GÖZETİM ASAMBLAJI: BUGÜNÜN DİSTOPYASI OLARAK DAVE EGGERS’ IN THE CIRCLE ADLI ROMANI ÜZERİNE ELEŞTİREL BİR OKUMA

Günümüz toplumlarında gözetim üzerine yapılan çalışmalar giderek ivme kazanmıştır. Devletlerin ve / veya şirketlerin insanları izleme amaçları belirsiz ve tartışmaya açık olması bakımından bu çalışmalar, gözetim üzerine çeşitli teoremler ortaya koymuştur. Bununla birlikte, gözetimin distopik yönü bu çalışmaların çoğunda ortak bir zemin oluşturmaktadır. Şüphesiz, futuristik-distopik kurguların dünyalarına derinden aşılanan gözetim toplumlarına yönelik artan korku günümüz dünyasının bir gerçeği haline geldiğinden, bu hususla ilgili haklılık paylarının olduğu aşikârdır. Başka bir deyişle, gözetim toplumu bugünün distopyası haline gelmiştir. Foucault’nun panoptikon fikrinin aksine, günümüz toplumundaki gözetim nispeten daha karmaşık ve merkeziyet dışıdır. Bu tür bir gözetimi, Haggerty ve Ericson “gözetim asamblajı” olarak adlandırmaktadır. Dave Eggers'ın Çember (YIL) adlı eseri bu çeşit bir gözetimi yansıtan en güzel örneklerden biridir. Bu roman, bize gözetim asamblajının karmaşıklığını gösterdiği gibi, bireylerin kendilerini tam şeffaflığa maruz bırakmaya istekli ajanlar haline getirerek gözetim assamblajının bireysel alanı yok etmedeki rolünü çok iyi resmeder DÜŞÜK CÜMLE. Bu durum, en nihayetinde bireyin yok olmasına neden olmaktadır. Bu araştırma makalesi, Haggerty ve Ericson’ın “gözetim asamblajı” teorisine ve hoşnutsuzluklarına odaklanarak Dave Eggers’ın Çember adlı eserini günümüzün distopyası olarak incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır.

The Surveillant Assemblage: A Critical Reading of Dave Eggers’ The Circle As Today’s Dystopia

Surveillance studies have gained momentum in today’s societies. These studies have put forward various theorems on surveillance since the states and/or corporations’ purposes of monitoring people are nebulous and open to discussion. However, the dystopian aspect of surveillance holds a common ground in most of these studies. No doubt, they have a fair share in their discussion since the growing fear of surveillance societies deeply instilled in the worlds of the futuristic-dystopian fiction has become a fact of our present world. That is, surveillance society has become today’s dystopia. Unlike the Foucaldian panopticon, surveillance in today’s society is relatively more complex and decentralized. This kind of surveillance is, what Haggerty and Ericson call, “the surveillant assemblage”. Dave Eggers’ The Circle is perhaps one of the best examples that portray it blatantly. As it shows us the complexities of the surveillant assemblage, it portrays its role to destroy individual zone by making them the willing agents to expose themselves to full transparency. This will eventually lead to the demise of the individual. With this purpose in mind, this research article examines Dave Eggers’s The Circle as today’s dystopia by giving utmost consideration to Haggerty and Ericson’s theory of surveillant assemblage and its discontents.

___

  • Ateş, K. (2023). “An Ecocritical Perspective on Simulated Theme Park In England, England.” Journal of Modernism and Postmodernism (JOMOPS), 4(1). https://doi.org/10.47333/modernizm.2023.101
  • Bex, Sean and Stef Craps and Mimi Lok (2015). “An Interview with Dave Eggers and Mimi Lok,” Contemporary Literature, Vol. 56, Number 4, pp. 544-567.
  • Beckman, F. (2020). “Control and the Novel: Dave Eggers and Disciplinary Form”. MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 66(3), 527-546.
  • Bhattacharyya, S., Walker, D.M. & Harshey, R.M (2020). “Dead Cells release a ‘Necrosignal’ that activates antibiotic survival pathways in bacterial swarms”. Nat Commun 11, 4157. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17709-0
  • Bogard, W. (2006). “Surveillance Assemblages and Lines of Flight". Theorizing Surveillance, edited by David Lyon. Willan Publishing. (pp.97-122)
  • Däwes, B. (2020). Flickers of Vision: Surveillance and the Uncertainty Paradigm in Dave Eggers The Circle. Surveillance, Society, Culture, edited by Florian Zappe and Andrew S. Gross, 103-118.
  • Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the Societies of Control. October, 59, 3-7.
  • Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. First published 1980 as Mille plateaux: Capitalisme et schizophrénie (Paris: Minuit).
  • Dinç, Derya Biderci (2023). “The Portrayal of Nature in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road”. The Journal of Academic Social Science Studies
  • Doctorow, C. (2021). How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, Medium Editions.
  • Duncan, J. (2019). Activist Learning and State Dataveillance Lessons from the UK, Mauritius and South Africa. In Activists and The Surveillant State: Learning from Repression. Edited by Aziz Choudry. (53-75). Pluto Press and Between the Lines
  • Eggers, D. (2013). The Circle: a Novel. Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Books.
  • Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish. A. Sheridan, Tr., Paris, FR, Gallimard.
  • Galič, M., Timan, T., & Koops, B. J. (2017). “Bentham, Deleuze and beyond: An overview of surveillance theories from the panopticon to participation”. Philosophy & Technology, 30, 9-37.
  • Gouck, J. (2018). “The Viewer Society: ‘New Panopticism’, Surveillance, And The Body In Dave Eggers’ The Circle.” Ijas Online, No. 7: 57–64. Https://Www.Jstor.Org/Stable/26489193.
  • Güven, F. (2021). “Panopticon Surveillance, Deviation from Gender Roles and Liberation in Villette”. International Journal of Language Academy, 10 (1), 39-45.
  • Haggerty, K. D., & Ericson, R. V. (2000). “The Surveillant Assemblage”. The British journal of sociology, 51(4), 605-622.
  • Herman, P. C. (2018). “More, Huxley, Eggers, and the Utopian/Dystopian Tradition”. Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, 41(3), 165–193. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26604117
  • Jarvis, B. (2019). “Surveillance and Spectacle Inside The Circle”. Surveillance, Architecture and Control: Discourses on Spatial Culture, 275-293.
  • Laurent, S. Y. (2021). “The Archipelago of Global Surveillance–without States–in the Western World 1” in Histories of Surveillance from Antiquity to the Digital Era (pp. 180-192). Routledge.
  • Los, M. (2006). “Looking into the Future: Surveillance, globalization and the totalitarian potential” in Theorizing Surveillance, edited by David Lyon. Willan Publishing. (pp. 69-94).
  • Lyon, D. (2018). The Culture of Surveillance: Watching as a way of life. John Wiley & Sons.
  • Orwell, G. (2020). 1984: Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel. Obooko Publishing.
  • Özsert, S. (2022). “Female Reaction against Patriarchal Oppression: Burial, Resistance, and Emancipation in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette”. RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, IV. Uluslararası Rumeli [ Dil, Edebiyat, Çeviri] Sempozyumu Özel Sayısı, 513-523. DOI: 10.29000/rumelide.1146704
  • Schneier, B. (2015). Data and Goliath: The hidden battles to collect your data and control your world. WW Norton & Company.
  • Sisk, D. (1997). Transformations of Language in Modern Dystopias. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
  • Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: Public Affairs.
  • WEB SOURCES
  • Atwood, Margeret (2013). “When Privacy is Theft”: Dave Eggers’s The Circle. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/11/21/eggers-circle-when-privacy-is-theft/?lp_txn_id=1479243. Web access on Aug 10th, 2023.
  • Baskin, Jon (2013). The Circle. https://thepointmag.com/criticism/the-circle/. Web access on Aug 10th, 2023.
  • Baker, Katie, J.M. (2013). “Is Dave Eggers’ New Novel a Rip Off of a Female Writer’s work? Web access on September 28th, 2023 at https://jezebel.com/is-dave-eggers-new-novel-a-ripoff-of-a-female-writers-1428445249,
  • Claire Gutierrez. “Behind the Cover Story: Dave Eggers on Imagining the Future World of Over-Sharing,” The New York Times, September 28th, 2013.
  • Dave, Eggers, ‘US writers must take a stand on NSA surveillance’, The Guardian, December 19th, 2013 at https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/19/dave-eggers-us-writers-take-stand-nsa-surveillance
  • Ha, Anthony (2013). “‘The Circle’ Author Dave Eggers Denies Reading Facebook Memoir That He’s Accused Of Plagiarizing”, Web Access on September 28th, 2023 at https://techcrunch.com/2013/10/02/dave-eggers-denies-reading-the-boy- kings/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnLw&guce referrer_sig=AQAAANJfpBJEw4OkKbn6vsIHnwwEcx48ELvI4CxIAan-sd6gE5UZIIBx- gf8R8BWKR7qM6VMsOjNCX3CHPqGPe6ts8tCspTJ8EqVSbygnbjeHVZSfaF975rES5 3dJIhfIebXzh6YVj3pdZfnvGJfkH_NiQ-vuu1wTMJ_2VU3m3cisbuD