From Reluctance to Rebellion: A Foucauldian Analysis of Bina Shah’s Before She Sleeps

Abstract

The article explores Bina Shah’s Before She Sleeps (2018), a specimen of feministic dystopian fiction under Foucault’s concept of ‘discipline’ to analyze the state’s control over the female body and its repercussions. The dark side of the world arising when political and social forces become anarchic in a nation’s power apparatus is being investigated here. When governments produce disciplined bodies and minds through the use of a strictly regulated routine, prescribed social functions, reproductive control and constant surveillance, the creation of the ‘Panah’, a secretive group of underground women where women resist the oppressive system, offers liberation from the state’s disciplinary control and allows dystopian citizens to resist and rebel against the authority of the state. Through delineating repressive state strategies of domination and elaborating women’s power of resilience the study highlights the role literature can play in helping women fight for their fundamental rights of safety and gender equality.