earticle

영어

This paper is to examine William Faulkner's Light in August via searching for and analyzing ontological and bio-political meanings of ‘circle.' After reviewing on various researches previously conducted on structural integrity of multi-narrative in Light in August, this paper argues that each narrative in the novel is potentially open to ‘connections' to produce various understandings. This multi-connected narratives produce a literary plane, resonating with geopolitical and historical planes of Yoknapatapha County, on which binary ideological segments are furrowed and simultaneously threatened by flights of outsiders—Joe Christmas and Lena Grove. This paper concentrates on such inquiries as how Joe's flights, despite being immersed in binary ideological segments, can contradictorily deconstruct these ideological segments and why his flights ends up with failures, revealing hidden meaning of restrained ontological circle Joe is enclosed within. And then, the paper, utilizing Giorgio Agamben's bio-political concepts of ‘the open' and ‘anthropological machine,' explores how Joe's will to become a human being falls prey to ‘animalization' through the operation of anthropological machine and racism.