„Je to hra, v níž každý váš pohyb je v centru silového pole...”. The Capillarity of Power in the Novel Lehni, bestie! of J. Kratochvil

Abstract

This article is a critical analysis of the discourse of power represented in the postmodern narrative. In this perspective, the Czech writer’s book creates a special study of the ‘genealogy of power’ (in relation to the concept of Michel Foucault). It arises from the combination (by using of the social-fiction literary convention) that regards the story of two symbolic forms of violence, supporting ‘sacred’ process of ‘subjugation’ of the entity (the past regime and, as result of trauma, the present and the future regime). The first form is a result of disciplinary authority of the communist system (a reference to the history of the Czech history – the period of the radicalization of the regime in the 50s of the twentieth century). The second one exemplifies the postmodern capillary violence (a reference to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center). In this analysis, the impact of the power dissipated in the human consciousness resembles chess game, used in the story of Kratochvil in order to express a dramatic situation in which the rate is the annexation of subjectivity.