Nabila ALi Marzouk Assistant Professor (Ph.D.), Head of the Dept. English Dept., Faculty of Arts, Fayoum University, Egypt.

Under the Gaze: Power Relations and the Illusion of Freedom in Shaila Abdullah's Saffron Dreams and Laila Halaby's Once in a Promised Land, a Foucauldian Reading

The aim of this paper is to investigate how the two novels mirror the new forms that the exercise of power takes following the hideous disaster of the Towers causing many shifts and changes in the relations among and between individuals, institutions and structures.

" a human being is not a cauliflower. A cauliflower never has to confront the problem of what it means to be a cauliflower; it never has to make a choice about how it will live its life; it will never be challenged about its choice" (Sartre, 345).

Actions speak louder than words; Ideas speak even louder than both.

Holy books state that, as part of his punishment, man has to “work” for his life; the present paper contends that man has to “think” for his life. “Think” was what Adam and Eve did before they carried out their first joint decision which was an act of disobedience.

Man came to earth knowing that: * Being watched will always be part of his life. * Power breeds power that comes from the opposite direction and, usually, not in accordance with the first power. * Manipulation happens through the bodies, not just the brainwashing of the minds.

Panopticon It is a tower of a central position from which invisible watch people are able to observe every single prisoner any time of the day. Religion Laws Surveillance

Power and Discipline Michel Foucault, a French philosopher ( )

The exercise of power takes new forms other than physical violence. Power is Dynamic not Static All the resources available in the different fields of life constitute elements of power that could be far more effective than physical violence.

Biopower: technologies that were developed at the same time as, and out of, the human sciences, and which were used for analyzing, controlling, regulating and defining the human body and its behavior" Gym, health care, psychological services, etc. Man vs State

religion school hospital

Moving across cultures Restraint vs Constraint Kissing in public vs sending a client to the wrong cubicle

micro-physics of power "power relations" begin from the bottom of the pyramid with individual behaviors and interactions that grow into "larger patterns, and eventually national norms or regulations, grow out of them" (Lynch 19).

Subjectivity: * This term "replaces the commonsense notion that our identity is the product of our conscious, self-governing self and, instead, presents individual identity as the product of discourses, ideologies and institutional practices" (xiv, xv). * the struggle to find one's true self

Conclusion: The concept of discipline as surveillance and intervention, so pervasive in the American society, is so ridiculously absent in Jordan and Pakistan. Discipline seems easy to internalize when citizens are confident in the biopolitical agenda of their governments that regard them as the main investment and offer them equal chances.

When governments lack a clear vision of how to invest in the natural and human resources, people have doubts as to their efficiency in planning and providing what is best for the public. It seems that believing in a system is a prerequisite for internalizing its dictates. Mixing of discourses

Parallel to the discourse of discipline and organization that characterizes life in the US goes the discourse of fate and predestination in Jordan and Pakistan. Despite the great value Islam confers upon science and scientists, the word fate helps citizens and states refer the misfortunes that befall them as a result of the absence of a clear, biopolitical plan to the discourse of religion.

In the US, an internal gaze is activated through institutions that work according to a clear, carefully laid agenda that reflects the dominant discourses determining good citizenship.

Notably, discipline and constraint in USA achieve the vital function of establishing order and organizing public life, while in Jordan and Pakistan they are mostly concerned with laying boundaries on personal life.

Man does not need to keep regretting his “Original Sin.” Man needs to commit another original sin to redeem the first.

Too innocent means too ignorant. Who said we lost by tasting that fruit?