Panopticism, Power-Knowledge and Subjectivation in Aboutorab Khosravi’s The Books of Scribes

• Main Authors: Hoda Niknejadferdos, Bakhtiar Sadjadi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Lasting Impressions Press 2018-12-01
• Series: International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies
• Subjects: Persian Novel; Panopticism; Power-Knowledge; Subjectivation; Surveillance
• Online Access: http://www.eltsjournal.org/archive/value6%20issue4/13-6-4-18.pdf

The present paper aims to closely read Aboutorab Khosravi’s The Books of Scribes (2000), a recent example of successful Persian novelistic discourse, in terms of Foucauldian concepts of power-knowledge, panopticism, and subjectivation. Throughout the text, three different narrations, intermingled with two sub-stories, demonstrate identity alteration in Said and Eghlima, as two major characters of the work. Moreover, the main characters’ daily life is dominated by the surveillance of the rabbis which results in Eghlima’s murder. It also provides gaining a vaster standpoint for the perception of the novel through illustrating the external panopticismof the rabbi and his men and its effects on Said and Eghlima. The study demonstrates how the instances of panopticism and power-knowledge relations clearly manifest the modes of social and self-control in contemporary Iranian society, while the consequences of internalizing panopticism in major characters extensively function in the procedure of their subjectivation.