POWER STRUGGLE IN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS'S A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE: A FOUCAULDIAN ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY
POWER STRUGGLE IN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS'S A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE: A FOUCAULDIAN ANALYSIS OF THE PLAY

Summary/Abstract: Turning interpersonal relationships to a battlefield, Williams's plays display a constant power struggle which originates from the domineering characters' desire to retain their position of the Same and to push those whom they consider as inferior to the place of the Other. Foucault (1994), considering power as a possibility of an action upon action, defines it as a relationship among two or more entities maneuvering for position and advantage. Moreover, he, having the eighteenth and nineteenth century clinics and asylums in mind, proposes such binary oppositions as healthy/ sick, law-abiding/ criminal, and sane/ mad and maintains that in power relationships those who want to keep their power position intact use the inferior center, such as madness, of such opposing centers as a label to suppress the voice of their opponents. The present research aims at analyzing Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire in the light of Foucault's ideas of power and madness. The main conclusion drawn from the study is that Stanly Kowalski, as a representative of the privileged in the binary opposition of man/ woman and apparently the superior center in the binary opposition of sane/ mad wins the battle over power with Blanche DuBois, his sister-in-law, by using madness as a label for Blanche leading to her being taken to an asylum where she can no longer disrupt his power position.

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