Exposing Byung-Chul Han’s digital panopticon in Yoon Ha Lee’s ‘The Erasure Game’

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant influence on society and the perception of the world. Literary texts allow us to evaluate the perceptions of these changes. Lee’s short story ‘The Erasure Game’ (2020) exemplifies the potential dangers of deep-reaching and fast-expanding digitalization, as was the case during the pandemic. The effects of the digitalization process on the power relation system in Lee’s short story (set in an apparently utopian future) can be best analyzed through the theoretical lens of bio- and psychopolitics. While Foucault’s notion of biopower still offers the chance to oppose surveillance, Han’s psychopolitical concept of the ‘Digital Panopticon’ provides a comprehensive framework to understand how new digital surveillance strategies emerge by taking advantage of the voluntary exposure of the individuals’ most intimate sphere. This paper reveals the threat that unlimited and uncontrolled digitalization may pose for an individual’s privacy, and the exposure to political control this enables.