Discipline And Resistance-A Foucauldian Approach To The Buried Giant

The Buried Giant is one of Kazuo Ishiguro’s most outstanding works.This novel has caused strong effects on the ingenious analysis of peace and historical memory.Critics and scholars at home and abroad have studied the work from different perspectives.The theories of Space,Memory and Forgetting,Trauma and Unreliable Narration have been applied to the interpretation of this work.But few scholars have applied Michel Foucault’s power theory to the analysis of the novel.Therefore,this thesis attempts to explore the construction,discipline and resistance of power in The Buried Giant by using the Foucauldian approach.This thesis uses Michel Foucault’s theory of power and discipline to analyse the construction of power,the discipline of power and the resistance of the protagonists,the Axls and others,to the discipline society.The main body of this thesis is developed through the following three parts.The first part analyses the construction of power in the novel through the distribution of architecture and space in the novel according to Foucault’s elaboration of the relationship among power,space and discourse.Meanwhile,the protagonist’s discourse reflects the operation of power from another perspective.This part aims to reveal the reconstruction of King Arthur’s power after the war between Briton and Saxon.The next part mainly explains the measures of power discipline,which analyses the mechanism of power discipline by exploring the hierarchical observation,normalizing judgement and panopticism proposed by Foucault and reveals how the discipline power operates in the society depicted in the novel.The last part focuses on how the protagonists resist the discipline power of oppression on them and regain their true memory and self-identity.The significance of this thesis not only provides a new perspective for readers to understand The Buried Giant but also can lead to more attention to the operation mechanism of discipline power in modern society.