The Co-extensiveness of Power and Resistance: A Foucauldian Reading of Howard Barker’s Victory

Document Type : علمی - پژوهشی

Author

-Imam Sadiq University-Faculty Member

Abstract

Howard Barker’s theatre of catastrophe depicts subjects in violent crisis from which they can hardly escape. Such crises which generally happen in socio-political transformations of power enforce the subjects to subjectivise themselves. Accordingly, a socio-political crisis is seen in his Victory. The catastrophic transformation of power from Cromwell’s puritan administration to Charles II’s government compels the play’s characters to enter the process of self-fashioning. Such subjectivization of self can be analyzed by two Fouacauldian concepts about power: “co-extensiveness of power and resistance” and “assujettissement”. The researcher, then, tries to apply these theoretical frameworks to Victory. This study, at last, shows that the mentioned framework and the characters’ strategies of resistance in Victory are concordant.

Keywords


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