https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=1389169
https://doi.org/10.60056/Lit.2025.35.407–434
Stanislav Mladenov
The following article constitutes a Foucauldian reading of the dynamics of power in Viktor Paskov’s novel “Germany, a Dirty Tale”. This interpretation is grounded in “Discipline and Punish”, Michel Foucault’s work that traces the long and gradual transformation undergone by the mechanisms of power in Europe since the classical age. Contemporary disciplinary techniques – such as the examination and the normalizing sanction – have managed to take root in virtually every aspect of modern human life. This pervasive penetration of power and surveillance, which Foucault likens to the geometry of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, becomes the conceptual framework of the analysis. In the narrative of “Germany, a Dirty Tale” panopticism will be understood as an omnipresent surveillance designed to compel the Bulgarian “colony” of émigrés to conform to the order imposed by the totalitarian terror of the GDR – their promised land that ultimately proves to be a trap.
Keywords: surveillance, punishment, abroad, stranger, émigré, totalitarian regime, panopticism, slave, master, discipline
About the author: Stanislav Mladenov graduated “Bulgarian Philology” at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” in 2025. He is currently enrolled in the master’s program in Translation and Editing. He has experience both on stage as a theater actor and as an intern in the show “Kultura.BG”, broadcast on the Bulgarian National Television. His interests are in the field of literary studies, translation, cinema, photography, and theatre.
