Desire, Confession, Self-dissection: Problematic Points around Dividual Subjectivation in Social Media.

Abstract

The article approaches the platformisation process of contemporary society from a subjective perspective. This approach follows certain lines proposed around algorithmic governmentality, in which a ‘diagrammatic’ type of power is associated with ‘de-subjectivations’, while a ‘pastoral’ one is linked to ‘hyper-subjectivations’. The paper intersects these two antagonistic subjective poles using the concept of ‘dividual’, as it illuminates contents and processes related to ‘machinic enslavement’ and ‘social subjection’, which correspond to ‘di’' and ‘hyper’ subjectivations, respectively. This crossover is made possible by two key notions of the ‘dividual’, namely desire and confessional communication, as proposed by the philosopher Gerald Raunig. This conceptual exercise is based on a theoretical investigation aimed at establishing the determinations of the modes of ‘dividual’ subjectivation typical of platformisation, taking as a corpus a bibliography referring to social media. On this basis, the article proposes to consider them as devices of subjectivation, insofar as they interpellate a desire to participate in digitality modulable as confessional communications, which brings with it the production of schemes of self-dissection and self-violence, again according to Raunig’s Nietzschean reading. This inscribes our proposal in the discussions around the type of social suffering associated with the process of platformisation, in the face of which we propose this novel line of consideration.