Food Practices And Power In The Inheritance Of Loss

Kiran Desai(1971-)is a contemporary Indian female writer.Her second novel,The Inheritance of Loss,won the Man Booker Prize in 2006.The novel is set in India during the 1980 s and depicts the story of Indians who suffer from class,patriarchal,and colonial oppression.The novel vividly describes food practices and highlights the close relationship between food practices and power.With political acuteness and humane breadth and wisdom,the novel has attracted domestic and foreign scholars.Their research topics include colonial legacy,cultural hegemony,diaspora,post-colonialism,violence,food,and many other issues.Taking food practices and power as an entry point for research,this thesis employs Foucault’s theory of power and discourse,in conjunction with research on food,to explore the author’s use of food as a symbol of power that is intricately connected to the predicaments,cultural inequality,resistance and connection,and thus endowing food practices with multifaceted symbolic and cultural significance to reveal the oppression of Indians and to express the concern for the subordinated Indians and Indian culture.The thesis is divided into an introduction,a body and a concluding section.The first chapter briefly introduces Kiran Desai and her works,a literature review of The Inheritance of Loss,followed by the framework and the significance of this thesis.The body part consists of three chapters.Chapter two focuses on the three kinds of discourse presented in The Inheritance of Loss.The food practices in the novel are the representation of discourse,and this chapter applies Foucault’s theory of power and discourse to interpret how food practices embodies class discourse,patriarchal discourse,and colonial discourse as well as the disciplinary power.The third chapter explains the consequences of this hierarchical power mechanism on both people of different strata and Indian culture.Due to the omnipresent suppression of disciplinary power,Indian elites,transnational workers in America,Nepali Indians,and ordinary Indian women are all trapped in the predicaments,which include the loss of survival rights and cultural identity.Meanwhile,Indian culture is also declining and stays at a disadvantage under the influence of Western supremacy.Chapter four employs Foucault’s “care of the self” to analyze the oppressed subordinates’ resistance and connection through food practices and further examines its political significance.Food practices function not only as a means of violent and nonviolent resistance against the disciplinary power,but also as the connection that unites various classes of people and different cultures.The last chapter concludes the cardinal arguments of the whole thesis.Through the depiction of food practices,Kiran Desai reveals the disciplinary power,tragic consequences and means of resistance embodied by food.The critical significance of food practices in this novel not only reflects the author’s criticism of classism,patriarchy and colonialism,but also expresses her sympathy for the underclass and concern for Indian culture,illustrating the need for humanity and cultural coexistence in the post-colonial era.Through this interpretation,it is hoped that the profound interaction between food practices and power in the novel will be fully understood,and that the sufferings of Indians in the novel and the condition of Indian culture will evoke our sympathy and concern for the marginalized in society and deeper reflection on the current state of culture.