초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Critics have predominantly focused on Vandover’s degeneration, neglecting the cruciality of Charles Geary, albeit a relatively minor character, in unpacking Norris’s Vandover and the Brute. Only by excavating and foregrounding Geary, this essay claims, can one fully grasp what is involved in the enigma of Vandover’s deterioration. Only after we realize Geary to be a fully empowered homo economicus who has internalized the techniques of governmentality, are we able to see that Vandover is not just a degenerate or a beast, but also an anti-economic man who falls into destitution by failing to govern the environment effectively. After coupling the discourses of health and degeneration to the problematic of capitalist production, this essay explores how Foucauldian governmentality buttresses Geary’s methodical management of the environment through rational calculation and informatization. By contrast, the environment appears to Vandover primarily as an overwhelming, incomprehensible, un-totalizable mystery, or an enchanting collection of things on which one depends so as to live through continuing miseries and failures.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
Frank Norris, Vandover, governmentality, homo economicus, environment, information
