NARRATIVES OF SURVEILLANCE IN SPECULATIVE FICTION: UNDERSTANDING THE SURVEILLANCE DYNAMICS IN MARGARET ATWOOD'S MADDADDAM TRILOGY
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract: The field of surveillance studies, in its modern form, started gaining attention of scholars after 1950s and began to gain increased academic as well as public attention after 9/11. Interestingly, in its early phase, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, the studies relied not so much on Foucault but on the literary works of George Orwell. Till date, political and sociological analysis of surveillance are more often than not presented in the surveillance state scenario of Orwell’s literary novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Several critics in this field have pointed out that it is the literary representations of surveillance that inform the masses and shape their knowledge and opinions about surveillance (David Lyon 2007). Moreover, they have also highlighted the importance of the link between surveillance and culture, and control and entertainment (Gary T. Marx 2009). Products of popular culture, therefore, have been given immense value in the studies of surveillance. Consequently, literature has become a valuable site to study the connections between surveillance and culture. This shall not only allow the bridging of the gap between the academic and popular discussions about surveillance but also provide a platform to understand the possible social and psychological impact of surveillance. Therefore, literary imaginations/representations offer versatile imageries and metaphors for comprehending the dynamics of surveillance. Especially in today’s age of crisis for humans and non-humans (COVID pandemic, climate change, social injustice etc.), the rising surveillance cultures, technologies and practices invoke the importance of speculative fiction which provides new vistas of imagining surveillance in nuanced forms. Renowned Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood, is a master of contemporary speculative fiction. The present paper seeks to delve into the intricate narratives of surveillance within the speculative fiction genre, with a special focus on Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. The trilogy comprises the literary novels: Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013). Through the lens of surveillance studies, the paper aims to engage in a comprehensive analysis and unravelling of the trilogy’s depiction of the corporate influence on surveillance along with its engagement with contemporary issues of control, privacy, and societal norms. Through this study, it is aimed to bring about a deeper understanding of the intersections between speculative fiction, surveillance studies and contemporary cultures of surveillance and their societal implications. Thus, this research paper is a humble attempt to make surveillance more visible and understandable. Keywords: Speculative Fiction, Surveillance and Technology, Bioethics, Bio-engineering, Ecological
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.018 | 0.027 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.009 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".