| Philip Roth is a Jewish writer with outstanding achievements and of huge distinction both inside and outside America. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature several times and won almost all other prestigious awards possible in the literature circle. A highly prolific writer, Roth published his novels in quick succession. Since the publication of Goodbye, Columbus in 1959, which witnessed his rise to fame, Roth has published more than 30 works to date. Roth’s novels, with their varied styles and all-encompassing themes,are well received by readers and critics alike. The Human Stain, published in 2000, is a great success and so is its film adaptation.Based on the Foucauldian conceptuation about power and subject, this thesis is an attempt to throw some light on how characters in The Human Stain are moulded by disciplinary power into uniformized subjects, to analyze how they resist against the omnipresent power and discuss the feasibility of their strategies and the limitations confronting them in the process.This thesis is composed of three parts, namely the Introduction, the Body and the Conclusion. The Introduction is mainly about the significance of this topic, a review of the relevant studies on the novel and a brief introduction to the theory framework.The main body of the thesis consists of three chapters. Based on a close reading of the text, the first chapter deals with how power, through ubiquitous monitoring and normalizing strategies, produces useful and docile bodies and how subjectification proceeds and woks. The second chapter is devoted to analyzing how the characters resist against individuality-devouring power. Foucault believes that where there is power, there is resistance. Resistance, as a player in the network of power, is practiced by nearly all the major characters, of whom Coleman and Faunia are the most determined in fighting against power. The third chapter is a discussion on the practicability of individual struggle and the limitations that confront the characters.The thesis ends with the conclusion that despite seemingly omnipotent disciplinary power, an individual is far from helpless. Partial self-establishment is truly possible. But still, it is noteworthy that the characters fail to fulfill their ultimate goal–the construction of fully independent self, mainly because the strategies available for them tend to degrade them into narrow conservatism and thus are inadequate for shaking the power-breeding foundation. Through the novel, however, Roth shows that there are indeed alternatives to our present mode of existence and thus inspires us to make more efforts in quest for more workable ways. |
