This article offers a comprehensive analysis of bullying from socio-cultural and literary perspectives, using Eli Frey’s novel Alice Syndrome as a focal case. The study examines disciplinary power, psychological violence, and mediated visibility through the theoretical lenses of Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Maurice Blanchot, Yuri Lotman, etc. It argues that school bullying is not an isolated psychological incident but a persistent mechanism that reproduces social hierarchies and control, in which language and the gaze operate as instruments of power. Frey’s novel functions as a laboratory of ethical resistance: through the figure of the double, the diary, and a digital “looking-glass world,” the protagonist acquires strategies of anonymity and reclaims an active voice. Dialogues with Chuck Palahniuk’s prose and contemporary young-adult narratives underline how bullying exposes the logic of violence and the individual’s dependence on surveillance systems and public pressure. Methodologically, the article integrates hermeneutic reading with socio-cultural analysis, aligning narrative structures with empirical data from WHO, UNESCO, and recent studies on cyberbullying. It concludes that Alice Syndrome traces a shift from individual trauma to a shared ethics of visibility, showing how literature can elucidate power mechanisms in the digital age and provide a space for resisting psychological forms of harm.
bullying; cyberbullying; disciplinary power; emotional abuse; literature and ethics; Eli Frey; digital age.