HUMILIATION AS A TECHNOLOGY OF DISCIPLINE: BODY, OBEDIENCE AND INSTITUTIONAL POWER IN TAMIL FILM TAANAKKARAN

Abstract

This paper presents an exhaustive post-structuralist and micro-sociological critique of the 2022 Tamil film Taanakkaran, directed by Tamizh, exploring the operationalization of somatic and psychological humiliation as a deliberate technology of discipline within the state's repressive apparatus. Drawing upon a systematic synthesis of Michel Foucault’s genealogy of disciplinary power and Erving Goffman’s sociological taxonomy of total institutions, the study deconstructs the spatial and somatic regimes of the Police Recruits School in Pozhilaru, Tirunelveli, set in the socio-politically volatile landscape of 1998. By examining the systematic breaking of the civilian body through ritualized head-shaving, uniforming, spatial exposure, and the relentless deployment of the Extra Drill, this paper illustrates how the post-colonial state replicates its colonial lineage to manufacture docile, non-reflective enforcers of institutional violence. To deepen the postcolonial critique, the paper integrates the materialist concepts of Rob Nixon’s ‘slow violence’ and Stacy Alaimo’s ‘transcorporeality,’ arguing that the parched, infrastructure-deprived environment of the training camp acts not merely as a passive setting, but as an active, trans-corporeal agent of physical and moral mortification. The study further explores how these panoptic regimes are challenged through the subaltern counter-conduct of the protagonist, Arivu, and the collective somatic resistance of the aging 1982 recruitment batch. Ultimately, this inquiry argues that Taanakkaran functions as a vital cinematic archive that demystifies the root causes of police brutality, locating them not in individual moral failure, but in the institutionalized trauma and bodily degradation of the training academy.