Biopolitics in Patrick Modiano’s The Search Warrant

Abstract

Patrick Modiano’s The Search Warrant (1997 AD) is a novel with significant political overtones during occupation in France ( 1940-1944 AD). It alludes to the political maneuvering of the Nazi and Vichy governments towards Jews. The physical existence of individual like Dora Bruder is always in crisis and doubt because of Nazism. The objective of the study is to access how the oppressive life of Dora becomes as A Homo Sacer inside the concentration camps and barracks. The repressive, brutal and barbaric mentality of the authority ruined the existence of Dora from one to other camps and makes her life like hell and is finally killed to Auschwitz. Based on the great archive of war, the novel gives the glimpse of the so- called revolution led by Nazis. It also appears a documentary account of Dora which is often regulated through biopolitics to her physical existence. As a methodology, the research adopts the narrative review of literature through analytical perspective of power politics and critics who have acknowledged the biopolitics by highlighting Dora’s existence as it emerge in the novel. The thesis concludes that a fifteen year old Jewish girl Dora is victimized by Nazism in the camps during occupation. This indicates she has been taken as a Homo Sacer. In legal terms Homo Sacer as someone who can be killed without the killer being regarded as a murderer; and a person who cannot be sacrificed. The sacred human may thus be understood as someone outside the law, or beyond it. Key words: Biopolitics, bare life, Nazism, totalitarian politics, holocaust victim, Homo Sacer, concentration camp, barracks.