Narrative Equilibrium and Biopolitical Aesthetic Image in Philip Roth's Nemesis : Health as Hermeneutical Exchange

Abstract: Philip Roth's last novel Nemesis enacts a literary construction of healthy body that is both biopolitical and hermeneutical in nature. By juxtaposing Michel Foucault's and Hans-Georg Gadamer's theoretical analyses of health and their divergent understandings of the function of language as it enables access to the body and lifeworlds of physician and patient, I argue for the pertinence of a hermeneutical reading of the intersubjective encounter between fellow polio sufferers Bucky Cantor and Arnie Mesnikoff, positioning the achievement of equilibrium as a therapeutical move beyond the dead repetitions of trauma and the eudaemonic potentialities of narrative as manifested in dialogue between the two characters. Foucault's biopolitical emphases allow for significant critical attention to the ideological markers of societal normativity that come undone under epidemiological circumstances, but it is Gadamer who evokes the healing potentialities of narrative as it integrates the narrated self with future ethical possibilities made possible by a balanced self-understanding. Nemesis employs an artful narrative structure to create an objectified equilibrium bringing together the language of health and the health of language.