Under the Gaze of Power; Gender, Violence,and Resistance in Nona Fernandezs Space Invaders and Diamela Eltits Custody of the Eyes

• POORNIMA R

  KAHM Unity Women's College, Manjeri

• MUHAMMEDALI P

  KAHM Unity Women’s College

This paper is an integrated analysis of Diamela Eltit's Custody of the Eyes and Nona Fernandez's Space Invaders through the combined theoretical perspectives of Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, and Nelly Richard. It explores how these novels engage with collective memory and gendered experience during and in the aftermath of the Pinochet regime's state violence, which had a profoundly dehumanising effect on both individual psyches and the collective consciousness of the Chilean population. The study reveals how these novels Foucauldian power mechanisms and the Arendtian erosion of the public sphere converge to depict lives controlled by totalitarian regimes. These theoretical Perspectives expose how individuals are stripped of their agency, alienated from one another, and reduced to mere survival under the panoptic gaze of the system, which operates through state surveillance, societal complicity, and institutional control. Yet, these narratives act as testaments to the indomitable human capacity for resistance, even in the most oppressive circumstances. The study explores how these Chilean women writers question the hegemonic narratives by providing an alternative voice from the marginalized, asserting storytelling as a political resistance.

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