Infernal Algorithms: Han Song's 'Hospital' Trilogy Explores Data Surveillance and Necropolitics

I Exist Only Because I Suffer: Data Surveillance and Necropolitics in Han Song’s Hospital Trilogy

The esteemed science fiction author, Han Song, has penned a chilling trilogy titled Hospital, which was published between 2016 and 2018 in China. This work, hled as one of the most prominent contributions to contemporary Chinese science fiction literature, is now being made accessible to English-speaking audiences through Michael Berry's translation released in January 2023.

delves into the nature of the distressing state that does not signal an imminent threat of mortality but rather signifies patients' inability to die within a futuristic hospital setting. Through processes of datafication and digitalization, Han Song's characters are transformed into streams of algorithmic codes and reduced to mere digital profiles for collection, storage, and re-accessibility. These 'profiles', surprisingly enough, develop an autonomous agency that outstrips the patients themselves as targets of biopolitics. This transformation marks a significant ontological shift, undermining autonomy while subjectifying the meta-being of patients into artificial versions of their own existence.

It is argued that this profound shift in perspective heralds new methodologies for governing and commodifying populations under a discourse echoing Michel Foucault's concept of pator ergo sum I suffer, therefore I am. This suggests an advancement in governmentality as well as epistemology and economic systems, highlighting the changing ways through which societies exert control over their members based on vulnerability and suffering.

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The Modern Chinese Literature and Culture journal is a peer-reviewed academic publication dedicated to exploring literature and cultural phenomena such as film, drama, art, dance, performance, architecture, media history, print culture, regional trs, among others. It covers China comprehensively including Twan and Hong Kong but transcs traditional boundaries of geography, ethnicity, or language.

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