Humanism in Crisis: Ironizing Panopticism and Biopower in W. H. Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen”

Abstract

This article examines as to how humanism is in crisis in modern times caused by the growing individualism, materialism, conformism, manipulation and the primacy of technology in human life. Invoking the Agambenian idea of “biopower”, Foucauldian concept of “panopticon” and the critical concept, “modernist irony”, this paper argues that the mentioned poem uses irony to expose and criticize the modern states’ panoptical surveillance and biopolitical control of their own citizens. When the citizens are alive they are used as functional bodies to operate in accordance with the requirement to the bureaucratic institutions but after their death, they are simply reduced into numbers disregarding their specific human character traits such as love, self-awareness, consideration, creativity, reliability, spirituality, etc. It is in this sense, the claims and commitments of modern states doing things for social, political, economic, intellectual, emotional and spiritual well-being of citizens are mere illusion and deception.