Obscenity And Sexuality In Miller's Tropic Of Cancer

The recurring themes of obscenity and sexuality in Miller's Tropic of Cancer, as shown above, play a significant role in Foucault's discursive theory, too. According to Foucault, a discourse is a group or system of statements in a society. Here, societal procedures control such discourses to enable and ensure the proliferation of disciplines and institutions prevalent in a society (cf. Hawthorn 87-9). In his analysis of Western discourses, language helps Foucault to detect social limits of existence. His concept of transgression, i.e. events resulting in the crossing of limits into formerly forbidden zones, explains the re-discussion as well as re-evaluation of such limits in discourses. To him, the language of sexuality is the primary factor to determine the limits of law or, in other words, taboos. In contemporary Western civilizations, however, Foucault perceived that the process of sexual discourse has developed into profanation, i.e. the lack of any sacredness regarding sex (cf. Rungo 228-31).

Rungo 231-2). Ironically, when charges were imminent against Miller in 1946 due to the obscenity found in Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, George Bataille argued that it is exactly this obscenity which would indicate Miller's morality and the pity the author feels about the loss of moral values during his time. Hence, Miller's Tropics are to be read as a quest for these values lost (cf. Stevenson 67), and this “pilgrimage” (181) can only happen in Paris, the setting of Tropic of Cancer,