Visibility Is a Trap? Dimensions of Surveillance and Its Effects on Culture Today

Within the context of the fluidity of our culture today, this article presents a critique of the connection between modernity and surveillance in contemporary critical theory, literature, and other media. The analysis of George Orwell’s 1984, Dave Eggers’s The Circle, and Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island illustrates the shift from a panoptic kind of surveillance (and modernity) to a liquid kind, and shows dimensions that offer alternative vistas to dark narratives.