## <span class="censor">Data Subjects 2022 <br>// S02: The modern subject</span>
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Pablo Velasco // Information Studies // [pablov.me](https://pablov.me)
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## Plan for the day:
* Pastoral subjection
* Copernican turn and modern subject
* Power and subjectivity
* Datalogical turn
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>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-->
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| <h3>Ship of Theseus</h3> | |
| -------- | -------- |
|<br>Heraclitus/Plato (Cratylus 401d, Parmenides 139) <br><br>Identity metaphor: the wood planks of Theseus ship are progressively replaced. Is it the same ship?<br><br>Hobbes adds: what if the original pieces of wood were used to construct a "second" boat? | <img src="https://i.imgur.com/YbxCETo.jpg" width=100%> |
<!-- identity as body: planks, atoms, butterfly -->
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### (*What's critical about critical data studies?*)
## <span class="censor">"Data are a form of power (...) a lack of data is another form of power"</span>
CDS attention to issues related to:
* changes in governmentality and policy
* **ways in which data is *weaponized* (e.g. for social control)**
* data **influence on truth and objectivity**
* **digital subjectivation and subjugation**
* data divide
* datactivism
* data literacy
* data justice
<span class="refs">Iliadis, A., & Russo, F. (2016). Critical data studies: An introduction. Big Data & Society, 3(2)</span>
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|<h4>*emne, objekt, subjekt*</h4> | |
| -------- | -------- |
| <img src="https://i.imgur.com/XJ355Dq.jpg" width="70%"> | "And no, don’t change the subject<br><br>Cuz you’re my favorite subject<br><br>My sweet, submissive subject<br><br>My loyal, royal subject" |
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### Geocentric model
<img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7b/Bartolomeu_Velho_1568.jpg/1200px-Bartolomeu_Velho_1568.jpg" width="80%">
<small>Ptolemaic representation (Bartolomeu Velho 1568)</small>
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| | <h3>pastoral</h3> |
| :----- | :----: |
| <h4>*science*</h4> | <p class="fragment">religion</p> |
| <h4>document</h4> | <p class="fragment">codex</p> |
| <h4>behaviour</h4> | <p class="fragment">submission</p> |
| <h4>authority</h4> | <p class="fragment">church</p>
| <h4>identity</h4> | <p class="fragment">soul</p>
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## 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>
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| <h3>In-dividual and Dualisms</h3> | |
| -------- | -------- |
|**Descartes**<br>Dualism: body & mind (proof of existence)<br><br> **Berkeley**<br>Subjective idealism: reality is dependant on the minds of the subject<br><br>**Locke**<br>Identity as consciousness: memory theory | <img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Descartes2.jpg/1200px-Descartes2.jpg" width=100%> |
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## Pastoral ☛ Modern
* salvation -> welfare
* multiplication of officials/institutions
<img src ="https://i.imgur.com/dN1dQC8.jpg" width="40%">
<br>
* Also, Fascism and Stalinism used ideas and devices of our political rationality
<span class="refs">Foucault, M. (1982). The Subject and Power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777–795.</span>
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### Objectivation of the subject
* Creation of **sciences of the subject** (psychology, sociology, biology, etc):
* global quantities / population
* analytics / individual
<!-- Q - examples: quantitative vs qualitative -->
* 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
<span class="refs">Foucault, M. (1982). The Subject and Power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777–795.</span>
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### <span class="censor">What does this means, **making a subject an object**??</span>
* 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)
* How do we (our own knowledge-type path objectifies subjects?)
--->
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| | <h3>pastoral</h3> | <h3>modern</h3> |
| :----- | :----: | :--: |
| <h4>*science*</h4> | religion | <p class="fragment">sciences</p> |
| <h4>document</h4> | codex | <p class="fragment">law</p> |
| <h4>behaviour</h4> |submission |<p class="fragment">discipline</p> |
| <h4>authority</h4> | church</p> | <p class="fragment">state</p>
| <h4>identity</h4> | soul | <p class="fragment">mind</p>
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# Close your computers
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### power as subjectification
* subjectivity as a process, not a substance or a state
* 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*
<!--
Q - do you think I have some **power** over you? why does this happens?
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### 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?-->
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## Datalogical turn
<!-- Q - church -> state -> now?-->
| | |
| ------------------------------------------- | -------- |
| <img src="https://i.imgur.com/6WZcjcc.jpg" width="100%"> | - **disciplinary**: not supresses, but subjects bodies towards certain behaviours, skills, patterns, etc <br><br>- **data** also "consitutes social relationships and subjectivities and **renders particular actions possible**"<br><br>- back to periphery: increasing awareness that there are **other actants**, and humans are intrinsically bound to their environment<!-- SEE definition on p. 15--><br><br><i>Where the distinction between inside and outside, system and environment, observer and observed comes to be confused</i> |
<span class="refs">Krasmann, S. (2017). Imagining Foucault. On the digital subject and “visual citizenship”. Foucault Studies, 10–26.
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### 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"</span>
### Visibility
<span class="censor">we believe in the existence of a particular form of power, precisely because we cannot see it </span>
<span class="refs">Krasmann, S. (2017). Imagining Foucault. On the digital subject and “visual citizenship”. Foucault Studies, 10–26.
</span>
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*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%">
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| | <h3>pastoral</h3> | <h3>modern</h3> | <h3>datalogical</h3> |
|:------------------ |:-----------------:|:---------------:|:--------------------:|
| <h4>*science*</h4> | religion | sciences | <p>?</p> |
| <h4>document</h4> | codex | law | ?<p>?</p> |
| <h4>behaviour</h4> | submission | discipline | <p>?</p> |
| <h4>authority</h4> | church | state | <p>?</p> |
| <h4>identity</h4> | soul | mind | <p>?</p> |
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