scholarly journals “What kind of cop are you?”: Disco Elysium’s Technologies of the Self within the Posthuman Multiverse

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-79
Author(s):  
Conor Mckeown
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Valuable Resource ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
The World ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Previous Scholarship

Abstract I suggest in this article, drawing upon Francesca Ferrando, Karen Barad and N Katherine Hayles, that Disco Elysium illustrates the human through the mode of a ‘posthuman multiverse’. Per Ferrando, humans and other beings act as nodes in a material multiverse while what we think, eat, our behaviours and relations, create part of a rhizomatic ecology that can be understood as who and what we are. This, I illustrate, overcomes a complicated tension in existing posthuman theory, particularly as it relates to game studies. Although theorists have detailed the entanglement of players and machines, and the new materialist nature of becoming, it is unclear to what extent human-machine assemblages can be said to be a singular ‘thing’. This is tackled in Disco Elysium as the seemingly mundane and often invisible actions the player takes, all play a role in constructing Harry Dubois and the world that is also endlessly producing him. Game actions, therefore, can be viewed as ‘technologies of the multiverse’, the ontological functions through which beings come to exist in a dimension. The game positions the player in a ‘relational intra-activity’ not only with the actions and outcomes of play, as discussed in previous scholarship, but also with the hypothetical outcomes of choices they have not made. When read through the lens of Ferrando’s philosophical posthuman multiverse, Disco Elysium represents a valuable resource for bridging gaps in contemporary posthuman scholarship.

scholarly journals Fulfilling the self through food in wellness blogs: Governing the healthy subject

2021 ◽  
pp. 136754942110557
Author(s):  
Kaisa Tiusanen
Keyword(s):  
Healthy Subject ◽  
Food Consumption ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Personal Journey ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Ideal

In the world of wellness, food and eating are fundamentally important to one’s subjectivity: the self in this sphere is created and maintained through food consumption along a plant-based, ‘wholesome’ and healthy personal journey to well-being. This article focuses on the analysis of wellness food blogs run by women, aiming to map out the technologies of the self through which the ‘ideal wellness subject’ is created. The analysis examines technologies of subjectivity as they aspire towards (1) balance, (2) healing and (3) narrativization of the self. The article suggests that the subjectivities related to wellness culture draw from postfeminist and healthist ideologies and are based on a neoliberal discourse of individuality and self-control. The sociocultural indifference of wellness culture and its prerogative to police the self through culturally hegemonic pursuits based on (the right kind of) consumption makes the language of wellness a prominent neoliberal discourse.

scholarly journals To-Do Is to Be: Foucault, Levinas, and Technologically Mediated Subjectivation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Peter Bergen ◽  
Peter-Paul Verbeek
Keyword(s):  
Self Care ◽  
The Self ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Technological Mediation ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Technological Artifacts ◽  
Ethical Subjectivity ◽  
The World

AbstractThe theory of technological mediation aims to take technological artifacts seriously, recognizing the constitutive role they play in how we experience the world, act in it, and how we are constituted as (moral) subjects. Its quest for a compatible ethics has led it to Foucault’s “care of the self,” i.e., a transformation of the self by oneself through self-discipline. In this regard, technologies have been interpreted as power structures to which one can relate through Foucaultian “technologies of the self” or ascetic practices. However, this leaves unexplored how concrete technologies can actually support the process of self-care. This paper explores this possibility by examining one such technology: a gamified To-Do list app. Doing so, it first shows that despite the apparent straightforwardness of gamification, confrontation and shame play an important role in how the app motivates me to do better. Second, inspired by Ihde’s schema of human-technology relations, it presents different ways in which the app may confront me with myself. Subsequently, it accounts for the motivation and shame that this technologically mediated confrontation with myself invokes through a Levinasian account of ethical subjectivity. In so doing, it also shows how Levinas’ phenomenology implies a responsibility for self-care and how nonhuman, technological others may still call me to responsibility. It concludes with a reflection on the role of gamification in technologically mediated subjectivation and some implications for design.

scholarly journals Storytelling as a Cultural Practice and Life Form

2020 ◽  
pp. 29-75
Author(s):  
Christina Schachtner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Life Form ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
The Self ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
The World ◽  
University Of Massachusetts ◽  
The University ◽  
University Of Chicago Press

Abstract Narrative is introduced as a cultural practice and life form which contributes to creating the foundation of our lives as it helps us to interpret the world, through stories, in which we must be able to act. Borrowed from Ricœur (Time and narrative: The configuration of time in fictional narrative (Vol. 2, K. McLaughlin & D. Pellauer, Trans). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press (1985) and The course of recognition (D. Pellauer, Trans). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (2005).), the concepts of time and space are presented as the contexts and products of narrative. The functions of storytelling are discussed under the heading of “technologies of Self-construction” (inspired by Foucault, Technologies of the self. In L. H. Martin, H. Gutman, & P. H. Hutton (Eds.), Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault (pp. 16–49). Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press (1988).), which provide orientation, self-understanding, and transgression. These need to be developed within the constraints of social norms—so the theory goes—and yet subjects still have some room to move within the process of adopting norms (Butler, Giving an account of oneself. New York, NY: Fordham University Press (2005).).

scholarly journals REGULISANO SOPSTVO / REGULATED SELF

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-156
Author(s):  
Nemanja Djukic
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Symbolic Order ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
World Picture ◽  
Symbolic Space ◽  
The World ◽  
Conservative Function

Starting from Agamben's understanding of the dispositive, Foucault's concept of technologies of the self, Derrida's deconstruction of the ontological status of identity and Lacan's concept of identity desubjectivization, in the article that follows, we analyze identity as a symbolic product of the reification and internalization of the auto-centric nature of the semantic order into the consciousness of individuals. The disposition, as a pre-experiential symbolic space of an image of the world, determines the technology of the self and the type of self-experience. The pre-modern World picture produces an ethnocentric self, the modern World picture produces an egocentric self and the postmodern World picture produces a logocentric self. Identity has no ontological status - it is the result of attributing meaning to the biological presence of individuals. Identity is not subjective than, as pure objectivity, it is the product of a reification of the semantic order as a subject. Identity has a conservative function because as a result of the internalization of the symbolic order into the consciousness of individuals, its function is to preserve the semantic order that establishes it, not to overcome it.

Power of Darkness: Narrative and Biographical Reflexivity in A Series of Unfortunate Events

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-212
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH BULLEN
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Project Risk ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
High Earning ◽  
Textual Culture ◽  
Children’S Exposure ◽  
Central Claim

This paper investigates the high-earning children's series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, in relation to the skills young people require to survive and thrive in what Ulrich Beck calls risk society. Children's textual culture has been traditionally informed by assumptions about childhood happiness and the need to reassure young readers that the world is safe. The genre is consequently vexed by adult anxiety about children's exposure to certain kinds of knowledge. This paper discusses the implications of the representation of adversity in the Lemony Snicket series via its subversions of the conventions of children's fiction and metafictional strategies. Its central claim is that the self-consciousness or self-reflexivity of A Series of Unfortunate Events} models one of the forms of reflexivity children need to be resilient in the face of adversity and to empower them to undertake the biographical project risk society requires of them.

‘A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust’: The World and Self in Thomas Hardy's Poems

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Monika Szuba
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Recurrent Theme ◽  
Body Subject

The essay discusses selected poems from Thomas Hardy's vast body of poetry, focusing on representations of the self and the world. Employing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts such as the body-subject, wild being, flesh, and reversibility, the essay offers an analysis of Hardy's poems in the light of phenomenological philosophy. It argues that far from demonstrating ‘cosmic indifference’, Hardy's poetry offers a sympathetic vision of interrelations governing the universe. The attunement with voices of the Earth foregrounded in the poems enables the self's entanglement in the flesh of the world, a chiasmatic intertwining of beings inserted between the leaves of the world. The relation of the self with the world is established through the act of perception, mainly visual and aural, when the body becomes intertwined with the world, thus resulting in a powerful welding. Such moments of vision are brief and elusive, which enhances a sense of transitoriness, and, yet, they are also timeless as the self becomes immersed in the experience. As time is a recurrent theme in Hardy's poetry, this essay discusses it in the context of dwelling, the provisionality of which is demonstrated in the prevalent sense of temporality, marked by seasons and birdsong, which underline the rhythms of the world.

Nihilistic Thinking as the Self-Will of the Mind and the Projects of Its Overcoming

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (10) ◽  
pp. 74-87
Author(s):  
Irina N. Sidorenko
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
The Self ◽  
Spatial Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Radical Transformation

 The author analyzes the conceptions of ontological nihilism in the works of S. Kierkegaard, F. Nietzsche, M. Heidegger, E. Jünger. On the basis of this analysis, violence is defined as a manifestation of nihilism, of the “will to nothingness” and hypertrophy of the self-will of man. The article demonstrates the importance of the problem of nihilism. The nihilistic thinking of modern man is expressed in the attitude toward a radical transformation of the world from the position of his “absolute” righteousness. The paradox of the current situation is that there is the reverse side of this transformative activity, when there is only the appearance of action and the dilution of responsibility. Confidence in the rightness of own views and beliefs increases the risk of the violent imposition of own vision of reality. Historical and philosophical reconstruction of the conceptions of nihilism allowed to reveal the following projects of its comprehension and resolution: (1) the project of “positing of values,” which consists in the transformation of the evaluation, which is understood as another perspective of positing values, leading to the affirmation of being; (2) the project of overcoming nihilism from the space of temporality, carried out through the resoluteness to accept the historicity of own existence; (3) the project of overcoming nihilism as the oblivion of being from the spatial perspective of the “line,” allowing to realize the “glimpse” of being. The author concludes that it is impossible to solve the problem of violence and its various forms of its manifestation without overcoming “ontological nihilism.” Significant role in solving the problem of ontological violence is assigned to philosophy as a critical and responsible form of thinking, which is capable to help a person to bear the burden of the world, to provide meanings and affirm being, as well as to unite people and resist the fundamentalist claims of exclusivity and rightness.

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