Volume XV, Issue I, May 2026 - October 2026

ISSN 2319-8281

Approved by UGC and enlisted in the UGC-CARE List in Arts and Humanities section.

A Refereed (peer-reviewed) Bi-Annual National Research Journal of English Literature/Assamese/Literature/Folklore/Culture

Members of Advisory Body

Volume XV, Issue I

• Dr. Nandini Sahu, Vice Chancellor, Hindi University (West Bengal) & former Professor of English, SOH, IGNOU
• Dr. Gayatree Bhattacharyya, Former Professor, Dept. of English, University of Gauhati
• Dr. Dwijen Sharma, Professor, Dept. of English, North Eastern Hill University (Tura Campus)
• Dr. Bibhash Choudhury, Professor, Dept. of English, University of Gauhati
• Dr. Dayananda Pathak, Former Principal, Pragjyotish College, Guwahati
• Dr. Kalikinkar Pattanayak, Former Associate Professor in English, Khallikote University (Odisha)
• Dr. Anway Mukhopadhyaya, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT-Kharagpur

Members of the Editorial Body

Volume XV, Issue I

• Dr. Rabi Narayan Samantaray, Dept. of English, Aeronautics College, Berhampur University
• Dr. Jayanta Madhab Tamuli, Dept. of English, M.S.S Vishwavidyalaya
• Dr. Premila Swamy D, Regional Director, IGNOU Regional Centre, Kohima, Nagaland
• Dr. Pranjal Sharma Bashishtha, Dept. of Assamese, Gauhati University, Assam

Editorial

SOCIETY, VALUES AND LITERATURE IN THE TECHNOCRATIC AGE

People today are seldom naturally garrulous in communal gatherings; they rarely open up to one another, as though an isolationist dynamic were quietly at work. The information age is deeply intertwined with global capitalism. We live today in a highly digitized society;the spaces of our lives seem increasingly appropriated by this digital and AI-driven age. Our life is one of rigid schedules. No wonder then that the physical world no longer attracts or educates us as it once did. While it foregrounds the potentials of knowledge work and meritocracy, it often turns away from emotional values. Humanity thus finds itself in an extraordinary existential condition. The question arises: is contemporary literature adequately equipped to engage with these singular circumstances?

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (2017) by Gail Honeyman may be read as a testament to the emotional fragmentation and social alienation characteristic of our time. Similarly, Michel Houellebecq’s Annihilation (2022) offers insight into the new existential conditions to which individuals are exposed in a technocratic world. Significantly, both these novels also uphold in their own ways the power of love and interconnected relationships. The nature of solitude and alienation in these works differs substantially from the existential crises depicted in the novels of Camus, and it cannot be fully captured by conventional portrayals of urban alienation. Rather, this is a solitude shaped by a hyperlinked age - one that thrives within a society struggling to cope with the singularities of its own transformation.

Literature, among its many functions, brings emerging realities to the attention of philosophers; it must therefore undertake an incisive exploration of this condition. Diagnosis, however, cannot remain confined to the externally observable realities alone. If the fragmentation of social structures leads to alienation or even social paranoia, literature can illuminate the inner dimensions of these phenomena, thereby heightening readers’ sensibilities.

Our capacity for socio-emotional resilience appears to be one of the greatest casualties of this postmodern condition. Literature must not only represent this reality but also persist in experimentationseeking to understand these maladies and to imagine possible futures shaped by them. This is a crucial moment for humanity; consequently, the use of parody, pastiche, and allusion must be guided by renewed purpose. Intertextual elements should foreground the irony of our time in its fullest intensity.

As the space of the individual mind undergoes transformation, so too does the public sphere. In this age of globalization, we confront three dominant forces: displacement, isolation, and dehumanization. Literature offers visions into our evolving selves, making visible what might otherwise remain obscure. At times, it also embodies our emotional responses to the conditions imposed upon us.

Derek Thompson has rightly observed in an article published in The Atlantic (February 2025): “although technology does not have values of its own, its adoption can create values.” - It is precisely this creation of values, based on human experience, that literature must urgently strive to articulate. #