Foucault’s “Panopticism” at Work in Eggers’ Zeitoun

With Michel Foucault’s essay “Panopticism” on hand and in the forefront of your mind, reading Dave Eggers’ recently published Zeitoun—an account of a Syrian-American man and his family’s intimate relationship with Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans and the subsequent dissolution of their city’s stability—morphs into a cradle of evidence revealing Foucault’s contributions to the field of theory at work, the inescapable sense that you’re always under observation with the possibility of consequences: panopticism. More importantly, Zeitoun reveals the multiple levels, each with varying degrees of effectiveness on the population remaining within the chaos of New Orleans, panopticism works. Using specific dates to catalogue the events of Zeitoun and his wife Kathy’s struggles, Eggers allows readers to easily track the consequences of the resulting suspension of authority spawned by the disaster, both natural and manmade.

As my essay demonstrates, Zeitoun becomes disillusioned with governmental authority, relying more than ever on his culture and faith as disciplinary substitutions. And while I acknowledge the fact that this book can spur surface level feelings of admiration for Zeitoun’s self-regulating abilities, I also reveal the pervasiveness of panopticism that has the potential to maliciously and effortlessly transform a man from an endearing, law-abiding citizen into a prisoner worthy of praise.