K@ta: A Biannual Publication on the Study of Language and Literature (Jan 2016)
The Investigation of Identity Construction: A Foucauldian Reading of Sam Shepard's Buried Child
Abstract
Shepard is peculiarly powerful in his symbolic family problem plays: True West, Buried Child and Curse of the Starving Class. He allegorizes the American experience and undermines the myth of America as the New Eden. The present study seeks to critically explore Sam Shepard's Buried Child in terms of Foucauldian conception of identity construction. Shepard is depicting a dystopian world with its bewildered characters; however he has still got a romantic view of individuals trying to grapple with the society in order to get unity and order. This Shephardian attitude towards human beings is seemingly a free agent that overlaps the Foucauldian view which establishes a philosophy focusing on the relationship between the self and the society. The present essay attempts to demonstrate the complicated relationship between the self and the opposing forces.
