AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, Volume 10. Number 2. May 2026 Pp.97-112
Department of English, College of Languages and Translation, University of Jeddah
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Contemporary Syrian writers have contributed to what has come to be recognized as Arab Spring narratives, while engaging with broader global concerns of power politics. Focusing on The Shell (2006) by Mustafa Khalifa and The Silence and the Roar (2004) by Nihad Sirees, this paper brings into dialogue the frameworks of panopticism and synopticism to examine the reclamation of the gaze and the disruption of authoritative narrative monopolies. While prison writing and discourses of surveillance have been predominantly interpreted through Foucauldian models of panopticism, comparatively little attention has been paid to the counter-discursive potential of Mathiesen’s concept of synopticism and its subversive capacities. This study situates Syrian narratives within a broader transnational context of literary engagements with surveillance and prison writing, highlighting how panoptic structures are both reproduced and contested within narrative form. At the same time, it foregrounds the synoptic dynamics embedded in these texts, particularly through acts of writing and voicing that enable visibility from below. By examining how mechanisms of surveillance and control are represented and resisted, the paper argues that literary articulation itself functions as a synoptic practice—one that reclaims the gaze, destabilizes hegemonic modes of seeing, and empowers marginalized voices through narrative expression.
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Lamis Abdulrahman Hakami, graduate of English Language from King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Studied a Master’s in English Literature at the University of Jeddah, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Author of “A Flawed World: Disney’s Aladdin through the Lens of Orientalism.” Her work explores issues of representation, surveillance, and power in literary and cultural contexts.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-6834-6956
Samar H. Aljahdali is an Associate Professor of Cultural and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Jeddah (KSA). She holds a PhD from the University of Exeter. Her research examines topics at the intersection of narrative, cultural materialism, and power politics. Her scholarly interests include settler colonialism, colonial and spatial imaginaries, the Anthropocene, and the inscription of history in literary and cultural texts. Her work is grounded in critical postcolonial and interdisciplinary approaches that attend to the material, spatial, and narrative dimensions of cultural production. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1214-7360