Power And Resistance:A Foucaultian Study Of V.S.Naipaul's A House For Mr.Biswas

A House for Mr.Biswas is the 2001 Nobel Literature laureate V.S.Naipaul's third novel,describing how a Trinidadian of Indian descent pursues and possesses a house of his own.With Michel Foucault's insight into power,this thesis analyzes the interpersonal power relations,power disciplines as well as manifestations of resistance against power in the novel,trying to show how power exerts influences on people's identity-construction.The thesis consists of five parts.The Introduction reviews Naipaul's career as a writer,the historical background of colonization in Trinidad and the local culture it molds.Reviewing related essays and theses finds,though one essay explores the interactions between space and power in A House for Mr.Biswas,the roles of gender and class in power relations and resistances against power in the novel are still short of analysis.At last,this part ends with the illustration of the thesis's theoretical basis--Foucault's theory of power.The first chapter starts with an analysis of power relations centered on gender and class issues.Males' fantasy about self-decision drops,and the ambiguity of females'domestic status discloses a two-way repressive power relation between couples.Besides,Naipaul depicts a class-conscious Trinidadian society in the novel.The economic discrepancy between proprietors and laborers explains why Mr.Biswas is treated as an invisible member of the family and why his voice unheard.The second chapter explores how power disciplines people from the aspects of space and discourse.Hanuman House is the literary version of what Bentham conceives of the panopticon,a disciplinary space of inclusion and exclusion.The powerful people supervise the powerless and control the latter through physical and mental disciplines.Besides,the colonial offices popularize the colonial English culture by means of examinations and newspapers,and the crowd's acceptance of English affirms the achievements of cultural colonization.The third chapter summarizes the repressiveness that indicates the necessity of resistance.But the colonized people's dependence on the colonizers confines individuals to resort to partial resistance.By combining Foucault's partial resistance strategy and Bhabha'notion of mimicry,this thesis analyzes individuals' resisting strategies against disciplinary power.The effect of mimicry helps to construct a counter-colonial discourse and its effectiveness manifests the productiveness of power.Under the guidance of Foucault's theory of power and certain concepts from postcolonial theory,the thesis examines the interpersonal power relations and power disciplines in the novel,and further explores how power exerts influences on people's identity-construction.It concludes that,in colonies like Trinidad,power creates the possibility to resist as it disciplines,and mimicry as resistance and the hybrid identity are the backbones of constructing counter-colonial discourse.The resister's tenacity and courage compose a heroic spirit and the tragic consciousness.