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Knowledge, Power and Hybridity in Barbara Kingsolver's The Knowledge, Power and Hybridity in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible and The Lacuna Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines Magisters der Philosophie an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz vorgelegt von Johannes HÄUSLER am Institut für AMERIKANISTIK Begutachter Prof. Dr. Walter Hölbling Graz, 2012 I gratefully dedicate this work to my parents. Knowledge, Power and Hybridity in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible and The Lacuna; by Johannes Häusler CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 2 2. THE THEORIES 4 2.1. MICHEL FOUCAULT: LIFE AND MAJOR WORKS 4 2.2. SAID’S ORIENTALISM 14 2.3. HOMI K. BHABHA & POSTCOLONIALSM 14 3. LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE POISONWOOD BIBLE AND THE LACUNA 20 3.1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDS 20 3.2. LITERARY CONTEXT 21 4. THE ANALYSIS 24 4.1. POWER AND DISCOURSE IN THE POISONWOOD BIBLE 24 4.2. POWER AND DISCOURSE IN THE LACUNA 44 5. HYBRIDITY IN KINGSOLVER’S TPB AND TL 64 5.1. HYBRIDITY IN THE POISONWOOD BIBLE 64 5.2. HYBRIDITY IN THE LACUNA 70 6. CONCLUSION 77 7. BIBLIOGRAPHY 79 Knowledge, Power and Hybridity in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible and The Lacuna; by Johannes Häusler 1. INTRODUCTION 'Tis written: "In the Beginning was the Word." Here am I balked: who, now can help afford? The Word?—impossible so high to rate it; And otherwise must I translate it. If by the Spirit I am truly taught. Then thus: "In the Beginning was the Thought" This first line let me weigh completely, Lest my impatient pen proceed too fleetly. Is it the Thought which works, creates, indeed? "In the Beginning was the Power," I read. (Goethe, Faust) “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (The King James Bible, The Gospel According to Saint John, 1:1) is probably the most well-known and widely read first sentence of all books in human history. In the quote above, it is Goethe’s Faust who meditates on the famous beginning of the Bible which for this paper so significantly opens the field of my analysis and its central questions: how is the “word” connected to establishment and reinforcement of power? In which ways does “Power” correlate “Knowledge” and vice versa? And finally: what is the space in which new “Knowledges” emerge which empower individuals to define their identity (in a post-colonial discourse)? In the multi-lateral, globalized world of today the idea of who speaks to whom and for whom is, both, a political and spiritual issue, with the authority of the “Truth” claimed by its proclaiming leaders. As I will show in this paper, “Truth” is nothing but a mere product of a certain corpus of knowledge, hence, discourse which – based on the power of the word – is valid only within the paradigm, or episteme; it rests on and is dependent on the individual perspectives and experiences of its members. INTRODUCTION 2 Knowledge, Power and Hybridity in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible and The Lacuna; by Johannes Häusler To lay the theoretical ground of my work, I will start off with an introduction to the life and work of Michel Foucault, who in the second half of the twentieth century changed the conception of the constellation power/knowledge/discourse. An easy summary of his main ideas can be found in Fillingham, Lydia (1993), Foucault for Beginners. Also Sara Mills’ Michel Foucault (1993) offers an accessible elaboration of Foucault’s sometimes elusive writings. The second part of this thesis deals with Homi Bhabha’s theories on post- colonial studies which very much employ and elaborate Foucault’s work. Bhabha’s main point in The Location of Culture is that culture is nothing pure in itself, but a ‘third space’ in which new knowledge and identities emerge. Writing from a post-colonial perspective himself, his ideas are very fertile for the analysis of Kingsolver’s novels that are both set in such a discourse. As Homi Bhabha is probably one of the most demanding authors, I suggest reading David Huddart’s Homi K. Bhabha for a better understanding of his ideas. Concerning post-colonialism, Bill Ashcroft et al. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, offers a wide range of primary (and often abbreviated) texts by the leading scholars in this field. Having laid out the theories of this paper, I will apply them to two of Barbara Kingsolver’s novels: The Poisonwood Bible (TPB) and The Lacuna (TL). Based on a seminar paper written by my colleague Daniel Hermes and myself, this paper can be seen as elaboration of my previous work (i.e. Foucault and TPB), which is then followed by an analysis of the same dimensions in The Lacuna. As an addition, in the second part of this thesis, I continue to apply Bhabha’s concepts to both novels, which will provide insights into the power constellations as portrayed by Kingsolver in the characters and countries of the post-colonial settings of Mexico and the former Congo. INTRODUCTION 3 Knowledge, Power and Hybridity in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible and The Lacuna; by Johannes Häusler 2. The Theories 2.1. Michel Foucault: Life and major works Michel Foucault’s work still resides among the most important in critical theory. Covering a wide field, it draws from philosophy, the social sciences, psychology and their histories respectively. Often associated with (post-) structuralist and post-modernist thought, the influences of his work can be found in a much wider range of academic disciplines such as English studies, sociology, post-colonial, post-Marxist and feminist theory. (cf. Gutting; Miller:1) Michel Foucault was born in 1926 into a provincial family of renowned doctors. Both, his father and his grand father were surgeons, with Michel supposed to follow that line. Already in his early life as a young boy Michel performed extremely well in school, entered the Jesuit Collège Saint Stanislaus and eventually reached a first major achievement when he made fourth place at the entry test for the École Normale Supérieure. (cf. Fillingham, 19 ff) His years as a student are termed intellectually brilliant, though psychologically tormenting. Because of growing depressions, Michel’s father sent him to see a psychiatrist to whom Michel revealed his sexual attraction to men. Both father and psychiatrist then regarded homosexuality as an illness with a need for treatment, as was usual in these days. By the age of 17, Michel knew that he did not want to become a surgeon, which caused wild arguments with his father. Michel successively distanced himself from his father and later even removed “Paul” from his name (cf. Fillingham, 19, 22 ff). The academic environment in which Foucault’s career started also played a crucial role in how he came to view the world. Entering the École Normale Supérieure in 1946, and because of his experiences, Michel became fascinated with psychology, which became his major subject, along with philosophy. Existential phenomenology was then at its heyday in France and Foucault The Theories 4 Knowledge, Power and Hybridity in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible and The Lacuna; by Johannes Häusler attended the lectures of Merleau-Ponty, a famous phenomenologist. Also Heidegger, Marx and Hegel were on the syllabus and left their marks in Foucault’s early work (cf. Gutting). Another three great philosophers need to be mentioned when speaking about influences on Michel Foucault. Firstly, Jean-Paul Sátre, the great existentialist, who still holds a prominent role in the culture and life of France. Sátre was a politically active scholar as well as an author of plays, novels, and newspaper articles. “[He] defined the parameters within which a politically motivated academic could act and influence public opinion. The philosophical position developed by Sátre, existentialism, is concerned with stressing personal experience and responsibility in a seemingly meaningless universe.” (Mills, 21) Even if Foucault was very much concerned with distancing himself from and reacting against Sátre’s philosophy, they share, on the one hand, a common aversion of bourgeois culture and society, and on the other hand an empathy for marginalized groups of the bourgeoisie. Foucault also became very active politically later in his life (cf. Gutting). The major difference, as Mills (22) points out, is that “Sátre was concerned with the analysis of meaning while he [Foucault] was concerned with the analysis of systems.” The second important philosopher to Michel Foucault’s work is Immanuel Kant, who provided at his times a very modern criticism of knowledge. The Theories 5 Knowledge, Power and Hybridity in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible and The Lacuna; by Johannes Häusler Kant's great epistemological innovation was to maintain that the same critique that revealed the limits of our knowing powers could also reveal necessary conditions for their exercise. What might have seemed just contingent features of human cognition (for example, the spatial and temporal character of its objects) turn out to be necessary truths. Foucault, however, suggests the need to invert this Kantian move. Rather than asking what, in the apparently contingent, is actually necessary, he suggests asking what, in the apparently necessary, might be contingent. (Gutting) Hence, what Foucault focused on was a critique of historical reason and the human sciences as such, providing us with universal truths that turn out to be the political and ethical products of a certain society (cf. Gutting). Friedrich Nietzsche, then, is the third and - as Foucault would most probably agree – the most important influence on his ideas on the relation between power and knowledge. My relation to Nietzsche, or what I owe to Nietzsche, derives mostly from the texts of around 1880, where the question of truth, the history of truth and the will to truth were central to his work.
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