ABSTRACT
This chapter posits the schizoid nondroid as a figurative concept connecting developments in environmental technologies, posthuman traumatic materialism, and contemporary surveillance capitalism. Schizoid nondroids are shown to consists of cognitive assemblages wielding surveillance capitalist powers, restricting cognizers’ freedom of participation and harboring the potential for trauma as bodies and networked technologies become intertwined. Through the analysis of two contemporary novels, Dave Egger’s dystopian satire The Circle (2013) and Malka Older’s science-fiction novel Infomocracy (2016), schizoid nondroids are revealed to extract data, labor, and compliance from their constituents in order to drive profits and make leaving the exploitative assemblages impossible. These fictions of surveillance capitalism are revealed to offer a fruitful starting point for considering the interfacing of bodies and technology, a central feature of the contemporary condition of living with environmental technologies.
