EXPLORING JOYCE CAROL OATES’S WORK BY USING FOUCAULT’S HETEROTOPIA

Abstract

This paper explores Joyce Carol Oates’ work by applying the theory of Foucault’s Heterotopia to analyze the primary forms and representational meanings of spatial writing of Heterotopia in Oates’ texts. With its heterogeneity, difference, and subversion characteristics, Heterotopia exists in a forgotten and neglected social space. Exploring the social and literary issues of history and time through the concept of space, Foucault’s Heterotopia theory has become the prized focus of contemporary academic research. In this article, the concepts of Heterotopia, historical transformation, and theoretical qualities and characteristics are introduced and applied to an analysis of Oates’s work. It argues that Oates’ literary works contain numerous postmodern writing techniques in the space of difference and heterogeneity. Her ideas and works traverse the real and the imaginary, the moderate and the edgy, in a manner that intersects time and space, history and the future. Almost every significant scene in Oates’s work conforms to the six characteristics of Heterotopia. It concludes that Oates’ Heterotopias reflect religious repression, racial discrimination, and sexual violence. By analyzing the construction of Heterotopia, this paper provides a glimpse of Oates’ plot of power and violence, her innovative and pioneering writing, and her expectation of female struggle for survival space and pursuit of self-worth.