scholarly journals Lifelogging: Digital technologies of the self as the practices of contemporary biopolitics

Sociologija ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-549
Author(s):  
Dusan Ristic ◽  
Dusan Marinkovic

In the paper we apply a theoretical concept of technologies of the self developed by Michel Foucault to the field of lifelogging practices. Lifelogging is a global social phenomenon, a part of contemporary experience of everyday, especially in the developed societies of the West. Our hypothesis is that, despite different ways of quantifying self, lifelogging practices have some characteristics in common: they all belong to the field of biopolitics. This is demonstrated on the levels of the body, identity and subjectivity, since they are influenced and changed by lifelogging. At the same time, lifelogging practices blur the relationship between coercion and consent, power and resistance. The theoretical framework for addressing lifelogging is the concept of biopolitics, also developed by, since it refers to the mechanisms, techniques and technologies, as well as the forms of rationality that regulate life and its various manifestations. In conclusion, we claim that it is still not possible to explain lifelogging exclusively in the terms of biopower, since it has a potential for the ?counter-conduct? and resistance. This also makes lifelogging practices open for development of new forms of subjectivity.

Author(s):  
Вадим Леонидович Афанасьевский

В статье анализируется проблема взаимоотношений философии права и научной теории права. Рассматриваемая проблема стала особенно актуальной в российском образовательном пространстве в связи с введением после длительного перерыва в государственный образовательный стандарт магистратуры по юриспруденции учебной дисциплины «Философия права». Автор статьи в качестве базисного принимает тезис, согласно которому философия права, являясь сферой философской мысли, и теория права как область научного социогуманитарного знания представляют собой разные типы теоретического дискурса. Исходя из этого, в статье выстраивается теоретическая концепция, согласно которой задачей философии права как философского типа мышления является конструирование или экспликация онтологических, эпистемологических, аксиологических, феноменологических оснований для формирования и функционирования научных теоретико-правовых и историко-правовых построений. Для реализации поставленной в статье задачи подробно рассматриваются ключевые характеристики как теории философского типа, так и идеалов, норм и характеристик научного знания. Выявленное различие экстраполируется на взаимоотношение теории права как продукта научного творчества и философии права как конструкции, задающей базовые мировоззренческие смыслы. В качестве примера выработанных философией права и государства оснований научных теорий прогресса, государства, морали и права, автор приводит взгляды мыслителей западноевропейской философской классики: Т. Гоббса, Ж.-Ж. Руссо, И. Канта, Г.В.Ф. Гегеля. Именно их философские концепции предопределили образы теоретико- и историко-правовых учений XVIII, XIX, XX и даже начала XXI в. Таким образом, отношение философии права и теории права выстраивается по «вертикали»: от онтологического основания к возведению теоретико-правовых и историко-правовых научных построений. The article analyzes the problem of the relationship between the philosophy of law and the scientific theory of law. The problem under consideration has become especially urgent in the Russian educational space in connection with the introduction of the Philosophy of Law discipline master's degree in law after a long break. The author of the article takes as the basis the thesis that the philosophy of law, being the sphere of philosophical thought, and the theory of law as a field of scientific socio-humanitarian knowledge are different types of theoretical discourse. Based on this, the article builds a theoretical concept according to which the task of the philosophy of law as a philosophical type of thinking is the construction or explication of ontological, epistemological, axiological, phenomenological grounds for the formation and functioning of concrete scientific theoretical and legal and historical and legal constructions. To implement the task posed in the article, the key characteristics of both a theory of a philosophical type and ideals, norms and characteristics of scientific knowledge are examined in detail. The revealed difference is extrapolated to the relationship between the theory of law as a product of scientific creativity and the philosophy of law as a construction that sets basic philosophical meanings. As an example of the foundations of the scientific theories of progress, state, morality and law developed by the philosophy of law and the state, the author gives the views and thinkers of the West European philosophical classics T. Hobbes, J.-J. Russo, I. Kant, G.V.F. Hegel. It was their philosophical concepts that predetermined the images of theoretical and historical-legal doctrines of the XVIII, XIX, XX and even the beginning of the XXI centuries. Thus, the attitude of the philosophy of law and the theory of law is built along the «vertical»: from the ontological foundation to the construction of theoretical and historical and historical legal scientific constructions.


Author(s):  
Joshua S. Walden

The book’s epilogue explores the place of musical portraiture in the context of posthumous depictions of the deceased, and in relation to the so-called posthuman condition, which describes contemporary changes in the relationship of the individual with such aspects of life as technology and the body. It first examines Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to view how Bernard Herrmann’s score relates to issues of portraiture and the depiction of the identity of the deceased. It then considers the work of cyborg composer-artist Neil Harbisson, who has aimed, through the use of new capabilities of hybridity between the body and technology, to convey something akin to visual likeness in his series of Sound Portraits. The epilogue shows how an examination of contemporary views of posthumous and posthuman identities helps to illuminate the ways music represents the self throughout the genre of musical portraiture.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-211
Author(s):  
Ashjan Ajour

Abstract This article explores the body as a site of subjectivity production during a hunger strike in Occupied Palestine. It further explores the former political prisoners’ theory of subjectivity as it emerges through their praxis and philosophy of freedom. Although the body is the principal tool that the hunger strikers use, they don't consider it the decisive factor in attaining their goal. For that they build on the immaterial strength that develops with the deterioration of the body and from which they construct the concept of rouh (soul). This is expressed through the formation of contradictory binaries: body versus soul and body versus mind. The article shows that the hunger strike not only is a political strategy for liberation; it also moves into a spiritualization of the struggle. It uses and problematizes Foucault's “technologies of the self” to theorize the specific formation of subjectivity in the Palestinian hunger strike under colonial conditions, and it contributes to theories of subjectivation. The hunger strikers, in their interaction with the dispossession of the colonial power, invent technologies of resistance to transcend the colonial and carceral constraints on their freedom and create the capacity for the transformation from a submissive subject to a resistant one.


2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Ryan

Hybrid literature has flourished in the Russian diaspora in the last decade and much of it is semi-autobiographical, concerned with the reconfiguration of identity in emigration. It dwells productively on the translation of the self and (more broadly) on the relationship between center and margin in the post-Soviet, transnational world. Gender roles are subject to contestation, as writers interrogate and reconsider expectations inherited from traditional Russian culture. This article situates Russian hybrid literature vis-à-vis Western feminism, taking into account Russian women’s particular experience of feminism. Four female writers of contemporary Russian-American literature – Lara Vapnyar, Sana Krasikov, Anya Ulinich, and Irina Reyn – inscribe failures of domesticity into their prose. Their female characters who cannot or do not cook or clean problematize woman’s role as nurturer. Home (geographic or imaginary) carries a semantic load of limitation and restriction, so failure as a homemaker may be paradoxically liberating. For female characters working in the West to support their families in Russia, domesticity is sometimes even more darkly cast as servitude. Rejection of traditional Russian definitions of women’s gender roles may signal successful renogotiation of identity in the diaspora. Although these writers may express nostalgia for the Russian culture of their early childhood, their critique of the tyranny of home is a powerful narrative gesture. Failures of domesticity represent successful steps in the redefinition of the self and they support these writers’ claim to transnational status.


2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (14) ◽  
pp. 2009-2023 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia Knapton

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental health problem characterized by persistent obsessions and compulsions. This article provides insights into experiences of OCD through a qualitative, thematic analysis performed on a set of interviews with people with OCD. Four themes were found as central in the participants’ descriptions of OCD episodes: (a) space, (b) the body, (c) objects, and (d) interactions. The findings also show that episodes of OCD can be grouped into three broad categories: (a) activity episodes, which revolve around everyday tasks; (b) state episodes, which are concerned with the self and identity; and (c) object episodes, which are concerned with the effects of objects on the self. The relationship of this three-way classification of OCD episodes to existing cognitive models of OCD is discussed. The study also demonstrates the value of categorizing episodes, rather than people, into subtypes of OCD so that intra-participant variation can be highlighted.


Author(s):  
Pau Conde Arroyo

Este artículo trata de problematizar la definición taxonómica de Testo yonqui desde una óptica literaria que atiende a su faceta narrativa para dilucidar los cauces por los que se manifiesta en tanto que ensayo queer. Dicha problematización es abordada desde dos lugares: por un lado, desde la propia obra, atendiendo a las autodefiniciones presentes en el texto, que son examinadas a partir del marco teórico de la autobiografía; y, por otro lado, desde la recepción crítica de Testo yonqui. En último lugar, a la luz de lo anterior, se exponen una serie de tensiones relativas a la relación entre narración, referente y representación en la propuesta experimental del principio autocobaya.   This article aims to question the taxonomical definition of Testo Junkie from a literary perspective that considers its narrative aspect in order to elucidate the ways in which it can be regarded as a queer essay. Such questioning is approached from two angles: on the one hand, from the work itself, examining the self-definitions found in the text, which are studied on the basis of the theoretical framework of autobiography; and, on the other hand, from Testo Junkie’s critic reception. Lastly, the principle of the auto-guinea pig is also explored, in reference to the series of tensions arising from the relationship between narration, referent and representation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Asuncion L. Magsino

As a counterargument to the Cartesian split that has impacted both speculative and practical fields of knowledge and culture, we propose Peirce’s doctrine of synechism to show the continuity in the semiotic activity that moves from the body as an Interpretant to the emergence of another Interpretant called the “self.” Biosemiotics, a nascent field of interdisciplinary research that tackles inquiries about signs, communication, and information involving living organisms is used as the framework in the discussion. The main question of whether a non-material “self” can emerge from a material body is tackled in many stages. First, the biosemiotic continuum is established in the natural biological processes that takes place in the body. These processes can be taken as an autonomous semiotic system generating the “language” of the body or the Primary Modeling System (PMS). Second, synechism is also observed in the relationship between the mind and the body and this is evident in any physician’s clinical practice. The patient creates a Secondary Modeling System (SMS) of how she perceives what the body communicates to her regarding its state or condition. Finally, the question about whether the emergence of “self” is synechistic as well is tackled. There is one organ from which emerges an Interpretant that is capable of generating a dialog between a Subject, that is the “self,” with its Object, and that is the brain. It is the primordial seat of specifically human activities like thought and language. The recent theory on quantum consciousness supports the doctrine synechism between the body as Interpretant to the “self” as Interpretant. This synechism is crucial for the creation of Secondary Models of “reality” that will, in turn, determine the creation of Tertiary Models more familiarly called culture.


Author(s):  
Kieran Fenby-Hulse

In this essay, I consider the music that has been chosen as part of the previous essays in this collection. I attempt to understand what this assemblage of musical tracks, this anthropology playlist, might tell us about fieldwork as a research practice. The chapter examines this history of the digital playlist before going on to analyse the varied musical contributions from curatorial, musicological, and anthropological perspetives. I argue that the playlist asks us to reflect on the field of anthropology and to consider the role of the voice, the body, the mind with anthropology, as well as the role digital technologies, ethics, and the relationship between indviduals and the community.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatsuru Honda ◽  
Takashi Nakao

Self-relevant information is processed faster and more accurately than non-self-relevant information. Such a bias is developed even for newly associated information with the self, also known as the self-prioritization effect (SPE). Interoception, which refers to the overall processing of information from inside the body, is crucial for self-relevant processing; however, little is known about its role in SPE. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the magnitude of SPE and interoceptive accuracy (IAc), defined as an individual’s ability to accurately perceive one’s own interoceptive state. Additionally, to explore the causal relationship, we measured SPE by presenting self- or non-self-relevant stimuli based on the participant's cardiac cycle in the shape-label matching task. We demonstrated that IAc was negatively correlated with the magnitude of SPE in terms of discrimination of the relevance of the stimuli. In addition, a correlation was observed only when the stimuli were presented during cardiac systole. Furthermore, IAc was negatively correlated with the processing of self-relevant stimuli but not with non-self-relevant stimuli. Our findings suggest that individuals with high IAc were less able to discriminate whether an external neutral stimulus was self-relevant when the stimulus was presented at systole. Our results may reflect the tendency to recognize the self-relevance of stimuli based on interoception in individuals with high IAc. Since the present study used geometric shapes, which are not easily recognized as stimuli that can induce changes in the interoception, individuals with high IAc assigned less self-relevance to the stimuli, resulting in weaker SPE. From this perspective, we further discussed the conditions that lead to stronger SPE in individuals with high IAc, in contrast to the present study results.


Author(s):  
Enrique Galvan-Alvarez

This article discusses the various shapes, inner structures and roles given to transformative and liberative practices in the work of US Buddhist anarchist authors (1960-2010). Unlike their Chinese and Japanese predecessors, who focused more on discursive parallelisms between Buddhism and anarchism or on historical instances of antiauthoritarianism within the Buddhist tradition(s), US Buddhist anarchists seem to favour practice and experience. This emphasis, characteristic of the way Buddhism has been introduced to the West,sometimes masks the way meditative techniques were used in traditional Buddhist contexts as oppressive technologies of the self. Whereas the emphasis on the inherently revolutionary nature of Buddhist practice represents a radical departure from the way those practices have been conceptualised throughout Buddhist history, it also involves the danger of considering Buddhist practice as an ahistorical sine qua non for social transformation. This is due to the fact that most early Buddhist anarchist writers based their ideas on a highly idealised, Orientalist imagination of Zen Buddhism(s). However, recent contributions based on other traditions have offered a more nuanced, albeit still developing picture. By assessing a number of instances from different US Buddhist anarchist writers, the article traces the brief history of the idea that meditation is revolutionary praxis, while also deconstructing and complicating it through historical and textual analysis.


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