The Silenced Voice: A Feminist Postcolonial Analysis of Women’s Identity and Resistance in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire in the Context of 21st Century Surveillance Culture

Abstract

This paper explores the intersection of gender, power, and identity in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire through the combined lenses of feminist and postcolonial literary theory. Set in a world grappling with radicalization, immigration, and state surveillance, the novel presents complex female characters negotiating their identities in an oppressive sociopolitical climate. Drawing on the works of Gayatri Spivak and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, as well as Foucault’s concept of panopticism, the study investigates how the state, family, and patriarchy collaborate to silence, control, and surveil women. The analysis argues that Home Fire not only critiques Western surveillance regimes but also challenges Eastern patriarchal norms, highlighting women’s resistance and redefinition of selfhood in a fractured world. Through thematic analysis of key characters like Aneeka and Isma, the research fills a critical gap in literary studies by examining how postcolonial feminist agency operates within the surveillance state. The paper concludes that Home Fire serves as a contemporary literary mirror reflecting how women in postcolonial societies assert voice and agency amid global surveillance and political instability.

Keywords: Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire, feminist literary criticism, postcolonial theory, surveillance, identity, women’s resistance, diaspora, panopticism, gender politics.