Entanglements:
Journal of Posthumanities
E-ISSN: 3107-488X

(Article) ‐ Volume 2, Issue 2 (Open Issue)
Reconfiguring the Consumption of Digitalism and Human Subjectivity in Jennifer Egan's The Candy House (2022)
Authored By — Mandeep Singh & Anupama Vohra

Abstract

The unprecedented expansion of digitalism in the contemporary age explicitly manifests in the representation of the self, political and virtual environment, educational system and knowledge, cultural production, surveillance and datafication, communication and emotional life. Digital tools have become crucial to human existence and actively disrupt the traditional boundaries between offline and online interactions. As such, digitalism targets and influences the user behaviour in an automatic and pervasive manner. The word 'digitalism' refers to a 'digital land' that not only changes according to the production and reception of new narratives but also reconfigures the condition of human in the 'techno-cultural' realm owing to consumption of digital tools. In doing so, this article argues that the ill-considered consumption of digital tools incites user dependency on digitalism and uninterrupted engagement of human with digitalism fosters an obsessive reliance on digital platforms as Jennifer Egan projects in her novel The Candy House (2022). Through the technological apparatuses such as 'Mandala Cube,' 'Own Your Unconscious' and 'Collective Consciousness,' the novel demystifies the consumption of human subjectivity in a digital space. Drawing on theoretical insights from posthumanism and new materialism, this article illustrates the transformation of human in a world mediated by digitalism.

Keywords

Consumption of Human Subjectivity, Digitalism, Memory Externalisation, New Materialism, Posthumanism.

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