Trauma, Identity, and Agency in Jenni Fagan’s The Panopticon (2012): A Study of Marginalized Youth in Contemporary Literature

This article examines how Jenni Fagan’s The Panopticon portrays the traumatic experiences of marginalized youth subjected to institutional surveillance and social exclusion. Drawing on trauma theory, Foucauldian panopticism, and resilience studies, it analyzes the ways trauma fragments identity while institutional labeling reinforces marginalization and stigma. Through the character of Anais Hendricks, the study highlights the psychological effects of abuse, abandonment, and disciplinary control within the care system. It further demonstrates how storytelling, imagination, memory, and social bonds function as survival mechanisms and forms of resistance. Ultimately, the article argues that despite oppression and fragmentation, marginalized youth can negotiate agency and reconstruct identity through resilience and creative self-definition.