나보코프의 <사형장으로의 초대> 속 “감시와 처벌”: 푸코의 계보학적 방법론에 근거하여

The purpose of this study is to explore the problem of discipline and punish in V. Nabokov’s <Invitation to a Beheading> on the basis of M. Foucault’s genealogical approach. Since the nineteenth century, it turned out that the prison cannot decrease the crime rate, and also rehabilitate the criminals. It was believed that the prison should be a place where the power observes inmates closely and induces their gradual rehabilitation. But in modern society it was revealed to be nothing but a place of an abuse of power and a stiffened mechanism of punishment. Although V. Nabokov’s <Invitation to a Beheading> deals with a problem of a discipline and a punish in an unrealistic world, we can find in this novel a criticism to indiscriminate and illogical nature of the power in general. The background of <Invitation to a Beheading> is a real fortress-prison where Cincinnatus, the prisoner sentenced to death, is imprisoned before an execution. There are many similarities between the panopticon that J. Bentham suggested as a perfect prison and the world of novel <Invitation to a Beheading>. As Foucault points out, though the prison and quick execution are acknowledged as a privatization of a punishment or a product of modernism, there is no difference in the nature of power to exert absolute influence on public. Just there is a change of a strategy of the power.