mddm (3): ship & jail

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 " ... for being in a ship is being in a jail ..." (35)

ships and jails (like psychiatries, concentration camps or tubercolosis wards) 
are both what erving goffman ("asylums. essays on the social situation of mental 
patients and other inmates", 1961, in german: "asyle", ffm 1972: suhrkamp), the 
great sociologist of micro-spheres, called "total institutions". while modernity 
in general can be characterized by a high degree of social differentiation 
(which implies that we take part in a plurality of social systems), "total 
institutions" are absolute in the sense that they combine a community of life 
with a formal organization. so the inmates are dwelling in a mono-contextural 
social world. in "one flew over the cuckoo's nest", 1962, ken kesey used the 
total institution as a metaphor for society as such. (right, cruel michel was 
rappin' about this, too). in pynchon's world - think of ships, reeducation- or 
labor-camps - total institutions are also important. 

                                                         kai frederik           
   
ps: for an effort to reformulate goffman's insights in the context of luhmannian 
systems theory, see --- andré kieserling: kommunikation unter anwesenden. 
studien über interaktionssysteme. ffm 1999: suhrkamp.