Supervision Without Vision: Post-Foucauldian Surveillance in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

Ray Bradbury, in his most significant and popular work, Fahrenheit 451, paints a futuristic, dystopian, and dysfunctional society in which possessing and reading books and any exercise of thought are illegal. Firemen, in the story, burn all books in order to prevent proliferation of independent thinking. Fahrenheit 451 uses the conventions of science fiction to illustrate the deception of government through censorship for suppressing thought. The novel's general atmosphere of suppression, alienation, fear, anxiety, and mistrust is associated with a surveillance society. This study tries to shed light on both Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian theories of surveillance in the story. Private and public institutions in the story are monitored via disciplinary techniques. By becoming 'docile' bodies, citizens lose their individuality. However, the novel also depicts interference of electronic technology in subjugating individuals in digital, hyperreal world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]