ALGORITHMIC IDENTITY AND DIGITAL SURVEILLANCE IN LAUREN BEUKES’ BRIDGE (2023): A DISTANT READING APPROACH

Authors

  • Muhammad Rizwan MPhil English Scholar, Department of English,Gomal University D.I.Khan Author
  • Saba Arooj Lecturer English,Department of English,Thal University Bhakkar. (Email: sbaarooj100@gmail.com) Laraib: Author
  • Nayab Kanwal BS English,Department of English,Rawalpindi Women University Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.63878/jalt1025

Abstract

This paper examines how algorithmic identity is built and the presence of digital surveillance in Lauren Beukes speculative novel Bridge (2023) with the help of the posthumanist theory and surveillance capitalism, utilizing the approach of Franco Moretti (2005) to reading at a distance. A multiverse story is followed in Bridge using a neural apparatus known as the dreamworm, the novel offers an account of fragmented identities, memory intrusion, and multiveral doubles, all of which are heavily tied to the contemporary anxiety of the datafied identity and algorithmic control.

This study does not depend on the conventional close reading methodology but employs a computational approach to literature based on digital humanities applications such as Voyant Tools, AntConc, Stylo (R), and CATMA. Through these tools, it was possible to identify thematic and linguistics patterns in the text. Analysis of the lexical frequency and collocation revealed some common motifs as version, glitch, mirror, and watching, indicating that there is the issue of algorithmic fragmentation and surveillance. According to the posthuman ideas about the nomadic subject and the fragmented self, stylistic difference in narrative threads was used to show tonal, syntactic, and personal change. CATMA Tag-based markup also demonstrated the structural embedding of the emotional loop and memory distortion in parallel universes, as an example of how identity is built, reproduced, and commercialized in the multiversal system of the novel.

These results indicate Bridge as a speculative fiction as well as a formal deconstruction of algorithmic determinism, showing how the speculative fiction can parody and criticize the systems establishing digital subjectivity. In the end, this paper contributes to the discussion of distant reading as an archaeology of the impacts of algorithmic and posthuman conditions not only in the analysis of texts that are already products of those very conditions and in turn productive of them.

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Published

2025-07-21