Invisible Discipline Of Power Visible Resistance Of Subjects

Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) is the famous contemporary African-American novelist, alsothe most influential American novelist in the twentieth century. Invisible man is the onlynovel Ellison wrote in his life time long, but it was just this novel completed his irreplaceablestatue in the history of American literature. Even today, the novel is still the literary classicsof the world.Invisible man has always been viewed as a masterpiece of contemporary Americanliterature since its publication. It has the great significance in the literary and social history.This works has its own special structure and writing techniques. Invisible man is not only aliterary masterpiece; it also echoes the sound of the protest. In the novel Invisible man, theauthor adopted a more complicated way, and a more broad sense to analyze the unreasonablesocial phenomenon thought a description of individual struggle under the force of socialpower rather than a direct statement of social unrest or conflict. This thesis combinesFoucault’s power theory with the novel to explore how the modern people were alienated inthe ubiquity of power, and how to keep independent against the power.In addition to the abstract and introduction, this paper makes up with five chapters; thefirst chapter basically introduces the author of invisible man, Ralph Ellison’s life and hismajor works, also the research status of this novel at home and abroad. The second chapterbasically interprets Foucault’s theory of power which will used to analyzing invisible man,this part starts from the introduction of Foucault’s theory, includes the discipline of powerand the resistance of subjects, to provide a theoretic basis for the analysis of the text. Thethird chapter analyzes the characters in this novel using Foucault’s theory, especially thediscipline system to explore the operation of American society at a microcosmic power level.The fourth chapter, based on the third one, further reveals the discipline of power onAmerican black and white people’s spirits from sex and identity aspects. The fifth chapterapplies Foucault’s aesthetics of existence, the survival of subjects to interpret the characters inthe novel how to resist actively out of the social power, adjust by themselves, so as to explorethe modern survival way.