My Friend and His Discourse

I’m student in a university now, not as student at high school again. In this university i meet a lot of friends, from middle class untill high class, also from very wit people untill very serious people.  Wow! What a wonderful university it is!, new life and new style. When my friend from another university said that my university is one of a borjuis university in this city, i just huffy and think ‘maybe it’s true’.

I choose culture studies as my concentration in my study, and i meet a lot of theories. One kind of that theory is discoure, discourses are characteristic of a way of thinking or the state of knowledge at a given moment.  What is discourse actually? As Foucault (1989) explains, discourses are ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’. Discourses, therefore, are social practices in which we engage, they are like social ‘scripts’ we perform (consciously and unconsciously). What we think of as ‘experience’ is always experience in or of a particular discourse. Moreover, what we think of as our ‘selves’ is the internalization of a multiplicity of discourses.  In other words, all the things we are, are enabled, constrained and constituted in discourses.

When i learn about this theory, i remember  with my friend. I remember at first time he visited to this university, he looks bemused and then said, “your university is wonderful, it’s like a car showroom and there is a lot of beautiful girl here, haha. Ah it is like borjuis”.
Although he looks like just make a joke to me, but  i know if it maybe sure. It cause he is a chemical engineering student and coincide a lot of his friend doesn’t look as high class as Airlangga students in their life style, maybe it relates to term that all of their time use to do their assignment. However he ever tell me that he was bored with his lesson, actually if he must stay in laboratory.

Ok, then I will try to analyze my experience with discourse theory, but i will analyze it just in one side, it’s from my friend discourse. Two years ago, when my friend come to this university he said that this university was kind of borjuis university. I think it is a discourse from him to Airlangga, because it was first statement at first time when he comes to Airlangga that had never seen by him before. He assumed Airlangga students consist from rich people and have high class in their life style. Not only that, as he know, Airlangga has excellent students, and his statement makes him fell ashamed if he comes to this university.

His statement to this university such has a power to changed him. I can see it when he comes again to this university for attends some seminar. His appearance looks different from previous visit. Now he is more adapting with this university especially in his manner of dress up, and it happen in every his visit to this university.

From this phenomena, i can see that the first, he has a discourse to this university at his first impression. Second, he do something to changed his style because his statement about the students in this university. Third he looks different from previous one, he has changed especially in his manner of dress up. He wants apparent like another students in this university when he attend an event in this university. And the fourth, it happen everytime in his visit, maybe it’s disciplinary power like in term of  panopticon machine which a type of prison building designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1787. It has major effect to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility. He doesn’t feel comfortable to come if he doesn’t change his style, also it cause whether or not he is actually being watched. This panopticon assures the automatic functioning of power.

I think in another time he also make a resistance with it. Sometimes he doesn’t concern with his appearance when he comes to this university and said, “no matter what happen. This is me an engineering student, and maybe i am cleverer than them.haha.” but i know he has not enough self-confidence when he said it.