Homo Digitalis: Request for a new personality configuration

The article presents the results of scientific reflection, the object of which is Homo Digitalis as a representative of the modern digital society. The aim of the article is to study the emerging configuration of the individuality of Homo Digitalis as a response to the demand of the digital world. Based on the theoretical and methodological foundations of the study of individuality in the context of different directions and approaches, the definition of individuality is formulated as a complex hierarchically organized system of interconnections of different levels in the sovereign, original and reflected subjective world of a person, based on a constructed picture of the world, value-appropriated and meaningful mastered form of being. The article shows the transformations of individuality representations caused by the development of information and communication technologies, a change in the ontological status of digital devices and a person’s dependence on them, the frequency and density of personal interactions with various Others in the digital environment and the discrepancy between the real and digital personality, digital and personal identity, as well as specific features digital subjectivity. It is established that the newly formed personality configuration of Homo Digitalis acts as a response of Homo Vitrualis to the request of a rapidly developing digital society. The applied aspect of the problem under study is the possibility of using the results of the conducted scientific reflection in the educational process, as well as in consulting practice.

‘ASMR’ autobiographies and the (life-)writing of digital subjectivity

For years now, a growing online subculture has been exchanging videos designed to induce ‘autonomous sensory meridian response’ (ASMR), a mysterious, blissfully relaxing tingling sensation held to alleviate anxiety, pain, insomnia and depression. Emerging from online health forums, ASMR culture today centres on YouTube, where ‘ASMRtists’ have used the feedback mechanisms built into social media platforms to refine a repertoire of ‘trigger’ techniques. Exemplifying a wider trend for using ‘ambient media’ as mood modulators and task facilitators (Roquet, 2016 Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self. London: University of Minnesota Press.), ASMR culture’s use of the word ‘trigger’ is telling, gesturing towards what Halberstam ((2014) You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma. Bully Bloggers. Available at: https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/ (accessed 8 August 2018)) sees as a shift away from the Freudian notion of ‘memory as a palimpsest’ towards one of memory as ‘a live wire sitting in the psyche waiting for a spark’, whereby digital subjects become black-boxed nodes in a cybernetic circuit. This shift has serious implications for the humanities and is particularly resonant for scholars of life-writing. As McNeill ((2012) There is no “I” in network: Social networks sites and posthuman auto/biography. Biography 35(1): 65–82.) argues, digital technologies ‘complicate[] definitions of the self and its boundaries, both dismantling and sustaining the humanist subject in practices of personal narrative’ (p. 65). The resulting friction is highlighted in ‘ASMR autobiographies’: texts narrating the author’s experiences of ASMR and their discovery of online ASMR communities. Echoing familiar auto/biographical forms, from medical case histories and coming out narratives to tales of religious conversion, these texts show that the models of subjectivity we have inherited from Enlightenment philosophy, religion, psychology and Romantic literature retain some cultural purchase. But they also suggest digital media are fostering new understandings of personhood informed by cybernetics, evolutionary psychology, behaviourism and neuroscience. Focusing on works by Andrew MacMuiris, Andrea Seigel and Jon Kersey while also addressing a range of other texts, this article asks what ASMR autobiographies can tell us about digital subjectivity.

Invisibility, Inequality and the Dialectics of the Real in the Digital Age

In the digital age, the practical possibility of engaging inequalities as political problems, that is, as problems related to the competition for the control over the distribution of values in society, is undermined by the digital invisibility of reality In the current state of affairs, the digitalization of society reflects the influence of capitalist interpellation and brings about the invisibility of the real. The invisibility of the real through capitalist digitalization, in turn, conflates digitization and digitalization subordinating the latter to the former. Construed as a process inspired by technological rationality, capitalist digitalization undermines the possibility of mobilizing knowledge and legitimizing practices in support of the interpretation of invisibilities in relation to inequalities and injustice. In line with the critical perspective of Andrew Feenberg and others, my approach is that the influence of capitalism in the digital age results from an epistemic appropriation of a technological development. This appropriation is the source of invisibilities that support inequalities and ultimately injustices that can and should be opposed. Leading on from this, my point is that opposition to this influence depends on the possibility of establishing alternative epistemic grounds and the formulation of alternative interpellations for the production of digital subjectivity. To foster the normative agenda of critical theory, I discuss this possibility in terms of the ‘dialectics of the real’, the re-politicization of the social construction of reality in the digital age and the role of critical media literacy.

Appearance, Absence, Art

This chapter suggests a model for reconceiving avatar in terms of desire and loss to reassess their role within creative practices and the construction of digital subjectivity. This focuses on the avatar as appearance, as a negotiation of presence and absence, and as a tool for critical art practice in Second Life. By placing the avatar as Lacan's objet petit a, the lost object cause of desire, the structure of the visual and cognitive gaze applies Žižek's concept of parallax to digital embodiment, reformulating a subjective position between physical and digital modes of being. Taking into account the position of the observer amidst the fluidity of contemporary identity, the manipulation of the structures of desire and control can create new experiences that alter our relation to presence and absence in the critical and creative mediation of avatars and its implications for embodiment as a function of consciousness.