SIGNS AND MACHINES
Capitalism and the Production og Subjectivity
Subjectification (French: subjectivation) is a philosophical concept coined by Michel Foucault and elaborated by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It refers to the construction of the individual subject. The concept has been often used in critical theory, sometimes with Louis Althusser’s concept of interpellation. In Gilbert Simondon’s theory of individuation, subjectification precedes the subject in the same way as the process of individuation precedes the creation of the individual. While the classical notion of a subject considers it as a term, Foucault considered the process of subjectification to have an ontological pre-eminence on the subject as a term.
One can be ‘enslaved’ or ‘subjected’ to a machine (whether it be technical, social, communicational, etc.) We are enslaved to a machine when we are a cog in the wheels, one of the constituent parts enabling the machine to function. We are subjected to the machine when, constituted as its users, we are defined purely by the actions that use of the machine demands. Subjection operates at the molar level of the individual (its social dimension, the roles, functions, representations and affections). Enslavement on the other hand operates at the molecular (or pre-individual or infrasocial) level (affects, sensations, desires, those relationships not yet individuated or assigned to a subject). I will try to illustrate the features that characterize these devices of enslavement and subjection, by examining how they function in the television “machine”.
The most influential book of the past seventy-five years: a groundbreaking exploration of everything we know about what we don’t know, now with a new . . .
«Kanskje finnes det for latteren ennå en fremtid!», skriver Nietzsche i åpningen av Den muntre vitenskapen. Med satire og skarpe iakttakelser legger han blant annet . . .
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Virilio’s exploration of the relationship between technology, war and information technology. “Civilization or the militarization of science?” With this typically hyperbolic and provocative question as . . .
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