كليدواژه :
Choice , Daily life , Desire , Identity , Post , colonialism , Power
چكيده فارسي :
Abstract – This study is an attempt to investigate the effects of power discourses on protagonists’ expectations and sense of identity in Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal and The Human Stain. In the present study, using Foucault’s notion of power and Bhabha’s mimicry, the characters’ idiosyncrasies, frame of reference, imaginations, verbal and non-verbal expressions and performance are assumed to be defense strategies for reclaiming their identities, substantiating their autonomy, and exerting their volition as respected, nonalienated entities in society, especially in academic milieu. These defensive strategies are practically power oriented; that is, they are a way of gaining power and control in a system founded upon power relations. Such a quest of power, on part of the marginalized voices and alienated entities in a postcolonial context, manifests itself in a series of human instincts and desires including will to profit, perfection, justice, right to live, self-expression, and choice. However, power cannot be realized unless the otherness (i.e., the suppressed and the marginalized) regains its freedom based on its internal and external exigencies. In other words, a freedom experience seems to control and channel both power content and expression, leading to the substantiation of a newly-found sense of being/ identity on the part of the otherness. Using a good array of examples from the texts of the suggested novels, this study has also argued that identity, as a perpetual policy, a daily-life process, or a set of choices made by an individual among countless human characteristics and behaviors with the ultimate aim of achieving power or presence in the society, is particularly meaningful in the context of power relations. In other words, both force and resistance are continually evolving around activities and behaviors that emerge as the daily life of the individuals and that might give them domination and sovereignty.
