Online education and surveillance during COVID-19 pandemic in Palestinian universities

ABSTRACT This article employs Foucault’s concepts of docile bodies, Panopticism, surveillance and the paradigm of resistance, subversion and containment to delineate the issues of power and control that shored up in online Higher education in Palestinian universities during the outbreak of the pandemic. We propose that the online mode of education perpetuates the traditional way of teaching literature, impeding both students’ and teachers’ innovation. Topics related to sexuality, politics, misogyny, and religion in literary works have been repressed in staff members’ discussion due to multilayered surveillance from the students, parents and online learning centralized management offices who, based on the testimonies of the literature teachers, are often attentive to online class meetings. Surveillance shatters the illusion of liberation many literacy educators thought they have gained in online education; indeed, the instructors’ testimonies highlight their internalization of panoptic surveillance that derails the liberating purpose of education.