Читать книгу Absent Rebels: Criticism and Network Power in 21st Century Dystopian Fiction - Annika Gonnermann - Страница 20

By stating, “[d]espotism we can understand” (History 495), Gregory Claeys summarises our familiarity with totalitarian regimes and their practices. The ability to have agent B do what agent A wants her to do – even against her will – constitutes a prime example for a simple action-reaction pattern based on the asymmetry of influence and power. This process is easily observable, and familiar to us, as it is this ability most people commonly associate with Foucault’s juridico-political form of power. According to Grewal, Steven Lukes defines this mode of power by its ability to “overcome[…] resistance” (in Grewal 123), making it the first step of his three dimension model of power. Lukes hints at the fact that the one-dimensional understanding of power is probably the one most easily observed and identified “because its exercise affects someone” (ibid.). After generations of scholars theorising on sovereign power, following Machiavelli’s notion that power is the ability to rule over territory and subjects (cf. King and Kendall 217), most people, among them Eggers’ protagonist, are able to identify the action-reaction schema of power: Mae “left her hand resting across [Francis’] lap. [His pulse] quickly rose to 134. She thrilled at her power, the proof of it, right before her and measurable. He was at 136” (TC 203, my emphasis). Mae is excited about her influence on Francis, her co-worker and love affair, since one move of her hand causes an observable effect (pulse rate to 136), granting her satisfaction and a feeling of superiority. Modern technology and its gadgets, in this case, a heart rate tracker, display ‘proof’ of her effectiveness, bolstering Mae’s self-esteem.

While Mae might find one-dimensional power a thrilling ingredient of a satisfactory sex life, The Circle demonstrates the extent to which people have learnt to mistrust direct forms of power on a political level since WWII, most notably in the form of authoritarian rule. In theory, Mae and her fellow Circlers can be seen as enlightened individuals, wary of totalitarian structures and concomitant power apparatuses, and are eager to challenge juridico-political abuses of power in the form of anti-democratic and oppressive regimes, such as the reign of terror exercised by a paramilitary group in Guatemala. Initiating an online campaign, the Circlers are passionately engaged in political activism:

There was a paramilitary group in Guatemala, some resurrection of the terrorizing forces of the eighties, and they had been attacking villages and taking women captive. One woman, Ana María Herrera, had escaped and told of ritual rapes, of teenage girls being made concubines, and the murders of those who would not cooperate. Mae’s friend Tania, never an activist in school, said she had been compelled to action by these atrocities […]. (TC 244)

Although “never an activist in school” and decidedly abstinent from political activism, Tania feels “compelled to action” by the clear abuse of juridico-political power. She thus stands pars pro toto for those raised in the belief of the importance of democratic institutions, having learnt the lesson of the 20^th century and the totalitarian regimes in parts of Europe and Russia. Compelled to do something and with the opportunities arising from advanced information and communication technology, the Circlers promote an online campaign that sends messages of support to Ana María and, “[j]ust as important, [sends] a message to the paramilitaries that we denounce their actions” (ibid., emphasis in the original). Doubts regarding the effectiveness of this method aside (readers might justifiably question the relevance of this online petition, since the novel makes it blatantly obvious that the Circlers’ ‘political activism’ translates directly into a painfully irrelevant, naïve idealism the characters in the novel nevertheless seemingly exhibit a strong tie to democracy and egalitarian ideals.

While the characters are intellectually equipped to identify abusive forms of juridico-political forms of power, which take the form of (sexual) abuse, oppression and torture, they are nevertheless unable to correctly assess equally destructive, yet less obvious forms of coercion and power. They fail substantially to identify network structures of power, which ‘force’ the individuals to make free, albeit involuntary choices. Since network power and its standards are more difficult to identify because the decisions resulting in or from network power appear to be free decisions by mature and responsible individuals (cf. Bernard), The Circle constitutes an exercise in reading this form of power, enabling its readers to broaden their perspective and to differentiate between modes of power dissimilar in method, yet similar in effect: to restrain voluntariness. By demonstrating that the promises of neoliberalism regarding freedom and their reality are mutually exclusive, the novel criticises the former immanently, relying on the depiction of coercive power structures.

Eggers’ novel makes the differences in conceptions of power explicit, requiring its readers to distance themselves from the characters’ inability to see through the mechanisms of network power that dominate the narrative. A case in point that illustrates how standards can compromise the options for actions of individuals is evident in the following paragraph. Having pushed the game-changing SeeChange cameras on to the market, which enable a 24/7 wireless livestream, the Circle alters the code of conduct for politicians. Originally intended as life style gadgets to facilitate monitoring of the roads for the daily commute to work, the weather at a favourite beach, or unsuspecting elderly parents (cf. TC 64f.) – and this is the first example of the novel alluding to the possible abuses connected to superior technology – the mini-cameras become constitutive of democracy once one politician decides to wear one 24/7. Congresswoman Santos explains, “I intend to show how democracy can and should be: entirely open, entirely transparent. Starting today, I will be wearing the [camera]. My every meeting, movement, my every word, will be available to all my constituents and to the world” (ibid. 210). Harvesting the full marketing potential, the Circle effectively leverages Santos’ ‘going transparent’ into a big media event. In her role as a politician and thus dependent on media attention, Santos happily complies by helping to promote the product: “a technician emerged from the wings and hung a necklace around Santos’s head […]. Santos held the lens to her lips and kissed it. The audience cheered” (ibid.). Eggers’ novel not only satirises real-world product releases, anticipating and imitating, for instance, Apple, Facebook, or Google and their general assemblies, but also showcases the unhealthy opportunistic tendencies of modern politics, criticising politicians for becoming brand ambassadors blending economics and politics.

Santos’ marketing coup allows readers to witness the birth and growth of a new standard, which will soon dominate both the theory and practice of politics (cf. TC 239f.). Initially, Santos is something of a curiosity and attracts mild media interest, but not “the kind of explosion anyone at the Circle had hoped for.” Yet over time, the full impact of her decisions materialises in the form of viewer numbers: “as people logged on and began watching [they realised] that she was deadly serious” (240). Enabling constant observation – her constituents can watch her every move and hear her every word – Santos thus spearheads a somewhat twisted ideal of democracy that relies on absolute transparency. Viewers are invited not only into her professional but also into her private life, which gives them the impression that Santos constitutes an exception to the moral corruption, opacity, and nepotism commonly associated with Washington.1 Meanwhile, her fame and approval ratings soar, as she gains voters’ support. Of course, this development catches the attention of her rivals, other politicians eager to boost their popularity. Subsequently, a continuous stream of elected representatives – irrespective of party membership, it seems, for the Circle never goes into details about their political points of view – follow Santos’ example and decide (initially) voluntarily to adopt the same measures, hoping for the same advantages and benefits in form of votes:

By the third week, twenty-one other elected leaders in the U.S. had asked the Circle for their help in going clear. There was a mayor in Sarasota. A senator from Hawaii, and, not surprisingly, both senators from California. The entire city council of San Jose. The city manager of Independence, Kansas. And each time one of them made the commitment, the Wise Men zinged about it, and there was a hastily arranged press conference, showing the actual moment when their days went transparent. (ibid. 240)

Turning Santos’ commitment to go transparent into a big media event, the Circle ensures that these procedures receive the necessary attention from the press and the general public. More demand, of course, equals more profit: “[p]roduction on the cameras, which were as yet unavailable to consumers, went into overdrive. The manufacturing plant, in China’s Guangdong province, added shifts and began construction on a second factory to quadruple their capacity” (ibid. 240f.). Moreover, the fact that a growing number of politicians from other states follow suit, from Hawaii and Kansas (ironically, the city is named ‘Independence’) and not only the technology-devoted California, shows how fast a standard can travel. Like concentric circles spreading from the epicentre in California, the new standard progresses through the States and beyond: “[b]y the end of the first month, there were thousands of requests from all over the world” (ibid. 240). What originally began as an extravagant PR campaign by one politician steadily develops into an expected code of conduct, a standard all politicians are expected to comply with. And the number of those wanting to join the network continues to grow. As the text elaborates, “[b]y the end of the fifth week, there were 16,188 elected officials, from Lincoln to Lahore, who had gone completely clear, and the waiting list was growing” (ibid. 241). In the end, the idea has found support on both sides of the Atlantic, in fact, in cultures as different as the United States (Lincoln) and Pakistan (Lahore), spanning the globe and dominating international discourse.

As the novel demonstrates, Santos’ voluntary decision, once universally accepted, limits the range of actions for others considerably, until democratically elected representatives literally run out of options other than to comply with the standard:

The pressure on those who hadn’t gone transparent went from polite to oppressive. The question, from pundits and constituents, was obvious and loud: If you aren’t transparent, what are you hiding? Though some citizens and commentators objected on grounds of privacy, asserting that government, at virtually every level, had always needed to do some things in private for the sake of security and efficiency, the momentum crushed all such arguments and the progression continued. If you weren’t operating in the light of day, what were you doing in the shadows? (ibid. 241)

While politicians are formally free to accept the standard (there is no one actively forcing them to do so), their choice ultimately becomes an involuntary one. Faced with aggression from both “pundits and constituents,” who disregard questions of security and privacy and suspect their representatives of being entangled with shady business practices like nepotism and corruption, the representatives in question are required either to accept the standard or to face the end of their political career in the next vote. The text makes it blatantly clear that voluntariness constitutes a necessary characteristic in order to speak of ‘freedom.’

As Timothy W. Galow writes, the system thrives on the acceptance of its measures, illustrating “the thin line between choice and coercion in contemporary consumer society” (124). There is a further clear example in the novel of how network standards emerge from initially free and voluntary choices, which eventually morph into a systemic form of coercion that eliminates alternatives options for action. Juggling ideas on how to increase voter participation in general elections – theoretically, a desirable and understandable wish in democratic societies – the Circle’s think tank suggests to simplify the voting process by expanding existing possibilities for voting online, culminating in the proposal that “your Circle profile automatically registered you to vote” (TC 388, emphasis in the original). Although conducting elections with social media profiles already represents a big leap for democratic structures, Mae takes this idea one step further and again provides an example for how voluntary decisions can create an unsurpassable standard. Referring to those “83 percent of the voting-age Americans” (ibid. 391) who have already logged into the Circle network, Mae poses the following question: “[s]o why not require every voting-age citizen to have a Circle account” (ibid., emphasis in the original)? Justifying her proposal by commenting on its feasibility due to the superior technology provided by the Circle, Mae soon wins over the board.2 The genesis of this standard is comparable to the aforementioned camera example. Initially, thousands of individuals decided to join the network voluntarily, hoping for easy ways to communicate online. This group of people grows exponentially. The more people join the network, the more disadvantageous non-membership becomes. As David Grewal explains, “the incentives to switch onto a dominant network become greater, the alternatives, even if freely available, become even less attractive” (122). Being a Circler does not only provide direct advantages from this point onwards, not being a Circler has direct negative consequences for those abstaining from the network. However, Mae’s proposal turns the options into a standard: from now on, people need a Circle account to vote. The decision to accept a standard is thus no longer voluntary. Although formally free, non-Circlers have run out of alternatives, and are now compelled to join the network – not necessarily hoping for social, economic, or political advantages, but to secure their status quo.

The Circle is deeply committed to the depiction of network power on the levels of both content and discourse. To demonstrate how power must not be reduced to coercive mechanisms, the novel has embraced a specific style. Dialogue dominates in The Circle, often extending over one or two pages without explanatory prose or even inquit formulas. This particular style aligns The Circle within the long tradition of eutopian writing. Works like More’s Utopia for instance are famous for their use of Socratic dialogues (cf. Seeber, Selbstkritik 16): one character asks a question on the structure of society, another provides answers. As Northrop Frye summarises, the eutopian “story is made up largely of a Socratic dialogue between guide and narrator, in which the narrator asks questions or thinks up objections and the guide answers them” (“Utopias” 324). The evolving dialogue creates the impression of co-authoring the world: both interviewer and interviewee are equally immersed in the literary construction and presentation of the alternative society. This egalitarian communication mirrors the egalitarian principles guiding the very same society from which the discussion arises. On the discursive level, as on the content level, then, eutopia arises as democratic project from communal efforts.

Dialogue in The Circle serves two purposes in particular, apart from locating the novel within the utopian canon. Mostly, it has an explanatory and an illustrative function, introducing both the reader and Mae to the Circle. Describing the “core beliefs here at the company,” for instance, Mae’s supervisor Dan explains the Circlers’ ideology to both his intra- and his extradiegetic audience:

Mae, now that you’re aboard, I wanted to get across some of the core beliefs here at the company. And chief among them is that just as important as the work we do here—and that work is very important—we want to make sure that you can be a human being here, too. […] And making sure this is a place where our humanity is respected, where our opinions are dignified, where our voices are heard—this is as important as any revenue, any stock price, any endeavor undertaken here. Does that sound corny? (TC 47)

Ending his speech with an open question, Dan invites Mae to react to his world-making, asking her for her acceptance and approval. Elaborating on the eutopian ideals, Dan also seeks to convince the readers, who he addresses indirectly. Continuing to talk to Mae and the reader in dialogical form – a typical mechanism of eutopia (cf. Baccolini, “Womb” 293) – Dan invites both Mae and the reader to become part of the Circle’s in-group.

Secondly, the excessive use of dialogue constitutes an investigation into network thinking, illuminating the co-dependency of individuals. Often citing entire dialogues between Mae and fellow Circlers, the novel rarely skips or summarises a conversation, but renders it accessible in its entirety. This way, readers will soon notice a particular speech pattern employed by all Circle employees. They insert leading questions, i.e. questions that already suggest the appropriate answer, after each relevant chunk of information: “That sound good” (TC 49)?, “Does that make sense” (ibid. 96)? or “Does that sound right” (ibid. 177)? and “[D]o you see the benefit in this” (ibid. 183)? They thus extract consent or rejection from their dialogue partner, creating the illusion of a dialogue on equal terms. Eamon Bailey employs this technique, too, when he talks to Mae about her ‘stealing’ a kayak from the shop she usually goes to – a crime barely worthy of the name for she is friends with the owner and had the intention of returning it:

He smiled almost imperceptibly and moved on. ‘Mae, let me ask you a question. Would you have behaved differently if you’d known about the SeeChange cameras at the marina?’

‘Yes.’

Bailey nodded empathetically. ‘Okay. How?’

‘I wouldn’t have done what I did.’

‘And why not?’

‘Because I would have been caught.’

Bailey tilted his head. ‘Is that all?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t want anyone seeing me do that. It wasn’t right.’ (ibid. 282)

Bailey’s use of leading questions is conspicuous, structuring the course of the dialogue by extracting the answers he wants to hear. By asking open questions such as “How?” and “Is that all?,” Bailey leads Mae to give the suggested replies, while simultaneously maintaining a pretence of democracy, as Mae’s consent is not staged. On the contrary, although nudged in a certain direction, Mae is always in control of herself and her words. Bailey’s rhetorical strategy of question and answer fulfils the criteria of freedom yet flaunts the maxim of voluntariness. Mae is not compelled to give these answers, so she is formally free, yet she is not at liberty to steer the debate and is therefore involuntarily restricted in her options. When leaving both the conversation and the stage, Mae marvels proudly if she had “really thought of all that herself” (ibid. 305)? Stylistically, the novel elaborates on the complex mechanisms of systemic power that originates from the individual but in turn compromises the range of the individual’s possible actions.

The Circle is void of any identifiable source of oppression, a gravitational centre of moral authority and responsibility (cf. Bernard). There is no Mustapha Mond, no O’Brien, no D-503 to force people to conform. There is no one “in a room somewhere, watching you, planning world domination” (TC 261). When Mercer complains to Mae about the Circle’s new shopping device, the following exchange ensues:

‘And so what? You don’t want Charmin to know how much of their toilet paper you’re using? Is Charmin oppressing you in some significant way?’

‘No, Mae, it’s different. That would be easier to understand. Here, though, there are no oppressors. No one’s forcing you do this. You willingly tie yourself to these leashes.’ (ibid. 262)

Although Mercer ignores the systemic aspects of network power, blaming the individual alone for adopting a certain standard (“tie [themselves] to these leashes”), he is correct in abandoning the conceptual paths of thinking in terms of juridico-political power. Ultimately, at least at the beginning when network standards are about to emerge, the Circlers, and by extension the users of the Circle, are themselves responsible for the way they handle their decisions, data, and information. Attacked by Mae asking if “Charmin oppress[es him] in some significant way,” Mercer has enough foresight to reject her ludicrous proposal, emphasising that this form of power is not the subject of their debate: it is about Mae’s passive acceptance and active support.

Peter Marks locates The Circle’s innovative potential in this narrative twist: “subverting generic codes by having a protagonist who complies through most of the text and then does not rebel at the end gives The Circle a knowing freshness and vitality that encourages interpretive creativity” (166). Unlike Winston Smith or John the Savage, Mae is not a typical dystopian protagonist, because she rejects the role of the rebellious dissident. Giving the readers insights into her mindset, Mae argues as follows:

The Circle had 90 percent of the search market. Eighty-eight percent of the free-mail market, 92 percent of text servicing. That was, in her perspective, a simple testament to their making and delivering the best product. It seemed insane to punish the company for its efficiency, for its attention to detail. For succeeding. (TC 174f., my emphasis)

Initially, the Circle’s monopoly might have grown out of free and voluntary decisions, as Mae argues. There is a good chance that the company did indeed provide the “best product.” However, Mae again ignores the power radiating from a standard once it has gained universal acceptance. At this stage, non-members are actively forced to adopt the Circle standard, which continues to grow in influence due to the continuous stream of new products and programmes devised by Mae and her fellow Circlers. As Kalden maintains, “[t]here used to be the option of opting out. But now that’s over” (ibid. 486). Therefore, “Mae Holland becomes complicit in the creation of the Circle’s dystopia” (Pignagnoli, “Surveillance” 153). The readers witness her integration into the Circle, rather than – as one might traditionally expect – the formation of an enlightened, critical individual ready to counteract dystopian reality.

Mercer, Mae’s ex-boyfriend, is a notable exception to the rebel-free world of The Circle. He can be identified as the only character even conceiving of rebellion, doing “what he can to stay off the grid” (Morais). Constructed as a contrast to all the Circlers, mostly by the work he does, Mercer is cast in the role of the authentic, back-to-basics outdoorsman. Making a living from selling antler chandeliers, he is connected to natural textures and materials, creating a contrast to the glass and steel associated with the Circle (cf. TC 1; 75). Refusing to join the Circle or to use any of its products and programmes, Mercer eventually renounces his relationship with Mae and her family and decides to move north “to the densest and most uninteresting forest I can find. I know that your cameras are mapping out these areas as they have mapped the Amazon, Antarctica, the Sahara, etc. But at least I’ll have a head start. And when the cameras come, I’ll keep going north” (ibid. 435). However, side-lined to the fringes of the narrative, his story is marginalised and ends abruptly with his death. Moreover, Mercer’s rebellion is staged not as an active attempt to challenge the status quo, but a desperate escape away from civilisation. Settling in the wilderness of North America, Mercer decides to live in a small hut almost reminiscent of the cabin of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854). Yet while the “latter kept elements of his rapacious world at bay […], the former falls victim to a more all-consuming predator” (Masterson 737). Mercer’s fatal error is to think of power in geographical terms. Under the illusion that power is always bound spatially, a further remnant of thinking in the juridico-political mode of power, Mercer hopes to evade the Circle by withdrawing north. Despite his awareness that the Circle has already “mapped the Amazon, Antarctica, the Sahara,” arguably the remotest places on earth and all unfit for human habitation, Mercer hopes to find a space outside the range of network power. Convinced he will profit from “a head start,” Mercer must soon bury his illusion; as the object of a global search by Mae, who wants to prove the effectiveness of their SoulSearch programmes, Mercer’s refuge is invaded within “[n]ine minutes, 24 seconds” (TC 459). The combined efforts of “14,028,981” (ibid. 452) Circlers cause him to run for his car, and eventually drive off a bridge in the desperate attempt to elude the company.

Strangely enough, it is the Circle’s founder who manages to withdraw from the system for the longest time. Giving out fake names, Kalden, aka Ty Gospodinov, achieves opacity for most of the novel, due to his understanding of how the Circle operates. Other than Mercer, who wastes his life in the attempt to physically evade the Circle, Kalden does not even try to abscond, enjoying the benefits of living in relative comfort on the campus. His strategy of rebellion relies not on physical but on virtual absence. When looking online for him, Mae tried

a preliminary search in the company directory, and found no Kaldens. She tried Kaldan, Kaldin, Khalden. Nothing. Maybe she’d misspelled or misheard it? She could have done more surgical search if she’d known what department he was in, what part of campus he might occupy, but she knew nothing. (ibid. 170)

The IT Whizz-Kid becomes a phantom with no name and, more importantly, with no internet history, and thus no network membership. Mae’s attempts to get hold of him are fruitless. Even ‘zinging’ about him (the Circle version of ‘tweeting’ and posting on Instagram), by tapping the swarm intelligence of the Circle – a strategy that yields spectacular results in Mercer’s case – is futile: “She put out a few all-company zings, looking for a Kalden, careful not to look desperate. But she got no response” (ibid. 171). The moment initiating Kalden’s demise is the moment he starts to combat network power. He approaches Mae, hoping to convince her to stop the Circle: “I didn’t picture a world where Circle membership was mandatory, where all government and all life was channeled through one network” (ibid. 485). Unable to contain the forces he has unleashed, Kalden tries to persuade Mae to prevent the Completion of the Circle (the monopoly of the Circle), erroneously believing that Mae would agree with his opinion:

‘We’re closing the circle around everyone—it’s a totalitarian nightmare.’

‘And it’s my fault?’

‘No, no. Not at all. But you’re now the ambassador. You’re the face of it. The benign, friendly face of it all.’ (ibid. 486)

Kalden’s attempt to stop the Circle from completing, however, backfires. Ultimately, he also demonstrates that he has not understood the mechanism behind network power, hence his plan to rebrand the eutopian Circle as totalitarian; simply launching a new marketing campaign with Mae’s help proves naïve and futile. The Circle’s power is based on the free and (in)voluntary decisions made by millions of individuals, who cannot revoke their approval even if told to do so.

Both Mercer’s and Kalden’s rebellions fail before they have even started. Therefore, Roman Halfmann argues that their attempts can barely be taken seriously as truly wholehearted plans to change the system but that they remain “foolishly staged clichés” never meant to fulfil the genre criteria of rebellion in the first place (cf. 276, own translation). Instead, The Circle is a decidedly contemporary dystopia in which, according to Gregory Claeys, “the revolutionary overthrow of the system, for either better or worse, is rarely ever encountered” (History 495). Mercer’s death/suicide is the only way to opt out of the system (cf. Gellai 302) – a decidedly pessimistic and bleak outlook for those uncomfortable with corpocratic power. The text does not offer an escapist reading, depicting eutopian enclaves that have so far resisted the Circle’s hegemony. Unlike Nineteen Eighty-Four and its forest enclave, Brave New World and its Indian reservation, or We and the forest behind the wall, The Circle does not provide relief in the form of untouched remote eutopian islands since – other than the juridico-political form of power, which rests considerably on the influence of one individual over a certain territory – network power is systemic in nature and bound to individuals, rather than soil. One way or another, “every character is affected by the company” (Lehnen 99): Annie and Mae are defined by their position within the Circle, Mercer and Mae’s parents by their opposition to it. This, however, has nothing to do with their actual spatial position, although Mae comes to spend an increasing amount of her free time on campus. The Circle is where the characters are – wherever that might be.

Having eradicated physical boundaries, the company ultimately aims at removing also psychological and mental borders: certain that she has averted ‘apocalypse’ in the form of Kalden’s attempt to destroy the Circle, Mae is already devising the next moves. As the company has conquered all of the earth and with nowhere left to go, she is annoyed to not be able to know Annie’s thoughts after the latter has fallen into a coma due to stress and exhaustion:

Mae felt a twinge of envy. She wondered what Annie was thinking. Doctors had said that she was likely dreaming; they’d been measuring steady brain activity during the coma, but what precisely was happening in her mind was unknown to all, and Mae couldn’t help feeling some annoyance about this. There was a monitor visible from where Mae sat, a real-time picture of Annie’s mind, bursts of color appearing periodically, implying that extraordinary things were happening in there. But what was she thinking? (TC 496)

Despite all the technology and power accumulated by the company, the “bursts of color appearing periodically” evade translation, leaving Mae frustrated and annoyed: “but what was she thinking?” Eager to colonise the human mind itself, which has been shielded off by the materialism of the human body to date (Mae marvelled “at the distance this flesh put between them,” ibid. 497), Mae’s next project is revealed to be a programme to read minds and thoughts. There truly is “no escaping the Circle” (J. Winter). Thus, it is only a matter of time until the final frontier will fall.