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water brought its own dark symbolic charge, carrying away, but purifying too. (10-1)
Therefore, the removal or imprisonment of the illness, the insane, and the criminals is a way to preserve the majority’s subjective position of power. The involvement of
witchcraft only intensifies the way that people treat the other. Azkaban is an extreme practice of Panopticon. In her discussion of discipline in the Potterverse Bethany Barratt focuses upon punishment and human rights in Azkaban. She observes that “wizard law allows for regular detaining of persons in Azkaban, which surely comprises punishment in and of itself, without trial and with indefinite arrangements for trial” (38). Barratt further analyses that one of Rowling’s central political messages should be “that an unjust law should not be followed (Brown 109), and that any regime that embraces such laws is not a legitimate one” (57). The question of human rights in the wizarding world is mainly provided by Sirius, Hagrid, and Buckbeak’s miscarriage of justice in The Prisoner of Azkaban, which also represents the dysfunctional judicial system and government.
2.3 Core Argument
All in all, in this section, the other in the Wizarding world not only presents the fluid border between the Same and the other since the involvement of magical force but also shows the initial hierarchy in the Wizarding world. The Magical Other discussed in this section reflects the Muggle Other in three aspects: The Foreigner, the non-human, and the abnormal human. By comparing the Magical and Muggle Other, this section provides that Magical people do embrace more obscure things which related to wizardry and witchcraft than the Muggles. However, as for the other minority groups within the Wizarding society, wizards’ response toward the other reflects how we see the other in readers’ reality, which then lead to a further social differentiation in the Wizarding
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society. The culture difference in the Non-Magical worlds also features in the Wizarding society. The boundary between human and non-human is more blurred in the Magical world than in the Non-Magical world.
Wizards use magical creatures to serve the purpose of surveillance in the Magical prison, which is another way to enact the discipline power of the institutional structure.
Rowling reveals the issue about the other in the readers’ society by describing the other in the Wizarding world. By combining with Foucault’s discussion on the other, especially his idea of the other in History of Madness, this section reveals the concept of the other within the Wizarding world. It is not only much more fluid than the Non-Magical world because of their different understandings of normality, but also mirror to the current situation of the Muggle Other and the other in readers’ reality.
The discussion of the other in the Wizarding society is more complicated than in the Non-Magical society since the difference between the external and internal conflicts.
The external factor is mainly from the Non-Magical society, which serves the purpose as a The mirroring perspectives of the other from the Wizarding and the Non-Magical societies lead to a more fluid concept of the other and reveal the power relationship in the Potterverse. The involvement of wizardry and witchcraft, on the one hand, adds more factors for one to judge the other one as the same or the other; on the other hand, the magical force enhances the gap between the Same and the other because it provides more possibilities of dominating and excluding the other. In the next chapter, I will discuss the fluid concept of the self by analyzing various subgroups and ambiguous self-identity in the Potterverse.
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Chapter Three
The Fluid Concept of the Self
Previously we discussed how Wizardkind views the other with a more fluid standard than Non-Magical people. In this chapter, we can see individuals’ identities in the Potterverse, and discuss how different the external and internal factor in the
Wizarding societies shape their members' identities. The external factor is mainly the influence from the Non-Magical society. The internal factor is subgroups within the Wizarding society which include social hierarchy, School Houses, and family backgrounds. These subgroups ensure diversity in the Wizarding world. Different
combinations of subgroups would result in different characters. Furthermore, the personal choice greatly affects how one sees himself or herself. One can belong to various groups and subgroups in the Potterverse at the same time, for example Squibs, Muggle-Born and Half-Blood wizards and witches. Their personal choices become the primal factor that determine their self-identities. The interaction between the external and internal factors in the Wizarding world reveals the fluid concept of the self.
The first section analyzes different subgroups in the Potterverse, such as school houses, wizard families, and secret societies, by discussing their leading ideologies and how they affect their fellow members’ self-identity. Then I will take the Slug Club as the example to discuss the situation of crossing groups and subgroups. The second section deals with those who have fluid positions in both the Wizarding and the Non-Magical worlds, such as Squibs, Muggle-Born wizards, Half-Blood wizards and their Non-Magical family members. These individuals’ fluid identities gain them an important
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position in the Potterverse since they can penetrate these two sites. Finally, this chapter reveals how the personal choice affects one’s understanding of the self. I take Harry Potter and Tom Riddle’s extraordinary position as case studies, to see how one sees and reacts to his “specialness” from different perspectives.