Mustafa Khalifa’s The Shell is a haunting and deeply personal narrative that exposes the cruelty and psychological toll of political imprisonment under Syria’s Ba’athist regime. Written in the form of a fictionalized autobiography, the novel recounts the narrator’s thirteen-year incarceration without trial in the infamous Tadmor Prison, where he is subjected to inhumane conditions, brutal torture, and the devastating effects of prolonged isolation. Through a sparse, introspective narrative style, Khalifa captures not only the horrors of the prison system but also the dehumanizing mechanisms by which authoritarian power asserts control over individuals.

This research seeks to analyze The Shell through the lens of Michel Foucault’s theories on power, discipline, surveillance, and identity. As one of the most influential thinkers on the operations of institutional power, Foucault offers critical tools for understanding how regimes maintain control not solely through violence, but through the regulation of space, time, language, and the body. His concepts—particularly those introduced in Discipline and Punish [1] and The History of Sexuality —are especially pertinent to Khalifa’s depiction of the prison not merely as a site of punishment, but as a system designed to reshape human subjectivity.

This study argues that The Shell can be read as a literary manifestation of Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power. The prison functions as a Foucauldian panopticon—a structure in which surveillance becomes internalized and individual autonomy eroded. In this closed system, silence and erasure are weaponized, transforming prisoners into anonymous, voiceless entities. Yet, through his act of narration, the protagonist resists the very mechanisms intended to annihilate his identity. This study explores how Khalifa’s novel reflects and interrogates Foucauldian concepts, ultimately revealing literature’s potential to critique—and transcend—systems of oppression.

The Panopticon and Surveillance in the Prison

In The Shell, Mustafa Khalifa offers a chilling depiction of life under an omnipresent authoritarian regime that relies not only on physical violence but also on a subtler, more insidious form of control: psychological surveillance. Though the protagonist is often in solitary confinement, the novel evokes a pervasive atmosphere of constant observation and unpredictable punishment, deeply aligning with Michel Foucault’s theory of the panopticon. As Foucault [1] articulates in Discipline and Punish, the panopticon is a mechanism of power that induces a state of conscious and permanent visibility in the subject, ensuring that control is maintained even in the absence of direct supervision: “The major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” [1]. Khalifa’s narrator, imprisoned in Tadmor for thirteen years, embodies this internalized form of surveillance. Even in isolation, the fear of being seen, punished, or singled out governs his behavior and erodes his mental autonomy. The regime’s method of maintaining discipline does not require constant presence—it thrives on the unpredictability of punishment and the psychological conditioning that results. The narrator reflects: “The silence in the cells was not peace; it was fear solidified. We didn’t speak because we knew that silence was safer than the wrong word, the wrong glance” [2]. Here, silence becomes not just a survival strategy but a manifestation of internalized authority. The prisoners discipline themselves, not out of loyalty or ideology, but out of learned fear—precisely the effect Foucault attributes to panoptic power. Scholar Joseph Massad [3] describes such regimes as cultivating “paranoia as a mode of subjectivity,” a state Khalifa dramatizes with unrelenting clarity.

Moreover, the novel portrays a physical environment structured to limit perception, speech, and sensory freedom—further mirroring panoptic dynamics. Prisoners are blindfolded during transport, deprived of mirrors, and rarely see their captors. Yet, the feeling of being observed never dissipates. In one passage, the narrator describes: “I had not seen the face of a guard in months, but I could hear their steps, their whistles, their keys. These sounds became my clock, my warning bell, my tormentor” [2]. This echoes Foucault’s description of the unverifiable gaze—an authority that “may see without being seen” [1]. The power of the panopticon, and by extension the regime, lies in its capacity to condition subjects into self-surveillance. As Lisa Downing [4] explains, “Foucauldian surveillance operates not merely through the gaze of the other but through the subject’s own internalized monitoring of conduct.” Even bodily movement is regulated by the mere suggestion of oversight. At one point, Khalifa’s narrator notes: “I stopped stretching, stopped even standing upright in the cell. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. My body forgot its own needs” [2]. This instance directly engages with Foucault’s concept of the docile body—the body that is trained, punished, and molded into obedience not through outright destruction but through subtle mechanisms of discipline. The prisoner’s own body becomes complicit in its oppression, reshaped by fear and silence.

In a broader sense, Khalifa’s text demonstrates how panoptic control leads to identity fragmentation. The protagonist is not only denied a name by the system but also gradually loses his sense of self. He remarks:“I no longer had a name. In this place, names meant danger. I was no one, a shadow, a whisper not worth noticing” [2]. This erasure aligns with Foucault’s argument that surveillance is linked to objectification and classification, processes that allow institutions to exert knowledge-power over individuals [5]. By stripping the narrator of language, interaction, and identity, the regime reduces him to a monitored body—a thing to be watched, managed, and forgotten.

Additionally, Khalifa uses the motif of the eye throughout the novel as a metaphor for invasive scrutiny. One particularly disturbing instance is when the narrator compares the regime’s gaze to a scalpel: “Their gaze cut deeper than their whips. They saw through skin and bone, into the part of me I was trying hardest to hide” [2]. This metaphor reinforces the theme of psychic exposure under surveillance—a space where even the private self is no longer inviolable. As Edward Said [6] notes in Culture and Imperialism, surveillance in authoritarian regimes is often both literal and metaphorical: it involves not only monitoring behavior but also penetrating the domain of the self, where resistance might germinate.

Furthermore, the prison’s use of other prisoners as informants fosters a paranoid, fragmented environment where trust becomes impossible. As the narrator confesses: “Any word I said could be overheard. Any kindness could be reported. In that place, we learned not to care, not to feel—because feelings made us vulnerable” [2]. This culture of fear and betrayal resonates with Foucault’s understanding of surveillance as a social logic, not simply a technological or architectural one. As Mark Poster [7] argues, “panopticism is embedded in networks of information, relationships, and routines that serve to create self-disciplining individuals.”

Ultimately, The Shell vividly illustrates the totalizing power of panoptic surveillance in the Foucauldian sense. Through physical confinement, psychological manipulation, and the erasure of individuality, Khalifa’s prison becomes a site where modern disciplinary power achieves its most complete form. But crucially, even in this environment, the narrator’s act of writing becomes a refusal of invisibility—a narrative rebellion against the panoptic machine that sought to render him voiceless.

Discipline and the Docile Body 

Mustafa Khalifa’s The Shell offers a harrowing portrayal of how authoritarian institutions produce what Michel Foucault terms the “docile body”—a body that is “manipulated, shaped, trained, obedient, responsive” [1]. The disciplinary mechanisms at work in the prison are not simply punitive; they are designed to fragment the will, shatter identity, and convert living subjects into malleable, silent forms of life. Khalifa’s narrative provides one of the most compelling literary illustrations of this Foucauldian transformation, exposing how the totalitarian state does not merely punish but reconstructs the individual at the level of flesh, habit, and thought.

From the very beginning of his incarceration, the narrator is subjected to systematic violence that is carefully orchestrated to instill submission. The first beating he receives is not random—it is part of an initiation ritual that establishes the disciplinary regime of the prison: “The lashes came one after the other, with precision. The guards didn’t shout, didn’t sweat. They were calm, efficient, like craftsmen. Their goal was not anger—it was education” [2].

This chilling description shows that the goal of torture is not merely to cause pain but to train the body. In Foucault’s words, “discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies, ‘docile’ bodies” [1]. The guards’ mechanical efficiency strips the act of torture of emotional content, transforming it into a normalized practice of state discipline. The physical pain becomes a tool to reorganize the prisoner’s relationship with space, time, and authority. Routine is another critical element of the disciplinary process. The narrator describes days spent in absolute stillness, forced to lie in cramped cells and prohibited from making sound or eye contact: “Our bodies became still out of necessity. To move was to invite pain. To speak was to summon danger. We learned how not to exist, how to become invisible” [2]. Foucault’s analysis of “time-tables” and “rhythmic obedience” is particularly resonant here. He argues that discipline is accomplished through the control of time—fragmented, measured, and imposed from above [1]. The prisoners’ immobilization is not just physical but symbolic: they are removed from the rhythm of life and subjected to a new temporal order that empties them of autonomy.

Discipline in The Shell goes beyond physical punishment; it targets the senses, gradually isolating the prisoner from reality and even from himself. Khalifa writes: “In the dark, time died. My ears became my eyes, my skin my map. The world shrank to a cell, a mat, a bucket. I became no one, nothing” (Khalifa, 2008, p. 92). This passage reflects the sensory deprivation central to Foucauldian punishment. Inmates are not merely denied comfort; they are denied perception. Foucault explains that the goal of modern discipline is to create “an individuality that is both calculable and utilizable” [1]. To do this, the system must strip the subject of unnecessary perception, movement, and complexity. Khalifa’s narrator is reduced to a body deprived of agency and stripped of relational context—an empty vessel ready to be filled with the regime’s discipline.

The narrator frequently references how his body began to betray him, how pain became normalized, and how his own physical form became an accomplice to his erasure: “At first, I resisted the pain. Later, I anticipated it. Eventually, I accepted it. My body stopped fighting. I was ashamed of how quickly it learned to obey” [2].

Foucault’s theory that power is most effective when it becomes internalized is clearly illustrated here. The body no longer requires coercion; it has learned to anticipate commands, to discipline itself. Foucault [2] refers to this as the transition from “sovereign power” (which punishes through spectacle) to “disciplinary power”, which “inscribes itself on bodies” through subtle, repetitive practices.

In authoritarian regimes, as Lisa Wedeen [8] notes, rituals of obedience are key to maintaining control. These rituals are embedded in posture, silence, and physical gestures of subordination. In The Shell, inmates are punished for the most minor deviations from expected behavior. For example, the narrator describes being beaten for sitting cross-legged instead of squatting: “A guard saw me sitting. That was all. He kicked me until I fell over, then he laughed. We were not allowed to be comfortable, even for a moment” [2]. This enforced discomfort is not incidental—it is strategic. The body is not allowed rest or dignity; it is shaped into an object of power, a surface on which authority writes its rules.

The most devastating effect of discipline in the novel is the psychic disintegration that follows physical and sensory erosion. Over time, the narrator loses not only his freedom and comfort but also his grasp on selfhood. He writes: “My memories became unreliable. I forgot the faces of my family. I even forgot the sound of my own voice. I was no longer a man—I was a habit, a reflex” [2]. This moment marks the culmination of what Foucault would call the productive function of disciplinary power—not just to repress, but to remake the subject according to institutional logic. The prisoner becomes a disciplined entity, with no past, no external affiliations, and no inner resistance. As Wendy Brown [9] argues, regimes of control in modernity often seek not annihilation but neutralization—the quieting of the political subject.

Even so, Khalifa does not present this transformation as complete. Despite his near-total dissolution, the narrator’s act of writing the memoir stands as a counter-discourse, a form of resistance that reclaims the body and the voice that the prison attempted to erase. This will be explored in Section 4, but it is important to note here that Foucauldian discipline is never absolute; it is always met with moments of refusal, however fragile.

Silence, Erasure, and the Control of Language

One of the most powerful tools of authoritarian discipline, as illustrated in The Shell, is the control not only of bodies but of language. Under Michel Foucault’s conception of power, language is not a neutral medium but a technology of control—a structure through which knowledge is shaped, reality is ordered, and silence becomes a political act. In the novel, Mustafa Khalifa reveals how the Syrian regime disciplines prisoners not only by physical violence and surveillance but also by strategically enforcing silence, distorting language, and rendering the individual unspeakable within the official discourse.

Foucault [5] argues that “where there is power, there is resistance,” but that power also “produces discourse”. In The Shell, the prison becomes a linguistic vacuum. Prisoners are forbidden from speaking freely, often punished for speaking at all. The narrator describes an early lesson in silence: “Words were dangerous. A wrong word could mean death—or worse. We learned to let our eyes speak, to move in silence like shadows. Our mouths became sealed not with tape, but with fear” [2]. This imposed silence is not merely circumstantial—it is structural. The regime deprives prisoners of the right to speak because language is a form of presence, of recognition, of being. Foucault notes that in institutions like the prison, language becomes a regulated economy: not everyone is allowed to speak, and those who do must speak in approved forms [5]. In The Shell, language becomes fragmented, reduced to commands, screams, and silences—none of which allow for self-expression or resistance.

Further, prisoners are often unnamed and unacknowledged. The narrator notes: “There were no names in Tadmor. We were numbers, or less. Sometimes not even that. We became ghosts inside our own skin” [2]. This erasure of identity is a central function of disciplinary regimes. By removing names, the state erases the narrative identity of the subject. This practice recalls Foucault’s idea of “subjectivation”—the process by which individuals are constituted through discourse. Without names, without speech, the prisoners are denied subjectivity. They become bare life, in Giorgio Agamben’s terms—existing within the law’s control but outside its recognition [10].

The censorship of language in the prison is mirrored by the impoverishment of institutional discourse. Orders from guards are often barked rather than spoken, structured around violence rather than communication. Even official “interrogations” function less to extract truth than to force submission. The narrator reflects on the absurdity of one such session: “They asked me questions, but they didn’t want answers. They already knew—or thought they knew—everything. My silence was guilt. My voice, when I used it, was a lie” [2]. This aligns with Foucault’s claim that institutions like the prison and asylum often wield language not to discover truth but to enforce it—to impose a regime of truth that legitimizes power. As he states, “Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint” [5]. In The Shell, the prison’s version of truth is absolute, violent, and unquestionable.

Importantly, Khalifa also highlights how silence becomes not just a result of power but a strategy of resistance. In a world where speech is weaponized, withholding language becomes a form of control over one’s inner self. The narrator notes: “They could take my body. They could strip me of my name, my family, my memories. But my silence—they feared that. Silence was the last thing I owned” [2]. This moment powerfully subverts the assumption that silence equals submission. In Foucauldian terms, resistance often exists within the cracks of power—not by confronting it head-on, but by refusing its discursive terms. Khalifa’s narrator reclaims silence as a zone of autonomy, an inward refusal to be fully assimilated into the regime’s narrative logic.

This tension between forced silence and chosen silence reveals a deeper Foucauldian insight: that power and resistance are co-constitutive. The same silence that dehumanizes also preserves a space for the self that cannot be penetrated. In this way, The Shell dramatizes what Judith Butler [11] would later call “performative resistance”—the idea that even non-speech, even refusal, can be a political act.

Finally, the act of writing itself—the memoir that becomes The Shell—is the narrator’s ultimate linguistic rebellion. It defies both erasure and silence by giving structure to trauma, memory, and identity. Through narrative, the prisoner reclaims the power to name, to interpret, and to testify—countering the state’s monopoly on truth. As Khalifa’s narrator writes: “They tried to bury me in silence. But I remembered. I wrote. This book is my body now” [2]. Here, language becomes resurrection, defiance, and survival all at once. In Foucauldian terms, this is an act of counter-conduct—the refusal to be governed in a certain way through the reappropriation of speech and memory.

Narrative as Resistance and Reclamation of Identity

While The Shell is saturated with silence, erasure, and institutional control, it is ultimately a work of narration—a sustained act of memory and authorship. The novel itself becomes the narrator’s resistance to the disciplinary mechanisms that sought to obliterate his identity. From a Foucauldian perspective, this act of writing is not merely cathartic; it is political. It reclaims the right to speak, the power to define truth, and the ability to resist institutional control through discourse. As Foucault [5] asserts, where there is power, there is also the potential for counter-discourse—“a plurality of resistances” that emerge within and against power structures.

After years of forced silence and self-effacement, the narrator’s ability to recount his experiences is itself extraordinary. In a system that aimed to turn him into a voiceless shell, the act of storytelling becomes a reassertion of subjectivity. He writes: “I survived by remembering. I remembered every face, every sound, every silence. I wrote it in my head, word by word, for thirteen years. And now I give it voice” [2]. This moment reverses the entire disciplinary project of Tadmor. Where the prison sought to erase identity, writing reconstructs it. Where the regime relied on invisibility, the memoir reintroduces visibility on the prisoner’s own terms. The subject is no longer an object of the state’s surveillance but an author of his own narrative.

Foucault [12] discusses the idea of “technologies of the self”, practices by which individuals constitute and care for themselves as ethical beings. Writing, in this sense, becomes a technology of resistance, allowing the subject to process suffering, define experience, and reconstitute agency. The narrator of The Shell does exactly this—transforming trauma into testimony, silence into speech. This is not merely autobiographical healing; it is political narration. The prison system’s goal was to make prisoners disappear—not just physically, but historically and discursively. As Lisa Wedeen [8] argues in her study of Syrian authoritarianism, regimes maintain power in part by controlling symbolic and narrative structures. By telling his story, Khalifa defies this control and reclaims narrative authority. The prisoner who was denied a name, a voice, and a face now speaks, names, and remembers. This return to narration also signals a reconstruction of temporality. Inside the prison, time was shapeless and cyclical, defined by torture, repetition, and the erasure of progress. Through storytelling, the narrator imposes sequence, meaning, and teleology. As Foucault notes in The Archaeology of Knowledge, discourse is a system that structures not only language but history—“the archive” of experience (p. 129). The Shell becomes part of this archive, a trace of a life the regime tried to erase.

Moreover, narration becomes a form of ethical witnessing. It does not merely recount; it testifies—on behalf of the silenced, the dead, and the disappeared. The narrator acknowledges this collective dimension:“I tell this story not only for myself, but for those who can no longer speak. Their stories are buried in the dust of Tadmor. I carry them here” [2]. This is an act of what Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub [13] call “bearing witness”—not simply recounting trauma but giving it social and ethical weight. The narrator assumes responsibility for memory, using the narrative form as a space of public resistance against historical erasure.

Importantly, this Foucauldian resistance is not revolutionary in a grandiose sense. It is subtle, reflective, and deeply personal. It does not overthrow the regime, but it undermines its symbolic power. As Edward Said [6] reminds us, “Narrative is the beginning of resistance”—particularly when it challenges the official version of events imposed by authoritarian structures.

Thus, The Shell becomes not only a document of survival but a philosophical intervention. It enacts a Foucauldian critique of state power by showing how even the most totalizing forms of discipline can be subverted—through memory, through writing, and through the quiet resilience of a self that refuses to be erased.

Mustafa Khalifa’s The Shell is a searing literary testimony to the mechanisms of authoritarian power, and it provides a profoundly fertile site for Foucauldian analysis. Through the lens of Michel Foucault’s theories—particularly those concerning surveillance, discipline, docility, and discourse—this paper has explored how the prison functions not only as a site of physical punishment but as a totalizing institution that seeks to reshape identity, regulate language, and erase individuality. Foucault’s concept of the panopticon offers a precise framework for understanding how surveillance in The Shell becomes internalized, producing subjects who self-police under the omnipresent threat of observation. The transformation of prisoners into docile bodies further illustrates how authoritarian regimes extend their control into the physical and psychological realms. Language itself becomes a site of contestation: silence is both imposed and reclaimed, and naming becomes a political act. Yet even within these oppressive structures, Khalifa’s narrative reminds us of the potential for resistance—through memory, silence, and, above all, storytelling.

The act of writing The Shell becomes a Foucauldian technology of the self, a way for the narrator to reconstruct his identity and bear witness to the forgotten. The novel affirms that while disciplinary power may succeed in suppressing speech, it cannot fully extinguish the subject’s capacity to resist, remember, and reclaim voice. In this way, The Shell is not only a depiction of trauma, but also an act of defiance—an ethical and political intervention against the erasures of history.

1. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Vintage Books, 1977.

2. Khalifa, Mustafa. The Shell: Memoirs of a Hidden Observer. Translated by Paul Sluglett, Interlink Books, 2008.

3. Massad, Joseph. Desiring Arabs. University of Chicago Press, 2005.

4. Downing, Lisa. The Cambridge Introduction to Michel Foucault. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

5. Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Edited by Colin Gordon, Pantheon Books, 1980.

6. Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. Vintage Books, 1994.

7. Poster, Mark. The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context. University of Chicago Press, 1990.

8. Wedeen, Lisa. Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria. University of Chicago Press, 1999.

9. Brown, Wendy. Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire. Princeton University Press, 2009.

10. Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford University Press, 1998.

11. Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. Routledge, 1997.

12. Foucault, Michel. “The ethics of the concern for self as a practice of freedom.” Edited by Paul Rabinow, 1994.

13. Felman, Shoshana, and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. Routledge, 1992.