Eyes Everywhere: Ecological Migration and State Surveillance in the Age of Iron Man

Thejas Gigy Thomas¹ & Dr. Prasantha Kumar N.S.²

Research Scholar, Department of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore Tamil Nadu, India. Email: thejasgt@gmail.com. ORCID: 0000-0002-5603-9057. Corresponding author.

Assistant Professor (Senior), Department of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore – 632014, Tamil Nadu, India. E-mail: prasanthkumarns@vit.ac.in. ORCID: 0000-0002-7907-2423

 Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.05

Abstract

In today’s society, migrants/citizens are monitored and exploited. A comprehension of the complexity of surveillance and resistance to it is crucial to guarantee a more democratic community. Disciplinary societies (in the Foucauldian context) have moved beyond the panopticon’s ecologies. Today’s monitoring is reterritorialized. Surveillance, enabled by digitalization, can adapt to any room today, but with the constant change in spaces, simply monitoring human actions would be inadequate. It is necessary to monitor both behavior and geographical place. Surveillance is also increasingly being marketed. Products are now being sold on the basis of people’s private lives. This dual aspect of surveillance connected to “safety” and “company” is well suited to the neo-liberal agenda. But monitoring also needs the supervised to participate. The States and MNCs are in a challenging situation if and when the monitored resist surveillance. Efforts are still being made by the state and its technology to properly monitor ecological migrations. This study claims that it is ecological and migration surveillance that makes Iron Man a strong avenger. Yet there are several cases in which his surveillance is inefficient through the cinematic narrative. For those already oppressed and who resist surveillance, the study would investigate these moments as flashes of optimism. This study also attempts to enunciate some of the aspects derived from works by theoreticians like Gary Marx and David Lyon. With the collective will of surveillance, unethical monitoring of ecologies and migrations imposed on us, it can be resisted to a good extent.

 Keywords: Ecology, surveillance, migration, marvel, neoliberalism, iron man.