Foucault’s Concept of Individuality in Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles: Tess and Angel as Prototype Failures of Foucauldian Subject
Nasser Maleki, Sayed Mohammad Anoosheh, Nahid Jamshidi Rad

Abstract
According to Foucault's dynamic view of power relations, individuals or subjects in every society are free and dynamic. Power produces individuals who act, and are not simply objects upon whom others act. For Foucault individuals and groups are neither preformed before they engage in power relations, nor unchanged by those relations, and this is how our participation in power relations literally makes us who we are. Put differently, an individual is not passive and victim of power relations, but free to succumb to the demands of power relations or use the possibilities before him and practice his own ethics. To Foucault subjects can practice every individual’s freedom through applying the strategies of ‘care of the self’. Considering such a postmodern hypothesis in mind, this study examines Foucault’s stance towards the concept of individuality in Tess and Angel, the protagonists of Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urberviles. The study is explored through analyses, but the question of manifestation remains in the realm of speculation because cross-pollination of thoughts can never be proven conclusively.

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