A New Hegemonic Hope: Daemonic Agency in the Techno-Thriller Novels of Daniel Suarez

Abstract

The article reflects on how contemporary science fiction has initiated a paradigmatic shift in the conceptualization of hegemonic force. Focussing on the figure of the Daemon depicted in two recent techno-thriller novels – Daemon (2009) et Freedom (2010) by American author Daniel Suarez – I show how the pervasive conceptions surrounding the agency of modern technology that we find in the late writings of Martin Heidegger are confronted in twenty-first century narratives that question the way we conceptualize the hegemonic directing of human consciousness by re-examining the figures of Ancient Greco-Roman thought. In the article, I pay particular attention to how what I call the “daemonic mobility” of human thought that we find in the writings of the Neo-Platonist Apuleius is eliminated by Augustine in his devising (in City of God and his other writings) of a permanent locus of existential consciousness, and how this contributes to Heidegger’s understanding of the essence of technology as the “coming to presence of art”. By re-investing the figure of the daemon and the mobility of human thought, Suarez narratives allow us to renew our understanding of the nature of this poeisis.