Constant surveillance: criticism of a "disciplinary society" and the paradox of agency in Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire and Mohsin Hamid's Exit West

This paper uses the 2017 surveillance footage of the 42nd Street NYC subway bomber (Akayed Ullah), as a lens through which to challenge dominant literary scholarship concerning Foucault’s social panopticon as represented in literature. The images serve as the platform to discuss the triangulation between power, agency, and surveillance, as portrayed in Kamila Shamsie’s novel Home Fire (2017) and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017). The paper questions whether agency is formed by one’s resistance to surveillance by both the state and private corporations, or if agency is a mirage because opposition is written into the dynamics of power. The essay examines how agency is fashioned by the different ways that people interact with observation based on class, religion, and power. A person’s position either coerces obedience as docile subjects, disillusions the reality and consequence of constant surveillance, or creates disobedient subjects who manipulate the system.