DIỄN NGÔN TÍNH DỤC VÀ SỰ KIẾN TẠO “CÁI ĐIÊN” TRONG THOẠT KỲ THỦY CỦA NGUYỄN BÌNH PHƯƠNG

Abstract

The article examines how Nguyễn Bình Phương’s Thoạt kỳ thủy organizes utterances, gazes, and practices related to the body, desire, and the construction of “madness.” Rather than viewing sexuality as an innate phenomenon already present in the characters, the study approaches it as a discursive field: the body becomes an object of naming, observation, narration, and association with norms concerning gender, marriage, virginity, and reproduction. The study approaches Thoạt kỳ thủy through close reading on three levels: the relationship between utterance and power; modes of representing consciousness; and the repetition and displacement of the images of the moon, eyes, knife, throat, fire, and blood. The results show that: first, communal knowledge of sexuality is produced through rumors, teasing remarks, furtive gazes, and judgments that associate the female body with the normative order of marriage; second, within Tính’s fragmented perceptual world, desire does not form a stable romantic plot but continually slips into the vocabulary of slaughter and memories of violence; third, the multilayered structure, shifts in focalization, and the “supplementary notes” both reuse stigmatizing labels and destabilize the authority to determine who is “normal.” The article also distinguishes micro-notes” both reuse stigmatizing labels and destabilize the authority to determine who is “normal.” The article also distinguishes micro-relations of power from panopticism, biopower, and pastoral power, thereby avoiding the use of Foucauldian concepts as interpretive labels mechanically imposed on every textual detail. The study is an attempt to connect discourse analysis with narrative analysis in order to show that “madness” in the novel is not the homogeneous essence of a subject, but an always incomplete result of social categorization, experiences of violence, and narrative and artistic construction.