A foucauldian analysis of tyrannical technology in george orwell’s nineteen eighty-four and don delillo’s white noise
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Date
2022
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UMT Lahore
Abstract
This study provides a Foucauldian critique on the ubiquitous surveillance of
technology in George Orwell’s 1984 and Don DeLillo’s White Noise by perusing its
tyrannical use and abuse. It aims to highlight the clandestine ways of the authoritative
governments to rule, dominate and “discipline” people through technological or virtual
surveillance. The research focuses on the critical aspects of Orwell’s and DeLillo’s novels
that, in various ways, relate to the tyrannical manipulation of their characters through the
‘propagandized’ and exploitative use of technology in the form of telescreens and televisions
respectively. By canvasing the postmodern dystopia and paranoia of Orwell’s and DeLillo’s
characters, the study contributes to the literary scholarship by a parallel investigation of the
technological hegemony and panoptic surveillance in 1984 and White Noise. It attempts to
discover how the two novelists underscored the ‘contemporary’ human concerns by
delineating the existential plague of their characters who have become victims of
technological subjugation. Through a Foucauldian model of Panoptic Surveillance (PS), his
philosophical notions of technologies of power (TP) and technologies of the self (TS), the
research investigates how merely the ideological setups of governing authorities such as
‘totalitarianism’ in Orwell’s 1984 and ‘consumer-capitalism’ in
DeLillo’s White Noise exercise power and a stupefacient influence on their characters.
Since not much work has been previously done on DeLillo in light of Orwellian deliberations
and vice versa, except for a very few critics like Alghamdi, hence, this study carries on the
discussion by essentially focusing on their comparable dystopian narratives, finding
commonalities in their themes and portrayals of the ‘dictating’ use of technology. Through
Foucault’s analysis of the ‘panoptic’ regimes in 1984 and White Noise, it will, however, be
found out how Orwell’s and DeLillo’s characters themselves became a reason of their ‘self
subjugation’ by ‘self-regulating’ and ‘self-disciplining’ their bodies under the fear of an
omniscient gaze; thereby, deducing how such covert surveillance strategies of the
Nazir 2
governments and media add to the chaos, oppression, and existential miseries of the modern
man.