Shattered Selves: A Psycho-Foucauldian Reading of Seemeen Khan’s When the Heaven Split Asunder

Abstract

This article critically examines Seemeen Khan's When the Heaven Split Asunder using a dual theoretical lens of Michel Foucault's discipline and punishment concepts and Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory. Foucault's analysis sheds light on how mechanisms of surveillance, normalization, and punishment create compliant subjects within familial, social, and religious spaces. Freud contributes to understanding the unconscious impacts of such control, such as fear, repression, and inner struggle. Together, these models illustrate how the novel depicts the splintered mind of those who are under disciplinary power, women especially, whose agency is limited by patriarchal and cultural norms. The novel illustrates how external frameworks of power intersect with inner conflicts of guilt, desire, and repression and lead to conformity and resistance. Through the synthesis of Foucauldian and Freudian analyses, the research brings to light how the novel criticizes the complex exercise of power while at the same time revealing the tenacity of human agency against oppression.