Analysis Of The Known World Based On Foucault’s Power Theory

Edward Paul Jones (1950-) is one of the most prominent African American writers in thedomain of literature in modern times. With the contemporary humanism view, his works breakthe limitation of color and race, and dig the complicated contradictions in slavery society toshow the complexity of human. Jones’s masterpiece The Known World (2003), once published,wins for the author almost all the important literary awards including both the National BookAward and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The novel tells the story of Henry Townsend, whodevelops from a slave to a black slave owner, and the slaves’ miserable life in his plantation inthe antebellum south of America.Previous studies on The Known World are mainly from perspectives of textcharacteristics, narrative techniques, black slave owners’ double consciousness, etc.. Thisthesis attempts to interpret the operating mechanism of disciplinary power and the resistanceto it under Michel Foucault’s power theory. Disciplinary power is a specific technique ofpower with the aims to achieve one party’s control over the other through a series ofdisciplinary techniques and institutions.“Where there is power, there is resistance”.Disciplinary power is not almighty and is destined to meet multiple resistances. Through thepower resistance, individuals get to know how to care more about themselves and how topursue an aesthetic way of existence.By analyzing the disciplinary techniques in Townsend plantation and Manchester County,and black slaves’ resistance to disciplinary power in The Known World, we find that theantebellum south of America is a disciplinary society like a prison where omnipresent powercontrols and reforms black individuals. However, the characters are not completelydisciplined. They resist in multiple ways and try to pursue freedom and respect.Five chapters will be used to analyze this topic in this thesis.The first chapter includes a brief introduction to Edward Paul Jones and his works, TheKnown World, the literature review of the novel and the framework of the thesis.The second chapter focuses on Michel Foucault’s power theory which also is the theoretical framework of this thesis. After a brief introduction to Foucault’s view of power,the dsciplinary techniques, Panopticism, resistance to power and the aesthetics of existenceare discussed in detail.The third chapter analyses how the discipline mechanism in Townsend plantation and thesocial monitoring in Manchester County is formed, and how the disciplinary techniques suchas hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment and examination are conducted in TheKnown World to normalize people and to maintain social order. The theory of Panopticismwill be interlaced in the analysis. It is argued that all the characters in Manchester County areconfined in a network of omnipresent observation and writing, and any deviation or violationof norms or laws will be punished.The fourth chapter mainly explores how Elias and Alice resist to the disciplinary powerin the antebellum south of America in various ways. With an unbowed spirit, Elias is alwaysplanning to run away and have one ear cut as a punishment of a failed escape. Since then,Celeste’s warmth and love makes him compromise, and survives numbly in the plantation.Although he is bound by desire and became the slave of power, Elias receives a spiritualawakening and growth with the help of his wife in the end. The “Night Walker” Alice lookslike a mad woman, but a very rational person actually. She secretly looks for the escape routewith her insane behaviors as a cover, and eventually flees to the free North under the help ofMoses. Then she becomes a famous printer and lives an artistic way of life with thecontinuous transcendence of herself.The last chapter summarizes the whole thesis finally. The author of this thesis gets theconclusion that the Manchester County in The Known World is a prison-like disciplinarysociety inundated by kinds of power relations and resistances. The novel reflects Jones’ deepconcern for human’s living dilemma and their struggles against the modern society penetratedwith power relations.