others and closed in upon itself, the protected place of disciplinary monotony” and are also partitioned in order to assign and track every individual’s position “so as to expedite the need to supervise, to break dangerous communications” (141). Hunt’s novel portrays the classroom struggles of an 11-year-old protagonist, Ally Nickerson, who experiences dyslexia as a disciplinary marker and is constantly subjected to peer and institutional surveillance via her classmates as well as teachers. Ally gets reprimanded by her educators for not reading effectively or taunted by her classmates for her academic shortcomings. This disciplining takes the form of bullying on her peers’ part, which can be analysed as the “capillary power” mentioned by Foucault. These mechanisms produce abjection, transforming both Ally’s subjectivity and classroom dynamics. As Foucault suggests, power is omnipresent and does not narrow down to a single individual or powerful institution, but is composed of “force relations.” Fish in a Tree is a novel which can be read through a Kristevan lens, tracing the journey of a neurodivergent protagonist whose disability shapes her experience as she attempts to find her way within the classroom, a microcosm of the Symbolic order. This space prioritizes normalization, uniformity, and high academic achievement, while marginalizing those who are unable to conform to the expectations imposed by an already established, homogenizing learning environment. Drawing on a combined Foucauldian–Kristevan framework, this paper examines bullying as both a social barrier and a normalizing tool deployed by the classroom and its members to sustain the already established, inflexible standards of the classroom space, while simultaneously abjecting the disabled subject.
Keywords: Fish in a Tree, disciplinary power, surveillance studies, abjection, capillary power, resistance, dyslexia, bullying
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