Abstract
The present article aims at demonstrating the pervasiveness of normalizing judgment in American society that makes people fixated with lists that rank order everything in any relations, through a Foucaultian reading of Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class. Foucault’s studies address themselves explicitly to the question of the problematization of sexual activity, government, body, etc., revealing the processes and practices through which subjectivity has been constituted. This article applies Foucault’s theories regarding the omnipresence of power and the potent for resistance in a panoptic-like society to the drama.
Keywords: Foucault, power, resistance, identity construction, Sam Shepard, Curse of the Starving Class, American family
Introduction
Foucault believes that modern society is a disciplinary society based on the mechanisms of panopticon which is a metaphor for a new kind of social regulation. According to Foucault, power is a network or a web of relations which spreads throughout the society. Power is not a one way practice, only from top to bottom. It does not just come from those in authority; instead it manifests itself in many different ways and from many different points. Foucault is critical of the notion of power possessed by some people or institutions and the belief that power is only connected with limiting and oppressing.
Discourse is a key word in Foucaultian terms which is introduced in Madness and Civilization (1967). Foucault defines it as a system which is constituted of structures made by institutions that determine what is true and what is false in a particular field.
Discussion
This article endeavors to have a Foucaultian reading of Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class. After providing a brief survey of some of Foucault’s main essays which have been referred to in this article, the drama is discussed according to those theories. His theories regarding the omnipresence of power and the potent for resistance in a panoptic-like society are mostly discussed in this essay.
Resistance is another concept readers would come across in this study. It is defined as the possibility of contesting power, in other words, any given individual may resist his or her position as a subject. Resistance is a part of a power relationship and is not external to it. According to Foucault, power and resistance coexist and they are dependent upon each other.
The Marxist Approach to the Play
The play opens with talking about the door which is broken by the father of the family, Weston, who is supposed to be the guardian of his house and family against outsiders. Here the image of home as the place of security and shelter is violated. This sense of security will be violated in the course of the play when Taylor, the lawyer friend, and Ellis, a local club owner to whom Weston owes money, lay siege to the house.
Shepard utilizes a wonderful array of strategies to undermine and overwhelm the realism of Curse. He has drawn upon Surrealism, physical comedy, symbolism of Christianity, the Hollywood gangster films as well as Absurdism. But the tragedy of Curse is borne on dialogue and physical actions more outlandish than the situation can deliver.
Stage Directions and Resistance
Shepard’s stage directions suggest mostly movement and action rather than telling or narration. The action is halted repeatedly during the play while the characters just stare at each other. The word “pause” is favored in this drama by Shepard. At such moments, the meaning that their gaze carries seems to reflect on itself, makes the play a bit ambiguous, blank. Communication cancels.
However unusual it is to talk to objects on stage, but in Shepard’s anti-conventional dramas, an object can be thought as another character. Characters seem to look at other characters as if they were objects or at objects as if they were characters. Shepard’s use of the pause and the gaze, the visual landscape he creates profoundly decenters our experience of the play.
Findings
Curse of the Starving Class depicts Shepard’s resisting view of American family and the situation of man in society. His narration and style of setting the stage, dramatizing a kitchen with no walls, not disintegrating inside from outside of the house, with intruders entering and leaving the house, undisturbed, all state his non-conformist view of the Western style of living and writing. As Foucault ponders, “Where there is power, there is resistance” (The History of Sexuality, Vol. I, 1978). Shepard manipulates and challenges the American family plays written since the war and turns against them. In his plays, he demonstrates highly individualistic or even eccentric behavior. He undermines the power of patriarchy and anticipates the collapse of the American Dream. His four characters are kept in a dilemma; however, any way they take, there is doom, catastrophe, and ultimate ruin.
Works Cited
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