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331303

Surveillance Capitalism and the Critique of Social Media in Gary Shteyngart’s <i>Super Sad True Love Story</i> (2010)

Article

Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

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Abstract

This study seeks to explore speculative fiction's response to the growth and influence of surveillance capitalism on human values and social relations through a case study of Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story (2010). Prompted by unprecedented advancements in technology, surveillance capitalism is a novel and worrying economic system that underpins contemporary digital culture and capitalizes on the manipulation of human users' data for purposes of power and profit-making. Following an interdisciplinary approach, the study relies primarily on the theory of surveillance capitalism articulated by the American economist Shoshana Zuboff in 2019. It seeks to provide an in-depth analysis of the relationship between dataveillance and new social media in Shteyngart's novel and the influence of this syndicate on the digitization of human identity and social relations under surveillance capitalism. Employing Zuboff's concept of ‘instrumentarianism', it further investigates how surveillance capitalism functions through instrumentarian power to control human behavior and instrumentalize social relations. The study ultimately concludes that there are eerie similarities between the observations of Zuboff and the fictional society created by Shteyngart as they both work to demystify and argue for resistance to surveillance capitalism which has transformed the way in which humans perceive their identities and the world surrounding them.

DOI

10.21608/ttaip.2023.331303

Keywords

surveillance capitalism, digital culture, new social media, Zuboff, Shteyngart

Authors

First Name

Muhammad

Last Name

‘Aql

MiddleName

Yousri

Affiliation

Department of English, Faculty of Al-Alsun, Kafrelsheikh University, Egypt.

Email

muhammad.yousry87@gmail.com

City

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Orcid

-

Volume

5

Article Issue

1

Related Issue

44866

Issue Date

2023-12-01

Receive Date

2023-05-16

Publish Date

2023-12-01

Page Start

46

Page End

61

Print ISSN

2636-4069

Online ISSN

2735-3451

Link

https://ttaip.journals.ekb.eg/article_331303.html

Detail API

https://ttaip.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=331303

Order

331,303

Type

Original Article

Type Code

1,357

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Textual Turnings: An International Peer-Reviewed Journal in English Studies

Publication Link

https://ttaip.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Surveillance Capitalism and the Critique of Social Media in Gary Shteyngart’s <i>Super Sad True Love Story</i> (2010)

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Type

Article

Created At

26 Dec 2024