“ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN”: SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM, INTRA-ACTION, AND POSTHUMAN SUBJECTIVITY IN DAVE EGGERS’ THE CIRCLE

Abstract

In the post digital moment, the ever-present computational infrastructures even intrude on humane experience by extracting and anticipating data and modulating algorithms, perpetually. This article aims to establish that The Circle (2013) by Dave Eggers is a posthuman human formation that is created as a radical immanence and an intra-active entanglement, as an architecture of instrumentarian. The study uses a theoretical framework that includes: Zuboff's (2019) theory on surveillance capitalism, Barad's (2007) concept of intra-action, Bennett's (2010) concept of ‘vivid matter’ and Alaimo's (2010) theory of transcorporeality. Thematically, it combines Braun and Clarke (2006)'s thematic analysis and close reading, while also making use of digital humanities tools (both Voyant and AntConc) to map the trajectory of processes and ways of ‘datafication’ the material, as well as processes and ways of ‘behavioural modulation' and ‘entanglement of the socio-technical'. The analysis shows that there is not only more than a merely intuitive sense in which thinking with instrumentarian architectures imparts a value to the data, but also a constructive sense, when thinking with instrumentarian architectures constitutes value-producing possibilities that remain immanent in the very structure of the instrumentarium.