Great Blog. Marginal Utility Annex.
Post: Unused notes on the “data self”
1. neoliberal subjectivity, grounded most plainly in social media, problematizes consumerist authenticity: social media becoming necessary as new site for socialized production (immaterial labor, full subsumption, etc.) but the experience of being subject to them is becoming an increasingly bumpy ride. Identity is fundamentally multiple, incomplete, provisional, cyborg, contextually contingent. It’s fundamentally social, necessarily emerging from a collectivity that pre-exists it, and it requires constant reiteration. Individuation is a continuous process, as Gilbert Simondon argues. But we experience subjectivity as unitary (we think we inhabit only one identity in the moment) and given. This can trick us into thinking identity should be a seamless continuity, as inherent and persistent as our conscious subjectivity. This conflation can be exploited for ideological ends, as with consumerism’s rhetoric about power and expression through choice in the marketplace.
2. the tensions in authenticity threaten consumerist/neoliberal hegemony: surveillance, reputation management, productive subjectivation all threaten generating…
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sincerelylife 