A Foucauldian Study Of Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead(1969-)is a well-known African American writer of contemporary American literature,whose works highlight racial problems thematically and exhibit experimental writing features.His sixth novel The Underground Railroad won him the National Book Award(2016),Arthur C.Clarke Award(2016),the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction(2017)and also the Booker Prize(2017).So far,studies of The Underground Railroad have mainly focused on its unique narrative skills or mostly carried out from perspectives of postcolonialism,traumatic theory,and spatial triad theory,but explanations from Foucault's power-related theory has not yet been proposed.Based on a textual analysis,this thesis intends to conduct a Foucauldian study of the novel so as to reveal African Americans' living predicament under slavery power,demonstrate colored folks' heroic resistance against slavery order and highlight the writer's reflection on racism in history and his contemplation of the race problems in today's America.On the basis of a meticulous reading of the text and theoretical analysis,this thesis will firstly,taking black people's representative living spaces such as the Georgian plantations,the executive square,the “Freedom Trail”,the negro concentration camp and Valentine's Farm as examples,uncover the panoptic dilemma of African Americans' existence under disciplinary domination.Then the thesis will discuss the implementation of disciplinary power on Afro-Americans from body,discourse and knowledge,showing that slavery transformed black people into marginalized beings of puppet-like bodies,silenced speech and distorted knowledge.Lastly it will demonstrate black people's diversified revolts against power and the rough collapse of slavery order.The thesis will finally point out the realistic significance of the novel and conclude that the unveiling of the power relations embedded in slavery shows the writer's observation on America's dark past and his warning for the present and future steering of the country.