Stockholms universitet

Jonathan FosterDoktorand

Om mig

Doktorand i litteraturvetenskap vid Engelska institutionen.

Vänligen se min profil på engelska.

Publikationer

I urval från Stockholms universitets publikationsdatabas

  • "Organised Clairvoyance": Supranational Surveillance and Controlled Borderlessness in H. G. Wells's A Modern Utopia

    2022. Jonathan Foster. Zeitschrift für Anglistik and Amerikanistik 70 (2), 145-157

    Artikel

    In A Modern Utopia (1905), H. G. Wells prophesised that emergent technologies of personal identification such as fingerprinting and central registries would enable the dismantling of national borders. Situating Wells's novel as a literary expression of a period of experimentation in European mobility control at the turn of the twentieth century, this essay argues that Wells's ideas about controlled borderlessness were indeed highly prescient, anticipating the recent rise of supranational mobility control à la the EU's Schengen cooperation. If Wells's theorisation of mobility control was ahead of its time, then so was his suspenseful narrative about undocumented aliens in utopia fearfully navigating a supranational surveillance state. In this essay I emphasise the correspondences between Wells's delineation of controlled borderlessness and modern-day supranational mobility control, whilst also highlighting discrepancies and discordant notes in Wells's bureaucratic-technocratic utopian vision.

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