Pursuing A Space Of Love And Freedom:A Study Of A Thousand Splendid Suns From The Perspective Of Foucault’s Space-power Theory

Khaled Hosseini is a well-known Afghan-American writer for his masterpiece The Kite Runner.His another book A Thousand Splendid Suns has also embraced an immediate success with its fascinating plots and sophisticated narrative skills since its publication in 2007.In A Thousand Splendid Suns,Husseini presents to us a disciplinary Afghan society,where class and gender inequality penetrates into every aspect of its domestic and social life.Through the description of Afghan women’s oppression and rebellion,Husseini expresses his deep sympathy for the miserable sufferings of Afghan women as well as his firm belief in their resistance to shake off the shackles and obtain love and freedom.In the novel,the Afghan society is like a panopticon full of discipline and imprisonment,where unequal power relations permeate in every corner of familial and social life.This thesis attempts to examine from the perspective of Foucault’s space-power theory the main heroine Mariam’s imprisonment and enslavement in domestic space,estrangement in social space as well as her resistant spatial practices to seek a space of love and freedom.It uncovers not only how patriarchal disciplinary power turns Mariam into a docile body,a prisoner and a slave within the panoptic domestic space but also how social space reigned by panopticism renders her into a social stranger through a set of disciplinary practices.Meanwhile,through resistant spatial practices,Mariam successfully unlocks the secrets of the disciplinary mechanism,which helps her transform herself from a passive subject to an active subject.Through textual analysis,this thesis contends that Mariam capitalizes on two types of resistant spatial practices publicized by Foucault,namely,cultivation of critique and immediate struggles,to fight back the patriarchal disciplinary power over her body and mind,through which she is able to break down the spatial constraints and fulfill her self-constitution as an active being,hence,obtaining a space of love and freedom.