About the Author

Betiel Wasihun

E-Mail: betiel.wasihun@tu-berlin.de

Betiel Wasihun has recently joined the Institute of Philosophy, Literary Studies, History of Science and Technology after being awarded an IPODI-Marie Curie Fellowship. Before coming to the TU Berlin, she was a Montgomery-DAAD Fellow and Lecturer in Modern German Literature at the University of Oxford. She holds an M.A. (2005) and PhD (2009) in German Studies from the University of Heidelberg and was also a Research and Teaching Fellow at the German Department of Yale University during her graduate studies (2006–2008). In 2010 she published a monograph on the phenomenon of competition in selected texts by Kafka, R. Walser, and Beckett, with a primary focus on Kafka (Heidelberg: Winter). In 2013 she co-edited the volume Playing False: Representations of Betrayal (Oxford: Lang). Her current project examines how technologies and theories of surveillance inform the narrative situations in contemporary literature.

Contributions by Author: Betiel Wasihun

Issue 6
teaser-image_issue6_surveillance-cultures
surveillance
Dave Eggers
privacy
shame
The Circle
transparency

Surveillance and Shame in Dave Eggers’s The Circle

Surveillance “has widely been theorized to induce emotions or ‘cultures of emotion.’” [1] It has been observed that surveillance creates cultures of anxiety, fear and suspicion. [2] One just has to think of security surveillance at airports that can trigger anxiety. [3] “Surveilled space alters human experience” — and therefore the emotions involved. [4] Surveillance, however, has hardly been examined in the context of other emotions. […]