Repressive apparatuses and biopolitical logic: A dystopian critique of Stephen King’s the Institute

Abstract

Stephen King’s The Institute is a critique of unregulated institutional power and its exploitative tendencies. His work highlights the predicament of telepathic and telekinetic children, illegally captured by a state institution and coerced into achieving strategic objectives. This paper aims to examine King’s novel, drawing upon the theoretical frameworks of Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, and Giorgio Agamben. It endeavors to explore the controlling and repressive mechanisms to enhance the understanding of power operating to regulate discipline, life, and death. The study adheres to qualitative research methodology, adopting close reading and textual/thematic analysis in relation to Biopower, Repressive State Apparatus, Homo Sacer, and State of Exception to comprehend the institutional violence exemplified by abduction, isolation, surveillance, and abuse. Findings of the study reveal the execution of institutional power through biopolitical logic, structural production of dehumanization, and normalization of cruelty for the greater good. It also emphasizes the significance of resistance as a counterforce to the aforementioned modalities. It situates The Institute within the tradition of dystopic literature for congruence with contemporaneous transnational practices of militarized surveillance, secured detention, and weaponized science. Finally, the novel foregrounds literature’s significance in critiquing oppressive mechanisms as well as the implications of dystopian control.