"A World of Perpetual Light": Dave Eggers's The Circle and Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment

Abstract:This essay suggests a reading of Dave Eggers's 2013 novel The Circle as a critique of modernity. It argues that Eggers's dystopian novel can be read as an artistic take on Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's philosophical critique of Enlightenment ideology, as put forward most prominently in their Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944/47). The puzzling tendency of "enlightened," rationally-minded individuals to subject themselves to totalitarian and dehumanizing systems is identified as a common concern of the Frankfurt School theorists and of Eggers's dystopia. The Circle, in this perspective, is read as a critical study of the twenty-first-century's version of Enlightenment ideology, and of the social mechanisms that lead to a state of "voluntary servitude." By means of a theory-informed analysis of the novel's principal thematic concerns, it is demonstrated that the world constructed by Eggers exhibits central traits associated with an enlightened society by Horkheimer and Adorno, and it is shown how the novel embeds its depiction of the self-destructive tendencies of this society in a discussion of social media and digital technology. This leads, eventually, to a reconsideration of the intellectual significance of The Circle.