Domination through Transparency in the Palestinian Carceral Experience Managing Human Existence through Exposure and the Regulation of the Senses”

Abstract

This study examines the Palestinian carceral experience as a contemporary system of colonial domination that is based not only on direct physical violence, but also on the precise and systematic management of human existence through constant exposure, the regulation of the senses, and the control of temporal rhythm. The study draws on the concept of “transparent domination,” as developed by Byung-Chul Han, to analyze Israeli prisons as spaces in which power is exercised through continuous lighting, constant surveillance, the organization of daily time, and the control of sound and silence, in ways that reshape the Palestinian prisoner’s consciousness and being over the long term. The study adopts a qualitative interpretive-critical methodology based on deconstructing everyday practices inside the prison such as roll-call rituals, yard time, bathing, access to the canteen, visits, and interrogation as techniques of power that operate through perception and the senses, rather than merely as administrative procedures. The analysis shows that these practices produce a state of permanent forced presence in which privacy is abolished, subjective time is dismantled, and the sensory field is managed in a way that leads to cumulative perceptual and psychological exhaustion. The study also demonstrates that domination within Israeli prisons is not fixed, but rather flexible and capable of being readjusted according to the political and security context, making control more deeply penetrating and less susceptible to direct observation. In contrast, the study identifies subtle forms of prisoner resistance, manifested in reclaiming spaces of silence and preserving zones of shadow that protect human being from complete exposure. The study concludes that the Palestinian carceral experience represents an advanced model of transparent domination within the contemporary colonial context and reveals a global logic of managing human beings through light, surveillance, and the regulation of perception. This makes the prison a central laboratory for understanding modern forms of control and the limits of human resistance within them.