The Otherness of Children as a Hint of an Outside: Michel Foucault,Richard Yates and Karl Barth on Suburban Life

Abstract

The essay shows how the ordinary life of children might save suburbia from itself. Disenchanted with contemporary existence, temptations of ideality tend to both vilify and verify suburban life as banal, yet to the extent that suburban life means life with children, profound possibilities subsist in that strange world. The argument unfolds in three parts. Beginning with Michel Foucault, the author shows how power courses through every form of life, colonizing depth such that desire reveals power's most fundamental expression. Secondly, Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road exemplifies power's machinations as Yates compassionately portrays the tragedy of belittling ordinary life. Finally, the author turns to Karl Barth in order to resituate Foucault's account of immanence within a larger horizon where children might be embraced as the aleatory play of difference of God's peace and patience.