Pelevin and Unfreedom : Poetics, Politics, Metaphysics

Khagi shows that Pelevin uses provocative and imaginative prose to model different systems of unfreedom, vividly illustrating how the present world deploys hyper-commodification and technological manipulation to promote human degradation and social deadlock. Rather than rehearse Cold War-era platitudes about totalitarianism, Pelevin holds up a mirror to show how social control (now covert, yet far more efficient) masquerades as freedom and how eagerly we accept, even welcome, control under the techno-consumer system. He reflects on how commonplace discursive markers of freedom (like the free market) are in fact misleading and disempowering. Under this comfortably self-occluding bondage, the subject loses all power of self-determination, free will, and ethical judgment. In his work, Pelevin highlights the unprecedented subversion of human society by the techno-consumer machine. Yet, Khagi argues, however circumscribed and ironically qualified, he holds onto the emancipatory potential of ethics and even an emancipatory humanism.