The Making of the Docile Female Body in Korean American Young Adult Literature: A Feminist Foucauldian Reading of An Na’s The Fold (2008)

Using both feminist and Foucauldian critical lenses, this paper seeks to analyze some aspects of young adult (YA) literature in The Fold (2008), written by South Korean-born American novelist An Na (1972-), demonstrating how the young docile female body is produced through certain disciplinary practices. Michel Foucault‟s concept of „the Docile Body‟ is drawn upon insofar as it can illuminate the role of centerless and invisible power/patriarchy in regulating the action of young women and constructing docile bodies and blurred identities among young women belonging to the Korean minority in America. In Foucauldian terms, the Western standards of beauty are considered disciplinary practices through which the docile female body is constructed. The paper argues that the female body becomes docile through self-surveillance and the internalization of the standards of beauty and body image prevalent in mainstream American culture. The paper shows that Korean female characters in the novel seek to define their body image and identity based on the notions of the dominant American culture. Their search for new „Westernized‟ features leads them to internalize the Western standards of beauty, thus objectifying themselves and blur their Korean identities. The paper argues that these standards can also be considered modern patriarchal techniques that eventually produce docile, self-controlled, and self-objectified female bodies.