Essay Plan: Dracula & Biopolitics

This essay plan interprets Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula through a biopolitical lens.

It answers the question:
‘I had to meet the white man’s eyes. An unfamiliar weight burdened me. In the white world the man of colour encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema […]. I was battered down by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetishism, racial defects […]. I took myself far off from my own presence’ (Frantz Fanon).
Discuss the ways in which the body becomes the key site of ideological contestation, with reference to ANY OR ALL of gender, sexuality, class, and race. Illustrate your answer with reference to ONE OR MORE literary texts of your choice.

It discusses sexuality and homosexuality using Foucault’s The History of Sexuality. It also discusses the role of racial prejudice in writing Dracula’s character, as well as androgyny, Marxism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia during the fin-de-siecle. Lastly, it discusses class, again linking this to wider historical context and other literary works that depict the ‘other’.

Excellent resource for A-level and university students. Written by a finalist at Durham University.