Panopticism or Post- Panopticism, that is the Question: As an Other, One can never Leave

This article focuses on the notions of panopticism and post-panopticism in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) through the perspective of left thinkers. Using Foucault’s and Lyon’s views, the writer tries to discuss how the exit of the migrants from the panoptic, disciplinary communities of theirs to the so-called democratic West can prove a failure. Focusing on an unknown, Islamic country as well as the western cradles of civilization—Greece, Britain, and America—Hamid, in fact, tries to clarify how the disciplinary community of the orient has much in common with the post-global West. The only difference is a shift from a panoptican discourse to that of a post-panoptican one. To this end, the notions of “camp,” “sorting paradigm” and “bio-politics” are to be discussed. It is argued that despite the blurring of the borders through the post-global capitalism, the West seems to have restored the old imperialist ethos in the form of the anti-racist racism through the practice of “geofencing” and “geoslavery.” However, the hybridity that migration results in can pave the way for the emergence of a space of heterogeneity, herterotopeia, in the West which is in constant process of “becoming.” As a result a new sense of belonging and, thus, identity on the part of the ethnic other is formed and the notion of nativeness and the concept of the home are challenged so much so that the imigrant would be able to “make a home” wherever he is regardless of his roots