An Examination of Heba Al-Dubbagh's Just Five Minutes: Nine Years in the Prisons of Syria Through The Scope of Foucault’s Theory of Power Relations

The present study deals with Foucault’s theory of Power Relations in Prison Literature. It focuses on Heba Al-Dabbagh's Just Five Minutes: Nine Years in the Prisons of Syria. The study argues that examining Power Relations in this novel shows how prison narratives can reflect and challenge hierarchies, authority, and resistance in such environments. It also seeks to show how Al-Dabbagh represents the effect of power relation on prisoners and the prison guards in her novel by relying heavily upon the theoretical framework of Power Relation by Michael Foucault. Using a Foucauldian perspective, this research emphasizes how the Syrian regime's exertion of power was based on establishing an atmosphere of fear, in which the individual is reduced to a passive subject of the state.