权力视阈下的《第二十二条军规》

菜单

Abstract Joseph Heller’s description of American airmen’s lives in Catch – 22 is the observation and critique of the American society in the 20th century. He describes in this famous novel a power field—Air Force squadron, which can be regarded as a micro totalitarian regime. All the soldiers here are woven in a big network by the power. They are monitored by an intangible eye all the time, just like the prisoners in a Panopticon, where the surveillance is permanent in its effects. Panopticon is one of the cores in Foucault’s Power Theory. Catch-22 can be considered as the tower in the panopticon which monitors the soldier consistently, and it also can be seen as the medium between authority and soldiers, and this relation reflects the second core of Foucault’s Power Theory—discourse. Panopticon and discourse, main points of power theory, together with institution, exert a great influence upon the soldiers. 53873

Keywords: power; Panopticon; discourse; institution; Catch-22

摘要在《第二十二条军规》中，约瑟夫•海勒描绘了一个权力场——空军中队。在这里有着各种等级的军官和士兵，它可以被视为一个小型的集权政体，权力在此发挥着重要的无形的作用。本文拟从福柯的权力理论出发，细读文本，分析人物与飞行中队之间的权力关系。在飞行中队及其飞行员的日常生活中，他们处于福柯式的权力监视之中。在此，第二十二条军规较好地扮演了圆形监狱理论中“瞭望塔”的角色。第二十二条军规又可以看作是控制者和被控制者之间的媒介，是当权者话语权的集中体现；同时体制又借助于权力和话语对人们起着重要的影响和控制作用。

毕业论文关键词：权力；圆形监狱；话语；体制；第二十二条军规

Contents

1. Introduction ..1

2. Literature Review2

3. Panopticism.3

3.1 Definition of Panopticism3

3.2 Panopticism and Power5

3.3 Panopticism and Catch-22.6

4. Discourse..8

4.1 Definition of Discourse.8

4.2 Discourse and Power9

4.3 Discourse and Catch-2210

5. Institution11

5.1Definition of Institution .11

5.2 Institution and Power.12

5.3 Institution and Catch-22..13

6. Conclusion..15

Works Cited..16

1. Introduction

Catch-22 represents an utterly unsentimental vision of war, in which there would be no glory and honor but cruelty and nightmare. To some extent, it presents a war story that is at once “hilarious, grotesque, cynical, and stirring” (Miller＆Phillips, 2011: 3). In American history of literature, it is famous for the style of “black humor”. “Black humorin a fantastic or nightmarish modern world play out their roles in what Ionesco called a ‘tragic farce’, in which the events are often simultaneously comic, horrifying and absurd”(Abrams and Harpham, 2010: 2). Here, ‘absurd’ is similar to ‘grotesque’, which covers ‘paradox’, ‘self-contradictory’ and ‘irrationality’. “In the early twentieth century, the concept of the grotesque [is] as a condition of modern life rather than as a fantastic or supernatural phenomenon In Madness and Civilization, for instance, in which Foucault discussed how western society has identified and treated insane, the analogies to the modern grotesque become inescapable”(Dunne,2005: 2-3).In contemporary society, the meaning of “grotesque” has greatly changed. It turns up as a milieu alienated by modern life rather than as an illusory and supernatural phenomenon. In this way, modern grotesque essentially is a phenomenon that inpidual is more and more helpless and surrender to another power. Just like “Catch”, all the soldiers in Air Force squadron are in a large power network.