ENGL 2706Y Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Yevgeny Zamyatin, Christopher Hitchens, Mass Surveillance
30 Mar 2016
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Document Summary
Both extrapolate from the present day (although pa goes a little further) Post-apocalyptic narratives: suspension of the rule of law; dissolution of the state; individual as self-sufficient, autonomous. Dystopian narratives: intensification of the rule of law; extension of state powers; individual as non-autonomous. Divisions of people into privileged and unprivileged groups. Hitchens: orwell"s was a house of horrors. He seemed to strain credulity because he posited a regime that would go to any lengths to own and possess history, to rewrite and construct it, and to inculcate it by means of coercion . Hitchens: bnw beckons toward a painless, amusement-sodden, and stress- free consensus . Technology as a tool of oppression: gait detectors; arphids. Little brother: near future with 1984 as the metafiction future suggested by the trajectory. How can you protect freedom by suspending the bill of rights? . Questioning it as an either or scenario. The point of terrorism is to terrify us.
