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A Critical Reinterpretation of the Biopolitical Mechanism in Akhtar’s Disgraced

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2024, 37(2), pp.253-284
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama
  • Received : July 24, 2024
  • Accepted : August 10, 2024
  • Published : August 31, 2024

Chung Suna 1

1목포가톨릭대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper examines issues of race, power, and capital in 21st-century American society as portrayed in Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced, utilizing the biopolitical paradigm as an analytical framework. The paper engages in a critical examination of Giorgio Agamben’s biopolitical theory, which elucidates the power dynamics and relationships of powerlessness among the characters. Drawing on Agamben’s theory of biopolitics, which scrutinizes ‘bare life’ through the lens of Foucault’s biopolitics of surveillance, this analysis explores the characters in this play using the concepts of bios and zoē. The characters in this play manipulate psychological power to serve their own interests, which exposes the dynamics of biopolitics. This analysis also investigates the characters’ evolving identities through contemporary biopolitical theories, situating the study within the socio-political context of the 2011-2012 America, where the play is set. Furthermore, in this play, Akhtar reflects on racism by addressing the issues of xenophobia and Islamophobia, which are prevalent in American society.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.