By Nestor Ravilas

What if all institutions we can identify that directly or indirectly impinging us are all colluding together to intentionally construct a particular human being? What if there is a grand conspiracy among these institutions, those that amount to what Judith Butler describes as “constituting relations,” that received us from birth, trained, shaped and designed us into something useful for particular end? Imposing its repressive power on us, monitoring every movement, controlling our gestures, manipulating our desires, dictate our behaviour, and govern the truth we dearly hold on. This is the angst of Michel Foucault, suspecting all institutions, from factories to psychiatry, to penitentiary, police, military, judiciary, education, including religions as mere state apparatuses that constitute its exercise of power over its citizens.

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