الإصدار 6 - العدد 16 (2026-07-02)

Patriarchal Biopolitics and the Thanatic Commodification of Women in Nawal El Saadawi’s "Woman at Point Zero"

Dr: Khaleel Bakheet Khaleel Ismail

Department of English Language-College of Sciences and Humanities-Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University-KSA

This paper investigates the biopolitical and necropolitical representation in Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero, arguing that the novel illustrates a systematic continuum through which patriarchal power administers and extinguishes female life. Applying Michel Foucault's theory of biopower, Achille Mbembe's concept of necropolitics, and feminist materialist critiques of capitalism, it develops two interrelated analytical frameworks: Patriarchal Biopolitics and Thanatic Commodification. Through a close textual analysis of Firdaus's narrative, the paper reveals how patriarchal institutions, such as family, marriage, religion, law, medicine, and the sex trade, discipline women's bodies as biological capital while simultaneously rendering them disposable. Firdaus's harrowing journey, marked by childhood mutilation, marital abuse, prostitution, and eventual execution, is theorized as a necropolitical trajectory where the processes of value extraction and killability are interwoven. Rather than casting Firdaus's death as a mere tragic anomaly or a purely resistant act, the paper posits that her execution symbolizes the culmination of a system governed by violence and death. At "Point Zero," Firdaus's refusal to succumb to fear or seek moral redemption engenders a form of resistance that explains the necropolitical logic of patriarchal racial capitalism. Hence, the paper concludes that Woman at Point Zero emerges not only as a feminist narrative but also as a critical theory of gendered governance, exposing the mechanisms through which female embodiment is managed, commodified, and annihilated within contemporary power structures.