The Island as Clean Room: A Prospective Hermeneutic of Algorithmic Polarization in Lord of the Flies

Abstract

Contemporary democratic societies confront intensifying pressures from algorithmic fragmentation, affective polarization, and the erosion of deliberative norms. Existing theoretical frameworks, however, often treat symbolic order, technological mediation, and micro-sociological dynamics in isolation, limiting their capacity to explain how these dimensions converge in processes of democratic decay. This study aims to develops and operationalizes a framework of prospective literary hermeneutics that rereads William Golding's Lord of the Flies as a cognitive simulation of sociotechnical collapse, thereby challenging interpretations that confine the narrative to a deterministic allegory of innate human depravity. The analysis shows that the novel functions as a diagnostic "clean room" experiment that isolates the failure of a specifically WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) social order once its institutional supports are withdrawn. It demonstrates how the displacement of the deliberative "conch" by the affective "hunt" anticipates a structur al transition from programmed sociality to viral, high-arousal feedback loops, alongside the systematic production of epistemic violence against marginalized voices. The study concludes that literary narrative can operate as an early warning system for the post-institutional condition. Preserving democratic rationality therefore requires more than moral exhortation; it demands the deliberate redesign of interaction rituals and symbolic architectures capable of sustaining public discourse under algorithmic conditions.