Under Our Eye: Margaret Atwood’s Variation on the Panopticon in The Heart Goes Last

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26485/ZRL/2020/63.1/6

Keywords:

Margaret Atwood, dystopian fiction, the Panopticon, surveillance, Jeremy Bentham, Michel Foucault

Abstract

In her dystopian dark comedy The Heart Goes Last (2015), Margaret Atwood openly refers to Jeremy Bentham’s concept of the Panopticon. The future world depicted in her novel is filled with violence and deprived of both human bonds and hope. Hence, being contained, monitored and — after Foucault — disciplined and punished appears to be the characters’ last resort. Surveillance tempts both sexes as it is politically correct and universal, and it does not privilege one group of people over the other.

The article discusses the dystopian vision of the near future as created by Atwood in her 2015 novel, with direct references to the conception of the Panopticon, both in its original meaning proposed by Bentham, and — more significantly — in Michel Foucault’s reading of this idea as a metaphor of the way western societies are organized.

References

Alter Alexandra (2015), Margaret Atwood, Digital Deep-Diver, Writes The Heart Goes Last, “The New York Times”, 27 Sept. 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/28/books/margaret-atwood-digital-deep-diver-writes-the-heart-goes-last.html [access: 7.07.2020].

Atwood Margaret (1996), The Handmaid’s Tale, Vintage, London.

— (2015a), The Heart Goes Last, Bloomsbury, London.

— (2015b), We Are Double-plus Unfree, “The Guardian”, https://www.theguardian.com/bo¬oks/2015/sep/18/margaret-atwood-we-are-double-plus-unfree [access: 7.07.2020].

Bentham Jeremy (1995),The Panopticon Writings, ed. Bozovic M., Verso, London.

Foucault Michel (1995), Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan, Vin¬tage Books, New York.

Harrison M. John (2015), The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood Review — Rewardingly Strange, “The Guardian”, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/23/the-heart¬-goes-last-margaret-atwood-review-novel [access: 7.07.2020].

Johnson Mat (2015), Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last, “The New York Times”, https:// www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/books/review/margaret-atwoods-the-heart-goes-last.html [access: 7.07.2020].

Keeler Emily M. (2015), Free Love and Free Will: Margaret Atwood on Her New Novel, “Na¬tionalpost.com”, https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/books/margaret-atwood-on-the-heart-goes-last [access: 7.07.2020].

Lyall Sarah (2015), Review: Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last Conjures a Kinky Dystopia, “The New York Times”, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/30/books/review-margaret-atwoods-the-heart-goes-last-conjures-a-kinky-dystopia.html [access: 7.07.2020].

Orwell George (1987), Nineteen Eighty-Four, Penguin Books, London.

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Published

2020-09-18

How to Cite

Kuźnicki, S. (2020). Under Our Eye: Margaret Atwood’s Variation on the Panopticon in The Heart Goes Last. Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich The Problems of Literary Genres, 63(1), 75–86. https://doi.org/10.26485/ZRL/2020/63.1/6