Stasis

In my persuasion class we learned about the rhetorical and legal principle of stasis. Stasis is when two different views in a case come together and the "stasis" is the outcome of the argument or disagreement.
An example of "stasis" is when students at Denison get written up by Denison security. The students have their own story of what happened. They were involved in an act that they did not necessarily feel was "wrong" or "bad." But, security finds their acts unacceptable. You have to look deeper into the situation at hand and who was involved in the act. The most important thing to explore is if the act was right or wrong, or good or bad. Is it worse than another act that had been committed and what punishment the act should recieve.
The final verdict comes when everything about the act is looked over.

Narrative Self-Construction

At the beginning of the interview, Jane appeared to be very upset about her past. Her story was very upsetting and hard to hear because the listenener could tell that she had suffered a great deal from her mother's choice of schooling for her. In the past, Jane was "passive and victimized." First, Jane suffered from her parents divorce, which always leaves a child upset, angry, and timid. Children tend to blame themselves for their parents problems. Then, her mother became swayed by someone else's advice, therefore she was sent to a boarding school that she did not want to be at. This then lead to abuse and unhappiness. To make matters worse, she finds out that her mother has been ill for a long time. All of these things combined make for a very hard childhood and past. But, once Jane finally gets a grasp on her life, she then repositions herself in her own story. She has now, at 57, become assertive and active in her life. She is reshaping how the rest of her life is going to pan out, with only herself as the storyteller and no one else. In the past she was passive and scared, but now the storyteller has become active. She has confidence to be who she wants to be, which can be hard after such a rough childhood. We become who we want to be when we narrate ourselves.

Foucault and Governmentality

The "disciplinary society" put justice in the hands of the society and laws of the society, as opposed to just letting families and people dual against one another. Now, punishment came from above sources and not from individuals alone. Society now has specific structures established to keep the law in order. There are consequences already set up for various crimes, so individuals cannot try to make their own answers to their crimes. Once a person commits a crime, their destiny now lies in the hands of the state and the officials. Now the individual is through making and telling their story, the laws in the system will be the storyteller now. The system will now tell the person if they will be behind bars for 50 years or only 10 years, or if they will be sentenced to the death penalty. The individual now has lost all power of their life, which at one time they had total control over. They carried out the crime, therefore they must pay the consequences. Their life that was at once going in a straight line, has now hit a bump in the road. The individual has no more control of where there future will lead them. Therefore, in order to be in control of one's story, they must stay in control their actions and duties, or else your life will lie in the hands of a person you dont even know.