A Foucaultian Space-Power Study Of The Inheritance Of Loss

Kiran Desai(1971-) is a contemporary Indian female novelist. Her second novel The Inheritance of Loss is a semi-autobiographical work which tells the story of the marginalized Indians in India, England, and America. The political acuteness and human warmth in this novel make Desai the 2006 Man Booker Prize winner. And her fantastic work has attracted critics home and abroad to research the issues of globalization, violence, western hegemony, diaspora, post-colonialism and so on. But hitherto few deal with the space and power issue concerned within this novel. This paper attempts to employ Foucault’s space-power theory to interpret The Inheritance of Loss.The thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One is an introduction of the novel, the literature review, and Foucault’s space-power theory, which explains the significance of the research and establishes the theoretical framework of the thesis. Chapter Two analyzes the features of space in the novel. The marginalization and pluralism of space is in accordance with Foucault’s spatial views, which gives the study more logical support and thus makes the research more reasonable. Chapter Three elaborates upon the disciplinary power in enclosed space and disciplinary society. The Indian diasporas in England and America, the Indian-Nepali diaspora in India, and the Indians who remain in India are all compelled by the omnipresent disciplinary power into the living dilemmas of identity crisis and culture amnesia. Chapter Four interprets the resistance to disciplinary power in space. Because of the incubated heterogeneity, contradiction, and opposition, the heterotopia becomes the site of resistance. The colonized India and the immigrant spaces in India and America are such heterotopias where the marginalized Indians resist the disciplinary power in various spatial ways. Chapter Five concludes that the disciplinary power intervenes and supervises the marginalized Indians in the colonial and neo-colonial times, in the colonized and colonizer space; but they resist bravely to save their faint but inviolable self; though the resistance is not thorough, it awakens more people to prevent the inheritance of loss of identity and self.Through this interpretation, it is hoped that the profound interaction between space, power and individual reflected in the novel can be deeply understood, and the suffering of the Indians can arouse our concern and sympathy for the living dilemmas of the marginalized and our contemplation about modern society.