## <span class="censor">Data Subjects 2021 <br>// S02: The modern subject</span> <!--image for class--> <img src="https://i.imgur.com/7sX6o6T.png" width=40%> Pablo Velasco // Information Studies // [pablov.me](https://pablov.me) --- ## Plan for the day: * From periphery to centre: copernican turn and *Aufklärung* subject * Pastoral and state subject * Datalogical turn >The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning (Foucault 1988)<!--Truth, Power, Self: An Interview with Michel Foucault--> <!--readings: foucault subject and power and Krasmann--> --- **Ship of Theseus** Heraclitus/Plato (Cratylus 401d, Parmenides 139) <img src="http://trainbeyondthebox.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Theseus.jpg" width=40%> Identity metaphor: the wood planks of Theseus ship are progressively replaced. Is it the same ship? Hobbes adds: what if the original pieces of wood were used to construct a "second" boat? <!-- identity as body: planks, atoms, butterfly --> ---- <img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Descartes2.jpg/1200px-Descartes2.jpg" width=50%> | ---- ### In-dividual and Dualisms - Descartes Dualism: body & mind (proof of existence) - Berkeley Subjective idealism: reality is dependant on the minds of the subject - Locke Identity as consciousness: memory theory ---- <img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7b/Bartolomeu_Velho_1568.jpg/1200px-Bartolomeu_Velho_1568.jpg" width="90%"> <small>Ptolemaic representation (Bartolomeu Velho 1568)</small> ---- *emne, objekt, subjekt* "And no, don’t change the subject Cuz you’re my favorite subject My sweet, submissive subject My loyal, royal subject" <img src="https://i.imgur.com/XJ355Dq.jpg" width="50%"> <!-- Q -are you subjects of the queen?--> --- ??? --- ## Copernican turn  **Enlightenment**: reinforcement of the "subject" *sapere aude* <!--(however, not everyone is a subject, e.g. women and colonized people)--> <span class="censor">Sartre (1989)<!--"Existentialism is a humanism"-->: a human being is not a calliflower. Calliflowers do not confront the problem of being a calliflower, or decide how to live its life</span> ---- ## Pastoral state pastoral power: church → state * salvation -> welfare * multiplication of officials/institutions * **knowledge of man** <!-- kind of broken in current tech --> * global quantities / population * analytics / individual <!-- Q - examples: quantitative vs qualitative --> --- ### Subjectivity *how-to* (Foucault) * subjectivity as a process, not a substance or a state * 2 modes of objectivation that transform human beings into subjects: * a. to someone else * b. to their own identity * 3 modes of inquiry: ***Sciences*** (speaking subject by linguistics, productive subject by economics, etc), ***Dividing practices*** (categorizing and self-categorizing), and ***Human being* self-turning** into a subject * Modern era: creation of sciences of the subject (psychology, sociology, biology, etc) - Human being subject and object of their own knowledge - Fascism and Stalinism used ideas and devices of our political rationality <!--Q - what does this means, **making a subject an object**?? -(not a substance, but a form (of an active agent in the western world) - a "rational being" taking form and acting in the world, world being an object here) --> <!-- Q - do you think I have some **power** over you? why does this happens? *power only exercized on free subjects (power is shown in the 'lack' of action, it acts on the possible actions -> governmentality, *structure the field of action of others*) --> ---- ### How to observe "power" and subjectification? "Ontology of the present": identify the conditions of emergence of current forms, and how they are legitimized * Anti-authority struggles: <!--frame the former and this on corona situation--> * global * vs "effects of power" * immediate enemy (near unresolvable) * questions the "individual" status * against the privilege of knowledge * around the question *who are we?* <span class="censor">Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are (...) to liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state (Foucault 1982, 785)</span> <!-- Q - who is F talking to?--> --- ## Datalogical turn <!-- Q - church -> state -> now?--> - **disciplinary**: not supresses, but subjects bodies towards certain behaviours, skills, patterns, etc - **data** also "consitutes social relationships and subjectivities and **renders particular actions possible**" <!-- SEE definition on p. 15--> - back to periphery: increasing awareness that there are other actants, and humans are intrinsically bound to their environment >Where the distinction between inside and outside, system and environment, observer aand observed comes to be confused (Krasmann 2017, 17) ---- * Algorithms generate new forms of suspicion <span class="censor">we can hardly figure out (...) whether it is the state agencies or commercial companies that are invested in the processing of data (Krasmann 2017, 15)</span> * Visibility <span class="censor">we believe in the existence of a particular form of power, precisely because we cannot see it (Krasmann 2017, 14)</span> ---- *What's the image for the local surveillance agency?* <img src="https://i.imgur.com/0oTqDI3.jpg" width="49%"> <img src="https://i.imgur.com/hndgdkN.jpg" width="49%"> <!-- .slide: data-background-image="" data-background-size="100% auto"--> <style> .reveal{ font-family:mono; font-size: 25px; } .reveal .censor{ background:black; color:white; } .reveal .censorw{ background:white; color:black; } .reveal section img { border:none; } .reveal section left{ width:50%; } </style>