Faculty Mentor
Dorothy Robbins
Location
Farrar Hall, Room 132
Session
Session 2
Start Date
20-4-2012 9:30 AM
End Date
20-4-2012 10:30 AM
Description
In my paper, I show how slavery serves as a panoptic prison system, or "constant surveillance" of captivity for the characters in Toni Morrison's Beloved. I utilize contemporary social, feminist, and literary theories to demonstrate the connections between this sense of control slavery has on each character. I focus on spatial captivity with the main character, Sethe, and how this translates into a more psychological control when applying Foucaultian theory on the entire family. My intention is to show how relentless this type of control is on the psyche, as it is in a traditional panoptic system.
Panoptic Paradoxes: Control and Captivity in Morrison’s Beloved
Farrar Hall, Room 132
In my paper, I show how slavery serves as a panoptic prison system, or "constant surveillance" of captivity for the characters in Toni Morrison's Beloved. I utilize contemporary social, feminist, and literary theories to demonstrate the connections between this sense of control slavery has on each character. I focus on spatial captivity with the main character, Sethe, and how this translates into a more psychological control when applying Foucaultian theory on the entire family. My intention is to show how relentless this type of control is on the psyche, as it is in a traditional panoptic system.