[Policing the Postcolonial Family: Rethinking Hanif Kureishi’s “My Son the Fanatic” through F. Fanon and D. Bigo]

[Abstract] This article offers a critical re-evaluation of Hanif Kureishi’s short story “My Son the Fanatic” at the intersection of Frantz Fanon’s postcolonial psychoanalysis and Didier Bigo’s security studies. Moving beyond conventional readings that center generational conflict, religious radicalism, or immigrant assimilation, the study foregrounds surveillance as a constitutive force shaping postcolonial subjectivity within diasporic family dynamics. It is argued that Kureishi’s narrative dramatizes the internalization of state logics of suspicion and control, whereby the immigrant father, Parvez, becomes both the subject and the agent of a dispersed surveillance apparatus. Drawing on Bigo’s concept of the ban-opticon and its emphasis on anticipatory governance and affective regulation, the article examines how fear of deviance displaces paternal care with a mode of domestic policing. Simultaneously, Fanon’s notion of epidermalization elucidates how the colonized subject internalizes visibility as a site of control, resulting in a fractured self constantly navigating racialized gazes and cultural expectations. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0).