Fabricating the Docile Subject: A Foucaultian Analysis of the Pedagogical Panopticon in La lengua de las mariposas

Abstract

This study examines Jose Luis Cuerda’s film La lengua de las mariposas (1999), adapted from Manuel Rivas’s short stories, through the lens of Michel Foucault’s theories of panopticism, disciplinary power, and the production of "docile bodies." Set on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, the narrative captures how totalitarian impulses infiltrate the microscopic layers of a provincial Galician town. Rather than focusing solely on the macroscopic political strife between Republicans and Nationalists, this paper argues that the film portrays a "pedagogical panopticon" where institutions like the school, the church, and the domestic space operate as surveillance apparatuses. By analyzing the breakdown of the humanist teacher Don Gregorio’s alternative educational model and the tragic conditioning of the child protagonist Moncho, the study demonstrates how power structures enforce self-surveillance and coercive normalization. Ultimately, the paper illustrates that the rise of fascism is achieved not merely by sovereign violence, but through the internal coercion of individuals who eventually become their own wardens.