The Architecture of Submission

This paper investigates how women’s identities are gradually transformed and manipulated at the very beginning of their lives in the post-colonial Egyptian era under intersecting power structures through the character Firdaus in Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero, drawing on Foucauldian ideas of the panopticon and Althusserian concepts of interpellation. The purpose of this paper is to unmask the covert mechanisms of patriarchal power and state authority in shaping and regulating women’s behaviours. It also analyses how social institutions, such as educational and religious institutions, operate as ISAs and RSAs to endorse and inject stereotypical ideas into women. Implementing a qualitative approach through intensive textual analysis, this study identifies themes of surveillance, discipline, and ideological interpellation with the help…