Identity Formation and Subjugation of Human Agency in Cyber Culture: A Study of Scott Westerfeld’s The Uglies

Abstract

Cyber culture is no longer a fantasy to be used for film-making. It is a reality that we are already living in the 21^st century That is why contemporary science fiction writers are reflecting upon the fears, challenges, apprehensions, threats, and anxieties that this culture is carrying in its train. They attempt to figure out how covert mechanisms are used to play with our essential humanness and how we are being given a docile identity by making us believe in an intransitive reality. This paper explores how the formation of identity of adolescents is used as a tool to check the free agency of the adolescents in the novel The Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. The study has used the critical realism theory per pounded by Roy Bhaskar and identity concepts given by McCollum, Crojour and Foucault as its analytical tools. The novel has been explored to investigate the use of uglies as an identity marker and the role of espoused ideas about the uglies that triggers the transformation of humans into posthumans. The critical evaluation of this novel has exposed the independent mechanisms such as concepts and notions of beauty in the cyber culture and their role in the production of an intransitive knowledge for the people of cyber culture.  This analysis has enumerated the effects of cosmetic surgeries on the human body and vicissitudes they encounter within themselves as a result of body transformation.  The examination of The Uglies has enabled us to understand the power structures of the cyber culture society by applying Foucault’s theory of docile body. The close investigation of the novel has revealed that the imposed identity stands as a shift from individuality and free agency to conformity and sameness. This endorses the paper’s assertion that powerful structures contrive the desired identity of common people by exploiting the independent mechanisms. The research has concluded that the empirical reality in the selected novel is taken as real and intransitive. In order to create that empirical reality, electronic media, education, and social media have been very shrewdly deployed by the political regimes controlling the societies. The free agency is achieved when one encounters the other and challenges the conformity.