Panoptic Surveillance in the Orwellian Dystopia of Manjula Padmanabhan’s Escape
Abstract
Escape is a dystopian novel by the Indian English writer Manjula Padmanabhan. The novel envisages a male dominated world bereft of any human values. The dystopia presented in the novel is characterised by its totalitarian government, environmental disaster, surveillance, violence. Dystopian novels abound in totalitarian authorities who restrict individual freedom. Panoptic surveillance is an essential part of the totalitarian rule. An individual is effectively disciplined using surveillance. Discipline works by a calculated gaze rather than force. Michel Foucault in his 1977 work Discipline and Punish uses Jeremy Bentham’s model of the panopticon, a building which has a specialised way of arranging inmates to demonstrate how surveillance serves to discipline individuals. The paper intends to study the panoptic surveillance mechanism used by the totalitarian regime and its efficacy/ inefficacy in disciplining individuals
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