Over the past decades, the development of IoT (Internet of Things) has found its way into literary representations. Studies have focused on how individuals become “thinglike” or adopt characteristics similar to objects due to the vast network that spans across the globe. The question arises: does the interconnectivity of things exacerbate the “thinglikeness” of humans in a world increasingly digitalized, interconnected, and transparent? Drawing on Georg Lukács’ theory of reification, this paper aims to offer a fresh perspective on this ongoing debate by examining the portrayal of networking technology in American author Dave Eggers’ dystopian sci-fi The Circle (2013) and Chinese writer Ge Fei’s latest novel, Deng Chun Tai (《登春台》, 2024). Two novels are set in an American social networking company and an IoT company in Beijing, respectively. Published a decade apart, they offer potential for a comparative analysis insofar as they parallel the evolution of the internet’s capacity for connection. Both fictions depict the extensive influence of highly developed technology beyond their primary settings, hinting at a globalized system that revolves around the powerful corporations they spotlight. In view of Lukács’ notion of reification as human beings’ degradation into things within a capitalist society, this paper explores Eggers’ disclosure of how humans are subject to algorithm, leading to their being treated as mere puppets or robots under panoptic surveillance. As the title insinuates, the complete transparency of everyone’s identity and actions kinetically prefigures IoE (Internet of Everything) as an immense “circle” that confines rather than liberates. The idea of “circle” links this work to Ge Fei’s novel, albeit with a distinct interpretation in the latter. Deng Chun Tai looks into the efficient circulation of things that contrasts the frustrated circulation of affections in human relationships. Reweighting the centre of global technological advancement to present-day China, Ge Fei’s realism enacts a dialectical view of digitalized relationships in a socialist cultural backdrop. While the company in the novel benefits from its sophisticated online system for transporting goods, its employees and leaders seek a backflow to a less alienating life from the highly interconnected yet isolating society. Through the characters’ efforts to reconcile their past and aspirations, the writer underscores their desire to de-reify themselves by reconnecting with lost love, family bonds, and conventions. Resonating with The Circle, this work serves as an ongoing investigation of reification in a radically formulae-oriented world while also proposing potential solutions to de-reification. Currently, criticism of these two works is still extremely rare. This paper will not only add to existing scholarship but also contribute to the exploration of narratives about high-tech corporations as a unique genre that transcends both eastern and western contexts.

Abstract: As for the integration of Chinese and Western poetry, Jiang Weakshui and Bai Hua both have similar judgments: Zhang Zao is the most outstanding poet after Bian Zhilin. Kafka to Phyllis, as Zhang Zao's most accomplished suite of poems, is often ignored. The suite of poems sequentially explores three aspects: the impossible love for Phyllis, the inadequacy of words to express reality, and the paradox towards God, which correspond to the loss of the Holy Spirit, the Son, and the Father in the theological concept of the Trinity. The modern dilemma of finitude caused by the absence of the Absolute is also revealed. In Zhuangzi’s Qiwulun (Discussion on Making All Things Equal), adopted in the poem, the pursuit of the Absolute also falls into an infinite regress. In Kant's criticism of traditional metaphysics, the Absolute, as the foundation of finitude, becomes an invalid concept that the verstand cannot judge, and the classical theory like Christian Order and virtue theory lose their effects in modern times. The possible turning point may still lie in the Trinity: the Holy Spirit has two implications, which are not only about the Son’s love for the Father, but also about the people connected by that love. In Hegel's interpretation, this connection goes beyond the church and becomes the spirit of the people and of history: the Absolute is not isolated from the world, but is itself a self-identical structure for the development of history.

Kubla Khan, as a masterpiece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge born from creative imagination and inspiration from Purchas His Pilgrimage, boasts the mystical images and the harmonious extreme meets. With the title of an ancient Chinese monarch, the poem evokes an idealized vision of China—one that, however, was not unique to Coleridge but rather part of a broader phenomenon in British Romantic poetry. Scholars have discussed consistent idealized image of China in the Romantic poems from political and economic perspectives yet few have provided convincing and thorough arguments regarding the religious and cultural factors. Even among the limited studies, attention is often focused on the disparate personal expressions, primarily attributing the depiction of China to the function of opium, the economical medium which objectively “bridged” the East and the West.

However, the common historical and cultural background of the British Romantic poets constituted a more active and profound role in shaping this collective unconscious imagination, which naturally lends itself to an archetypal analysis of the idealized China. Within this framework, I would demonstrate how the Romantic ecological turning towards nature in the paradise, echoed with the Chuang-tse’s unity of heaven and human; how the spontaneous overflow of personal feeling combined with fancy and imagination, resonated Zen’s epiphany of truth and finally, how the prosperous and harmonious China as “the Other”, was imbued with the shadow of their own projections — a panacea for the chaos in Europe and the construction of Utopia. Meanwhile, their East complex also encompassed the dominion attempt through the illustration of female characters.

Through the archetypal lens, the British Romantic poets transformed China into an ever-lasting heterogeneous symbol within world literature. Thus, investigating the inner cultural motivation of the literary vision within their poems, not only bears relevance in understanding the image of China in the early periods, but also experiments a new avenue of inquiry into Euro-Asian encounters, which extends its far-reaching influences even till today.

This research on science fiction is concerned with the affective consumption that constructs a re-globalised community in a technological environment. Published in 2003, William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition is situated in a post-9/11 consumer society where capitalism’s expansion is intertwined with mass affectivity’s commodification. The protagonist, Cayce Pollard, is an advertising consultant for Blue Ant—a multinational advertising agency, and her work and daily life are surrounded by brands and alternative media that circulate globally. Based on Sarah Ahmed’s notion of ‘affective economies’ and the autonomist Post-Marxism view of ‘economic postmodernisation’, I argue that it is the branding and alternative media in the novel that catalyse consumer affect and community relations reimagine the technologically conditioned reconstruction of the global political and economic order in the aftermath of 9/11. I begin by focusing on the literary strategy of the novel’s emphasis on the country origin of commodity, analysing how the global landscape of branding characterises capital’s exploitation of the affect of the consumer and creates an affective marketplace dominated by the power of Western capital. Considering that the affective consumption of the footage exists in posters’ investment and sharing of emotions, feelings, and desires, as reflected in the novel, I then dissect whether the marginal digital community constructed by alternative media can resist the market logic of capital. I conclude that PR suggests that alternative media situates affective consumption within a framework of de-centralised exploitation, it nonetheless inscribes affective autonomy within the overarching control of corporate globalisation.