A Study On Body Politics In John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row

Cannery Row is a novella written by American writer John Steinbeck(1902-1968)in 1945.The novel is mainly about two banquets held by the vagrants,and it describes a situation where the bottom class is disciplined by various powers,revealing the spiritual loss of Americans from the 1920 s to 1930 s.Being widely discussed for his left-wing views in early times,Steinbeck shows his concern over the society,which indeed stems from an unconscionable discipline of capitalist system.Such discipline on body not only enslaves the bottom class in the novel,but also keeps a continuous impact on current American society.Body politics,which focuses on the body intertwined with power,can help explain the power that disciplines the bottom class in the novel.From the perspective of body politics,the thesis will base on Nietzsche’s thoughts on the body’s freedom and resistance,Foucault’s discipline on the body and O’Neill’s thoughts on the deconstruction on the body from the state apparatus aspect,exploring a“be-disciplined—anti-discipline—re-discipline” way of the bottom class in the novel and thinking that the resistance of them is faint and incomplete.The thesis puts forward three methods of the deconstruction on body politics,that is “continuous resistance of disciplines”,“redistribution of the body”,and “de-labelling of the body”.The thesis holds a view that the bottom class in the novel is bound by powers from policy,economy,society and culture.Contemporary capitalism can not tolerate a free and unlabeled body,and will label the body in different ways so as to better govern the body,which leads to the bitterness of the bottom class in the novel nearly a century ago,and stirs increasingly worse social problems like the Black’s riots and the racial discrimination on minorities in current American society.Steinbeck’s concern about and wish for American society calls for people to reflect on the existing American system.Perhaps only a free and unlabeled body can achieve a proper deconstruction on the body.