Language, Power and Resistance in Marissa Meyer’s Cinder: A Foucauldian Critical Discourse Analysis

This research uses the concepts of Panopticism and the disciplinary power, which are proposed by Michel Foucault, to analyze how technology, surveillance and institutional control are exercised in the dystopian world of Cinder by Marissa Meyer. A Foucauldian approach to discipline and punish is adopted to examine how the Panopticon theory is extended beyond prisons to the school, the hospital, and digital culture where docile bodies can be produced through constant visibility and normalization. It examines, from the perspective of the cyborg protagonist, the hierarchical relationship of observation, medical examination, and legal categorization that is presented in Cinder, highlighting how the cyborg character is monitored, categorized, and controlled by the technocratic regime of New Beijing. Using qualitative textual analysis within a Foucauldian framework, it also highlights acts of resistance that challenge panoptic power structures. The study contributes to literary scholarship by linking Foucauldian theory with YA dystopian fiction, an underexplored area. It is limited to Cinder and concludes that the novel critiques modern surveillance while revealing possibilities for agency against disciplinary control.