Technologies of the Self

In contemporary Western society, there is a strong focus on how the body looks and performs, and whether it requires regulation. These powerful expectations impact on individual embodiment - the lived experience of having and being a body, including the internalisation and enactment of socially constructed norms (Kosut and Moore 2010; Shapiro 2015). In this article, we focus on the ways in which tattoos are an embodiment of the interaction order (Goffman 1983); a symbolic mediation between individuals and the social structure. To achieve this, we draw upon the experiences of Rachael, a 24-year old woman employed as a receptionist with ten tattoos, to illustrate how social discourses about the ‘normalised’ feminine body can be reinforced and challenged through tattoos. This is evidenced by Rachael’s use of tattoos as part of a suite of ‘technologies of the self’ (Foucault 1988), which make her feel in control and align, and reconfigure, her body with social discourses of femininity. ...

Socially engaged art since the 1990s has become a global trend. The practices of socially engaged arts, while creating new kinds of arts and opening up the entire institutional domain of the art world, are inseparable from the practices of museums that undertake significant changes. In this essay, I theorize the concept of “socially engaged art museum” - a practice that unveils art as an aesthetic force for rendering everyday life performative or playful - to examine both socially engaged arts and museums under what the philosopher Jacques Rancière calls “aesthetic regime of art” (2009). Comparing with the current scholarship that mostly examines European and American examples, I examine cases from Chinese contemporary art. Specifically, I discuss artistic practices of the Yangdeng Art Collective in Southwestern China. My argument is that a socially engaged art museum - qualitatively different from a conventional art museum that engages social life through its curated collections and exhibitions - is both a context-specific artwork of aesthetic experience and a technology of the individualized self in contemporary risk society. Not only does this study question the common scholarly view of socially engaged arts as “post-autonomous” or “anti-aesthetic,” but it also advances a notion of sociality that accounts for the complexity of everyday life.

Wayne Vucinic Book Prize 2007, "for the most important contribution to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences." 

Endorsement by Slavoj Zizek:

"Alexei Yurchak's Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More immediately seduced me by its very title with a profound philosophical implication that eternity is a historical category--things can be eternal for some time. The same spirit of paradox runs through the entire book--it renders in wonderful details the gradual disintegration of the Soviet system from within its ideological and cultural space, making visible all the hypocrisy and misery of this process. I consider Yurchak's book by far the best work about the late epoch of the Soviet Union--it is not just history, but a pleasure to read, a true work of art." (Slavoj Zizek, author of In Defense of Lost Causes)

Abstract:

Soviet socialism was based on paradoxes that were revealed by the peculiar experience of its collapse. To the people who lived in that system the collapse seemed both completely unexpected and completely unsurprising. At the moment of collapse it suddenly became obvious that Soviet life had always seemed simultaneously eternal and stagnating, vigorous and ailing, bleak and full of promise. Although these characteristics may appear mutually exclusive, in fact they were mutually constitutive. This book explores the paradoxes of Soviet life during the period of "late socialism" (1960s-1980s) through the eyes of the last Soviet generation.

This paper proposes to examine the thesis that single-player RPG games occupy a particularly strategic position in abetting the ‘self-construction’ that occupies a central role in the formation of contemporary subjectivity and which resonates with what may be broadly termed neoliberal subjects.  They do so, however, in a double-edged fashion that, beyond performing the recuperative function of mirroring a ‘rationalisation of existence’ in an arena of play, also point towards the emancipatory and appealing refusal of this kind of subjectification.  Hence, they are doubly meaningful.  Self-construction here refers, first, to the ethicoaesthetic project of the refusal of the self, the artistic fashioning championed by Foucault in his later work: autopoiesis (Foucault, 1984 (1983)); and second, to neoliberalism’s adoption of self-creation and the realisation of one’s individuality as its “primary engine and product line” (Nealon, 2008, p. 13). 

The meaningfulness of computer games will be situated within a Jamesonian concept of ‘totality’ as an unrepresentable horizon (Jameson, 1971; 1981, p. 55) rather than foregrounding the intersubjective meanings that computer games have for their various kinds of players.  This totality is always receding, provisional, subject to further elaboration and to the kind of refutation that would call for the resolution of its contradictions at a higher level of synthesis.  It is assumed that theories of neoliberal capitalism are helpful towards grasping this, bearing in mind the objections against the unchecked proliferation of the term ‘neoliberalism’ that risk dissipating its definitional value (Venugopal, 2015). 

The three main nodes of the proposed paper are as follows: 1) the contemporary subject; 2) the ambivalence and significance of self-construction; and 3) the distinctive characteristics of single-player RPG games.  The question to be addressed regards the possible interconnections between each of these coordinates, as well as how they are situated in relation to a totality and what they may reveal to us about it.

1) A particular kind of subject has lately received the theoretical attention that attributes to it the status of being indicative of a key form of contemporary subjectivity: the new hypermodern, flexible, precarious, fluid, streamlined individual produced by post-disciplinary technologies – the neoliberal subject – that is fashioned by more than merely the training and rendering docile of bodies, but by a mode of governmentality in which subjects must be fully involved in the activity that they are required to perform (Dardot & Laval, 2013; Wark, 2007; Dyer-Witheford & Peuter, 2009; Humphreys, 2008), and which comports well with games as ergodic artefacts that need to be enacted. 

At the core of this subject is the old search for (since modernity) authenticity and meaning, but which has come to take the present form of the imperative to realise oneself, to fulfil one’s potential through one’s work, which is more closely identified with the self.  It is argued that the entanglement between the categories of ‘work’ and ‘play’ was prominently born out of capitalism’s subsumption of the ‘artistic critique’, resulting in a situation where “the demand for authenticity…[leads to an] increase in paranoid behaviour by people who are forever fearful that they have been manipulated” (Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005, p. 460) cited in (Kirkpatrick, 2015, p. 7).  Thus, the anxiety of just being a cog in a machine drives the individual to perform more efficiently in the quest for freedom, to (ironically) see themselves as ‘human capital’ to be indefinitely increased and to thereby desire the putative freedom of self-construction. 

2) The significance of self-construction, with its connotations of unfettered self-determination, can be contextualised within a trajectory of the insidious decorporealisation of power and of its increasing intensity, lightness, and efficiency (Nealon, 2008, p. 32).  This dualism, it will be argued,  is also expressed in the discussions of ‘pharmacological’ dialectics in relation to ‘Empire’s’ reliance on ‘immaterial labour’ and the new technologies that have the potential to be genuine tools of autonomy (Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009, p. 32) as well as extensions of control.  As more of life is captured under Empire – the arenas of leisure, play, and sociality – the increasing subsumption is argued to herald the increasing potential for resistance.  It will be argued that Foucault’s concept of the subject as a form capable of transformation (1984) theorises this irreducible potential, although the way it is pursued has become almost inseparable from the operation of neoliberal subjectification. 

3) The paper proposes a to-and-fro methodological movement between totality and computer games, where each is ceaselessly refined and contradicted by reference to the other, and neither thereby completely solidify into analytic definitions.  If the concept of totality is indeed an unrepresentable horizon always subject to further articulation, then that articulation is on the basis of a complex relational understanding of particular works and mediums, which are themselves refined in the process. 

A starting point for comprehending the totality will be Dardot and Laval’s account of neoliberalism (2013), which discusses aspects of competition, evaluation, freedom, and responsibility.  In contrast to some classic games that simply escalate in difficulty, like Tetris or Pacman, contemporary single-player RPGs are more varied in what they demand from players.  Comparatively more pragmatic and solution-orientated (Dardot & Laval, 2013, p. 271), they feature a disparate range of challenges that may be unenjoyable yet are necessary not for unlocking another part of the game but for the realisation of the player’s self-set goals.  In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, it was helpful to develop ‘athletics’ in order to level up, which led some players to swim against a corner and jam their controllers, acquiring athletics levels with minimal effort.  But levelling up with attribute-maximisation in mind (getting three +5 to attributes per level) called for the careful monitoring and control of skill levelling and resting, which was a pertinent requirement if one wanted to play on higher difficulty levels.  The significance of this self-imposed challenge, and the requisite kind of dedication, will be examined. 

Transgressive play, such as ‘glitching’ (e.g. item duplication in Dragon Age: Inquisition) has been seen as instances of resistance against the game rules, and by extension against social norms.  However, such behaviour can be alternatively aligned with an aspect of neoliberal rationality.  For Dardot and Laval, the key question for the government of competitive individuals is how to programme individuals as early as possible, so that the injunction to boundless self-transcendence does not degenerate into the openly criminal behaviour that occupies its logical endpoint; it is how to maintain ‘public order’ when pleasure has to be encouraged, while avoiding excesses (2013, p. 299).  It is no coincidence that in order to master the glitches and shortcuts needed to ultimately accomplish a speed-run worthy of Youtube, the player has spent countless hours testing and mastering the rules and their exceptions.  Nevertheless, the initial experimental attitude motivating transgressive play, which arguably only later becomes co-opted by the instrumental rationale, cannot be easily encapsulated under a notion of ‘false’ transgression despite bearing a proximate relationship to it.

Over the past decade, consumers in Australia and elsewhere have increasingly been confronted with a fast growing number of health food products. This profusion of health foods is accompanied by a proliferation in popular culture of professional nutritional advice on 'what is good to eat'. The genre of lifestyle magazines is one popular medium via which healthy eating practices and health foods are frequently reported. In this paper we use a visual discourse analysis of food-related editorial and advertorial content sourced from the long running and popular The Australian Women's Weekly to investigate how lifestyle magazines have been one important locus for constituting health conscious consumers. Taking up a Foucauldian governmentality perspective we trace how this active, responsible conceptualisation of the consumer, which we refer to as 'healthy food consumer', has increased in prevalence in the pages of The Australian Women's Weekly over time. Based on our analysis we suggest that the editorial and advertorial content offers models of conduct to individuals about what possible preventative activities in which to engage, and plays an important role in shaping how we think about taking care of our health through eating.

How is it possible to introduce a notion of Reality as Totality that is conso- nant with the continuous development of contemporary science? To answer this question, we introduce in this chapter the notion of Reality-Totality. We argue in favor of the view that Reality as a Totality may be conceived as active and living Knowledge: the self-exposing Idea that self-exposes itself to us by a self- organizing process of which our knowledge process itself is part. The view we argue for is of a metaphysical nature, and it elaborates on the methodological character of the study of the Self-Organization. We show that this philosophi- cal view emerges from some general reflections on the constitution of scientific knowledge, providing elements that make possible the structuring and coordina- tion of various scientific contents and methods.
Our exposition begins with a discussion of the epistemological analysis of Gilles-Gaston Granger (1920–2016), and the genetic epistemology and psychol- ogy of Jean Piaget (1896–1980) and his coworkers. We then proceed to an anal- ysis that leads us to the notion of Reality-Totality and its properties. At the conclusion of the chapter, it will be seen that the view presented here is a new form of absolute speculative idealism, close to the philosophical view of Georg W. F. Hegel (1770–1831).

Για την εύρεση μιας θέσης εργασίας αλλά και την εδραίωση και την ανέλιξη εντός ενός κλάδου η αυτοπροώθηση στα μέσα κοινωνικής δικτύωσης αποτελεί πλέον αναγκαία συνθήκη για όλο και περισσότερους εργαζομένους.

Για τη διαμόρφωση μιας επιτυχημένης στρατηγικής αυτοπροώθησης αρκετοί είναι εκείνοι που καταφεύγουν στο “personal branding”, μια αναδυόμενη θεωρία και πρακτική των τελευταίων χρόνων σύμφωνα με την οποία για να επιβιώσει και να αναδειχθεί κανείς εντός μιας έντονα ανταγωνιστικής αγοράς εργασίας είναι απαραίτητο να προσεγγίσει τον εαυτό ως ένα εμπορικό σήμα, ως ένα brand.

Ενώ το personal branding αρχικά απευθυνόταν σε ανώτερα στελέχη με υψηλές θέσεις στην εταιρική ιεραρχία, οι αλλαγές στη δομή της εργασίας και η διάδοση της χρήσης του διαδικτύου και των μέσων κοινωνικής δικτύωσης κατέστησαν την πρακτική του personal branding δημοφιλή σε ευρεία στρώματα εργαζομένων.

Ο στόχος της παρούσας εργασίας είναι διττός. Στο βιβλιογραφικό σκέλος επιχειρείται η τοποθέτηση του personal branding εντός ενός ευρύτερου πλαισίου κοινωνικών μετασχηματισμών, εστιάζοντας στη διάδοση του μεταφορντικού τύπου οργάνωσης της παραγωγής καθώς και στην ανάδυση αυτού που περιγράφηκε από τον Μισέλ Φουκώ ως νεοφιλελεύθερη κυβερνητικότητα.

Η ποιοτική έρευνα που ακολουθεί στόχο έχει να προσεγγίσει τις μεταβολές αυτές μέσα από το πρίσμα των ίδιων των υποκειμένων που τις βιώνουν και καλούνται να ανταποκριθούν στις προσταγές που προκύπτουν από αυτές, των εργαζομένων. Μέσα από την πραγματοποίηση δεκατριών ημι-δομημένων συνεντεύξεων επιχειρούμε να εξετάσουμε πώς βιώνουν οι ίδιοι οι εργαζόμενοι την αυξανόμενη απαίτηση προώθησης της προσωπικής επαγγελματικής τους εικόνας και πώς ανταποκρίνονται σε αυτήν, πώς αξιοποιούν το LinkedIn, την πιο διαδεδομένη ψηφιακή πλατφόρμα επαγγελματικής αυτοπροώθησης, αλλά και με ποιον τρόπο πραγματεύονται ευρύτερα ζητήματα σε σχέση με την εργασιακή ζωή.

Όπως διαφαίνεται από την έρευνα, ο λόγος των συμμετεχόντων αντανακλά ευρύτερες κοινωνικές διεργασίες αναδεικνύοντας την επικράτηση μιας νέας κουλτούρας της εργασίας, η οποία καλεί κάθε εργαζόμενο να προσεγγίσει τον εαυτό σαν μια επιχείρηση.

English:

In order to find a job but also to become established within an industry, self-promoting on social media is a necessary condition for any employee.

To formulate a successful self-promotion strategy, more and more employees resort to "personal branding", an emerging theory and practice according to which it is necessary to approach oneself as a brand with the purpose of surviving and succeeding in a highly competitive labor market.

While personal branding initially concerned senior executives in the corporate hierarchy, changes in the work structure and the spread of the internet and social media made the practice of personal branding popular across a wide range of employees.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. In the literature review, personal branding is positioned within a broader context of social transformations which are summarized in the dominance of the postfordist system, as well as in the emergence of what was described by Michel Foucault as neoliberal governmentality.

Furthermore, a qualitative research was conducted as a means to approach these changes from the perspective of the employees themselves, the subjects who experience these changes and are required to respond to the orders that arise from them. In the second part of this thesis, we examine through thirteen semi-structured interviews how employees experience the growing demand for the promotion of their professional image and how they respond to it, how they use LinkedIn, the most widespread digital platform for professional self-promotion, and in what way they perceive broader issues related to working life.

As shown by the research, the participants’ views reflect broader social processes highlighting the prevalence of a new work culture, which invites each employee to approach themselves as an individual enterprise.

Link: http://pandemos.panteion.gr/index.php?lang=el&op=record&type=cid&q=isMemberOf-cid:14,isMemberOfCollection-cid:8&page=1&pid=iid:20950

Il nucleo del libro è rappresentato dalla traduzione delle due conferenze pronunciate da Michel Foucault in inglese, nell'autunno del 1980, a Berkeley e al Dartmouth College, rimaste fino a oggi inedite sia in italiano sia in francese. In queste conferenze vengono esplorate le origini della moderna ermeneutica del soggetto, introducendo il tema delle “tecniche di sé” e studiando in particolare due di queste tecniche – l'esame di sé e la confessione – prima nel mondo antico e in seguito nel cristianesimo dei primi secoli. Foucault inaugura così un'indagine genealogica del soggetto moderno, o meglio, quella genealogia dei rapporti tra soggettività e verità che occuperà buona parte del suo lavoro negli anni compresi tra il 1980 e il 1984. In quegli anni e, a partire da queste conferenze, forse per la prima volta in modo così chiaro, il filosofo individua in una “politica di noi stessi” la principale posta in gioco etico-politica del nostro tempo. Infatti, come si legge nella prefazione al volume, bisognerebbe sbarazzarsi delle tecnologie costruite nel corso dei secoli, aprendo così lo spazio a una «politica di noi stessi». Una conclusione che, d'altronde, richiama ciò che Foucault aveva già detto all'inizio della prima conferenza, alludendo a una fondamentale «dimensione politica» – quindi critica – connessa al suo progetto di una genealogia del sé occidentale: «un'analisi che si riferisce a ciò che siamo disposti ad accettare nel nostro mondo; ad accettare, rifiutare e cambiare sia in noi stessi, sia nella nostra situazione (…) si tratta di cercare un altro tipo di filosofia critica: che ricerchi le condizioni e le indefinite possibilità per trasformare noi stessi».

Michel Foucault's theory of moral subjectivity, as a trained relation of the subject to itself, contains a latent semiotic theory of self-knowledge. The formation of the moral subject is seen by Foucault as a sign system, given the name of technology, and placed in a broader context of semiotic and non-semiotic paths to knowledge. In such a framework, signification as a technology, the self as a binary opposition, and the in-between space of binaries emerge as important methodological elements in self-knowledge. Furthermore, a semiotic argument comes forth about the epistemological role of culture in the modeling of knowledge at large.

This paper questions the use of new technologies as tools of modern surveillance in order to: (a) advance the research done by Michel Foucault on panoptic techniques of surveillance and dominance; and (b) give new insights on the way we use these new surveillance technologies in violation of democratic principles and legal norms. Furthermore it offers new arguments in support of Foucault's account on the expansion of Bentham's Panopticon scheme as universal model of modern day democratic institutions. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to (c) shed new light on the various ways the deployment of new technologies reinforces the Panopticon model; and (d) analyze the effects produced by the emerging modes of surveillance that empower various new mechanisms of domination and control of individuals. This research paper seeks to (e) examine to what extent technology influences the course of our social, political and behavioral changes; and propose a framework for (f) evaluation and transformation of democratic institutions and practices that rely on the use of modern communication tools and technologies. Our cities have become a new kind of technologically driven Panopticon and this model has achieved perfection as increasingly fragmented, disseminated and ubiquitous device of power and dominance.

This master's thesis deals with processes of subjectivation of transfeminine individuals in and in relation to post-fordist wage work. Based on four employment biographical interviews with transfemale persons, it examines how transfeminine individuals in urban areas of Austria are subjectivized by the institution of wage work. And how this unfolds in the context of neoliberal heteronormative hegemony (Ludwig 2012). The thesis analyzes the employment-related subject norms and positions which apply to transfemale individuals. And also the  individuals‘ positionings of themselves and others in response to these positions and norms.

In a posthumous essay published in 1988, Michel Foucault offered a historical overview of various 'operations' used since classical antiquity and through Christendom by individuals hoping to transform their bodies and minds to enhance their existence. He dubbed these practices 'technologies of the self'. Three decades later, as Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have grown in complexity and power, and our relations with them become more intimate, it is inevitable to ask whether and how they are affecting human self-understanding. This paper compares two approaches that address the former question by re-interpreting and expanding Foucault's concept; one is framed by postphenomenology and media theory, the other stems from an informational (constructio-nist) view. The two interpretations have points in common, but their analyses arrive at fundamentally distinct conclusions. While the former argues digital simulations are merely expanding and fragmenting but not radically altering human ontologies, the latter shows ICTs are deeply transforming how humans present themselves to themselves.

This book will be of great interest to all stakeholders in the HIV and AIDS response community. The authors and editors of this timely collection provide a much-needed interrogation of policy discourses that frame the "end" of HIV and AIDS in the near-term as a desirable and reachable goal. No one can argue with the objective of ameliorating the HIV pandemic, but language matters. Constructs, such as a "post-AIDS" era, an "AIDS-free generation," and "ending AIDS," do violence to people with HIV, who will continue to live with the disease for decades, even if new HIV transmissions are halted by 2030 as many campaigns aspire. The experience of people living with HIV and AIDS, which includes stigma, discrimination, marginalization, and criminalization, is not sufficiently captured by discursive structures that persistently reduce the pandemic to a biomedical, rather than a relational and social, phenomenon. The engaging historical, theoretical, and empirical analyses in this book interrogate the meanings that circulate around biological science claims-that virological suppression (resulting from use of antiretroviral drugs) leads to zero new HIV transmissions, which equals the "end of AIDS." They document the ways in which the persistent biomedicalizing of the HIV pandemic and its response shifts attention away from social and cultural processes that are as central to the story of AIDS-and to its ending-as is the virus itself.

This article examines Chinese hair imports in the text and imagery of popular American newspapers and magazines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, overlapping the first federal restrictions on Chinese immigration. As Sinophobia swept across the country, hundreds of editorials and illustrated news items on “artificial” hair from China circulated nationwide in such publications as the New York Times, San Francisco Call, and Cosmopolitan. Chinese hair imports were essential to building the age’s signature pompadour hairstyle popularized by the iconic Gibson Girl, an early version of the New Woman linked to fantasies of the white American nation-state and national boundaries. At the same time, however, the Gibson Girl phenomenon pivoted on participation in mass consumerism, and a reliable supplement of hair via imports from China. During the era, media sensationalism surrounding the pompadour’s incorporation of Chinese tresses, especially male “pigtails,” spawned questions and anxieties around domesticity and consumption, national belonging and exclusion. Exploring the verbal and visual discourses of Chinese hair imports and pertinent hairstyles in early popular American periodicals, this article uses feminist theories, critical race feminisms, fashion and beauty theories, and Asian American studies to broaden critical insights into gendered and racialized traditions of exclusion.

En este artículo recurrimos a la cura mental del norteamericano Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802-1866) como ejemplo de práctica psicológica informal que, siendo previa a la psicoterapia formal moderna, contribuyó a establecer las condiciones de posibilidad para que esta última se desarrollase en el mundo occidental. Contextualizamos la labor de Quimby dentro de su época y de la formación de los Estados Unidos como país y como economía capitalista. Explicamos las bases teóricas de su cura mental y el procedimiento conforme al cual transcurría la misma, indicando algunas semejanzas generales con formas de psicoterapia posteriores. Señalamos asimismo la semejanza entre el tipo de individualismo que la cura mental apuntalaba y el de la actual Psicología Positiva.

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The present paper analyses the work of Phineas Parkhurts Quimby (1802-1866), father of the Mental Healing movement in North America. It will be argued that this movement, characterized as an array of informal therapeutic practices, should be regarded as an important precursor of modern institutionalized psychotherapy. To display this argument, we will contextualize Quimby’s work within the cultural framework of American culture in general and the development of capitalist economy in particular. Second, we will examine both the theoretical basis and the therapeutic techniques of the Mental Healing movement, pointing out some of its commonalities with subsequent types of psychotherapy. Finally, we will remark the notable resemblance of Mental Healing’s individualism with that of current Positive Psychology.

For a few centuries in Classical Greece, Michel Foucault claimed, people were able to shape their lives
according to the principles of beauty, and to “constitute” themselves instead of “discovering” themselves.
They achieved this through specific practices conducted by the self on the self to attain a state of happiness,
wisdom and moderation. The thinker largely ignores, however, the close relationship between this care of
the self and the Athenian democratic mechanism, focusing instead only the process itself. He also argues
that these practices were only confined to the future potential leaders of Athens and that they were in essence
an aristocratic occupation. This paper aims to prove the opposite, that these “technologies of the self” were encouraged by speeches and several democratic developments in order to make them more accessible
to the general population, and to highlight their organic connection with the Athenian democratic practices, which Foucault barely discusses.

Massively multiplayer online roleplaying games, or MMOs, present an increasingly popular digital media experience whereby identity emerges as players contribute materially to play but contributions are governed by affordances and constraints of the game. Unique to such digital worlds is the player’s ability to create and control a digital body – an avatar – to represent the Self in the immersive gameworld. Although notions of identity and the Self in digital games have been examined through a number of approaches, it is still unclear how the way one sees the avatar in the uncanny situation of having two bodies – one digital, one physical – contributes to a sense of Self in and around these games. Further, it is unclear how non-human objects contribute to human senses of Self.

In that vein, this study examines two research questions: How do players have relationships with their avatars in a digital game? And how does the Self emerge in relation to those relationships? Toward understanding how nonhumans play a role in the emergence of the Self, this study approaches these questions from an actor-network perspective, examining how human, nonhuman, material, and semiotic objects exist in complex webs of relations and how those relations give rise to particular senses of Self in relation to particular gameplay situations.

Tracing the history of the construct of “Self” from romantic and singular to postmodern and pluralistic, I argue for an approach to Self that accommodates postmodern perspectives that embodiment is only one way that the Self is signified across spaces. Actor-Network Theory principles are integrated with postmodern notions of identity to propose a Network Model of Self. In this model, the Self is a network of personas that are, themselves, complex networks of objects. Following, I present a research approach called “object-relation mapping” that integrates phenomenology, Actor-Network Theory, social network analysis, and Grounded Theory to accommodate network structures and multiplicities of the Self as it is signified across spaces.

To address the questions of how the Self emerges in relation to different player-avatar relationships, I conducted in-depth interviews with 29 players of the online digital game World of Warcraft. Transcripts of those interviews were analyzed via thematic analysis for patterns in player-avatar relationships and via object-relation mapping for semantic and structural patterns in how object-relations give rise to persona- and Self-networks.

Through this analysis, a four-point typology of player-avatar relationships emerged, characterized by variations in emotional intimacy, self-differentiation, perceived agency, and primary gameplay focus. It is interpreted that the different relationships are the result of sense-making processes in response to the uncanny situation of having two bodies – one digital and one physical. Analysis revealed that players of different relationship types “activated” different types of personas, resulting in a Self that was more or less complex and consistent across game and non-game spaces.  Further, players of each relationship type differently approached particular objects in crafting those personas. Ultimately a model of active Self-organization is presented, where players work with the affordances and against the constraints of objects in sense-making practices in order to maintain and protect preferred senses of agency and to achieve personal gameplay goals.

These findings suggest that players see avatars as objects that are, to different degrees, both human and technological, and as resources in the purposeful organization of a Self that serves individual psychological, social, and functional purposes. Different phenomenal accounts of the player-avatar relationship emerge as players work to make sense of human-technology interactions and to maintain agency and Selfhood in the face of technological constraints. Implications for human-technology relationships, more broadly, are discussed.

Some of the most ambitious attempts by astronomer-astrologers to rethink their art's epistemic foundations and predictive methods appeared around the middle of the seventeenth century, at the very time when astrology was rapidly becoming marginalised in European academic culture. The French physician-astrologer Jean-Baptiste Morin (1583-1656) offers the most spectacular illustration of this phenomenon. Morin's Astrologia Gallica (1661) constituted what is arguably the most complete attempt to theorise astrology's multidisciplinary foundations, and to systematise its interpretive methodology, in the art's 2,500 year-long history. This paper argues that the aforementioned seventeenth-century attempts at revamping astrology shared many of the deeper epistemic, theological, and political concerns that were the driving forces behind the work of Morin's philosophical acquaintances (e.g., Descartes, Gassendi, or Mersenne), even if the solutions were different. More specifically, I argue that just as post-Tridentine Catholic theology and spirituality demonstrably shaped the work of these philosophical novatores, so Morin's project represents the point where the astrological tradition was similarly transformed by this shared religious context.

"The Rise of Care of The Self in Daily Live Activities in The Digitalizing World" Üsküdar University Faculty of Communication 6 th International Communication Days Digital Transformation Symposium Üsküdar Üniversitesi İletişim Fakültesi 6. Uluslararası İletişim Günleri Dijital Dönüşüm Sempozyumu p.491-517
Özet
Gündelik hayatın kültürü; internet ve mobil teknolojiler ile dolaşımda olan yeni kültürlerle beslenmekte, geçmişten gelen yerleşik değer ve norm dizgeleri üzerinde sürekli bir değişim yaratılmaktadır. Dolayısıyla coğrafyaların geçmişten getirdiği gündelik yaşamı biçimlendiren geleneksel kültürler, melezlenerek zamanından ve mekânından kaydırılmaktadır. Söz konusu kültür akımlarıyla, özneler, gündelik yaşam aktiviteleri içinde kullandıkları dijital teknolojiler yoluyla girdikleri çevrim içi ve çevrimdışı süreçler içinde buluşmaktadırlar. Kendi rızalarıyla ve istekli olarak anlamlı ve önemli gördükleri kültürel değerleri alımlayarak, kendi öznelliklerini inşa etme sürecine girmektedirler. Böylelikle dijital kültür, öznelerin yaşam pratiklerinin değer ve norm dizgeleri içine sinerek öznelleşmektedir. Edinilen bu “yeni kültürel formlar” gerçekte, küresel ve ulusal iktidarların öznelleşmesinin farklı kurguları olarak, gündelik yaşam pratiklerinde dışlaşmaktadır. Benlik teknolojileri olarak da değerlendirilebilecek bu dijital tekno-dünyanın pratikleri içinde özneler, biyo-iktidarlar yoluyla kendi bedenlerini, ruhlarını, düşünce ve hareket tarzlarının üzerinde bir dizi operasyonlar yaparak, kendilerince kurdukları öznelliklerini dijital bir atmosfer ve yaşam algısı içinde ifşa etmektedirler. Süreç; güncelliğini kaybetmiş eski gelenekçi eğilimlerden, güncel tüketim kültürünün olanaklarıyla uzaklaşma ve arınma, yenileşme, mutluluk, bilgelik, kusursuzluk, ölümsüzlük ve narsistik eğilimler içinde yerel coğrafyanın insani görünümlerini değiştirip dönüştürmektedir. Böylelikle diğer öznelerle kurdukları etkileşimlerinde hem farklılık bireysellik hem de eşgüdümlülük nosyonunu sağlayarak, toplumsal etkileşim süreçlerinde de sistemle aidiyet sağlamış olmaktadırlar.
Bu çalışmada Web TV ortamında yer alan ulusal kanalların, “Gündelik Yaşam ve Moda Programları” dikkate alınarak amaca yönelik bir örneklem oluşturulmakta ve bu yolla tespit edilen programların kimlik temsillerinin kurgulanan öznellikleri ve kendilik kaygıları, postyapısalcı bir yaklaşımla irdelenmektedir.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Kimlik, Öznellik, Kimlik Teknolojileri, Tüketim Kültürü, Web TV Ulusal Kanalları, Gündelik Yaşam ve Moda Programları

Abstract
The culture of everyday life is fed with the new cultures that are circulating with internet and new technologies and a continuous change is created on established value and norm systems that come from the past. Therefore, traditional cultures that the geographies bring from their past and that shape the everyday life are hybridized and shifted from their time and space. With such cultural trends, subjects meet in online and offline processes which they get into by means of digital technologies they use in their daily life activities. They enter into the process of building their own subjectivities by adopting the cultural values they consider meaningful and important with their own consent and willingness. Thus, digital culture becomes subjective by permeating the value and norm systems of life practices of the subjects. In reality, this acquired "new cultural formats" manifest itself in daily life practices as different constructs of the subjectivation of global and national powers. In the practices of this digital techno-world, which can also be considered as self-technologies, the subjects perform a series of operations on their own bodies, souls, styles of thought and manner through bio-powers and disclose their subjectivity within a perception of digital atmosphere and life.  The process changes and transforms humanistic aspects of local geography through divergence and from out-of-date traditional trends with the facilities of current consumption culture as well as regeneration, happiness, wisdom, perfection, immortality and narcissistic trends. Therefore, they ensure the notion of both difference and individuality and coordination in their interactions with other subjects and belonging to the system in their social interaction processes.
In this study, a purposive sample is created by considering the "Daily Life and Fashion Programs" aired on national channels available on Web TV and subjectivities and care of the self of the identity representations of such programs are examined with a post-structuralist approach.
Keywords: Identity, Subjectivity, Identity Technologies, Consumption Culture, Web TV National Channels, Everyday Life and Fashion Programs

"Is the self narratively constructed? There are many who would answer yes to the question. Dennett (1991) is, perhaps, the most famous proponent of the view that the self is narratively constructed, but there are others, such as Velleman (2006), who have followed his lead and developed the view much further. Indeed, the importance of narrative to understanding the mind and the self is currently being lavished with attention across the cognitive sciences (Dautenhahn, 2001; Hutto, 2007; Nelson, 2003). Emerging from this work, there appear to be a
variety of ways in which we can think of the narrative construction of the self and the relationship between the narrative self and the embodied agent. I wish to examine two such ways in this paper. The first I shall call the abstract narrative account, this is because its proponents take the
narrative self to be an abstraction (Dennett, 1991; Velleman, 2006). Dennett, for example, refers to the self as a centre of narrative gravity, to be thought of as analogous to a mathematical conception of the centre of gravity of an object. The second I shall call the embodied narrative account and this is the view that the self is constituted both by an embodied consciousness whose experiences are available for narration and narratives themselves, which can play a variety of roles in the agent’s psychological life."

Scientific and scholarly attention to psychedelics has recently faced a resurgence. Recent studies suggest that psychedelic experiences can change values and behavioral dispositions, for example increase appreciation of nature and increase prosocial behavior. For this reason psychedelics have been identified as a promising option for moral neuroenhancement. However, we still struggle to understand these changes in the valuations psychedelics induce, or why exactly they are morally enhancing.

In this thesis I construct a philosophical framework to understand these changes. I combine Iris Murdoch and Abraham Maslow’s thinking with empirical studies on psychedelics and experiences of self-transcendence. Psychedelics induce experiences of self-transcendence which involve evaluative changes. I argue that these changes are not random but result from an intelligible process. I first claim that psychedelics in some cases induce unselfing, that is, perspectival and evaluative changes resulting from reduction of salience attributed to oneself. By reducing egoic centering, unselfing opens our attention to the world and can cause perspectival widening from egocentric into more allocentric (other-directed) or cosmocentric (universal) perspective. The second main claim is that the process of unselfing is often connected to sharpened perception of values. The increased attention to the world and reduced egocentric attributions of salience, resulting from unselfing, can widen our evaluative context and make it possible to perceive or grasp intrinsic values better, thus ‘tuning the moral compass’ away from instrumental egocentric mode of evaluation.

This thesis makes an original contribution to current discussions on moral neuroenhancement by presenting a well-elaborated connection between the experiences of self-transcendence and the evaluative changes. At least some changes in values associated with psychedelic experiences are related to unselfing. Further the framework provided is relevant not only for understanding value changes in psychedelic experiences, but it can be used to understand and to conceptually and theoretically integrate various phenomena which involve unselfing and techniques that aim at spiritual, moral and existential changes. Another original contribution of this thesis is that psychedelic experiences and moral neuroenhancement are discussed with the conceptual means of Murdoch’s and Maslow’s thought.

Many sexual encounters are nowadays photographed by the participants. The paper examines the photographed sex in the historical contexts of the visualization of sexuality, pleasure and desire; and the new norms of photographed self-documentation. Based on research conducted in Israel, I show that photographed sex produces new sorts of not only pleasure, but knowledge: about one's self, partner, sexuality and relationship. This “objective”, visual knowledge is often privileged over subjective, haptic knowledge. Photography also introduces new peformativities, encourage borrowing from media-representations of sex and rational self-improvement.

Mountain worship has always been one of the central features of Korean cultural landscape. While specific traditions of mountain culture have been utilized by North Korea’s leadership for the purpose of promotion of the state ideology, in South Korea mountain culture has acquired different forms. We argue that contemporary South Korean ki suryŏn (氣 修練) practices for perfection of mind and body constitute such manifestation of mountain-related culture. The ancient tradition of mountain gods (山神, sanshin) is a source from which the legendary figures of New Goddesses on Mt. Paektu emerge. We study origination and development of Paektu-related myths of South and North Korea, focusing on two divinities. The first goddess is Ch’ŏnsŏnnyŏ (天仙女, the Woman of Heaven) from the contemporary legend of GiCheon (氣天, Kich’ŏn), one of the ki suryŏn training methods. Our second goddess is Kim Chŏng-suk, the first wife of Kim Il-sŏng, founder of North Korea. In order to study simultaneous processes of origination and development of Mt. Paektu-related myths of South and North Korea, we consider sources from different fields of knowledge, such as folklore, art, philosophy and religion, politics, literary criticism, political science and environmental science. We apply an interdisciplinary approach to two seemingly incompatible processes of myth-making of contemporary South and North Korea. The two countries, divided geographically, politically, economically, have for many centuries been one nation and one people, one language and one culture. This commonality has not disappeared into the depth of history, but comes to the cultural surface even in this most difficult contemporary time.

The research conducted by this paper has been largely updated and elaborated in my MA-thesis "Senses and Passions of Benvenuto Cellini"; you are more than welcome to check it out. // The article aims to rethink the several stereotypes of Romantic tradition, which are still reproduced in regard to Benvenuto Cellini and his Vita. Using the approaches of intellectual history and iconographical studies, the present study pays attention to the coherent system of lay, scientific and ‘secret’ knowledge of the epoch lurking under the surface of the simplicity and even naivety of the author’s language. I argue that this autobiographical writing embodies a certain type of culture of the self deeply rooted in contemporary medical, alchemical and magical contexts. Organized around the concept of “getting pleasure,” Cellini’s practices of the self are built into the Neo-Platonic picture of the world. Analyzing the two passages of Vita, I demonstrate the author’s spiritual ascent from the corporeal suffering to union with ‘the One’ by means of individual and collective magic rituals, transforming his Life into a work of art.

Obwohl ernährungs-, gesundheits- und anderen körperbezogenen Argumenten eine kaum zu unterschätzende Bedeutung in der ökologischen und umweltpolitischen Diskussion zukommt, hat sich die sozialwissenschaftliche Umweltforschung kaum systematisch mit der Entwicklung 'sozialer Körperverhältnisse' und ihrer Bedeutung für die Lösung ökologischer Problemstellungen befaßt. Der Beitrag setzt bei dem Phänomen einer fortschreitenden Technisierung des alltäglichen Umgangs mit körperlichen Problemen an und skizziert am Beispiel ausgewählter körpertechnischer Geräte ein Konzept für entsprechende empirische Untersuchungen.

EN: "Although nutritional, health and other body related arguments are prominent in ecological and environmental policy debates, social science environmental research has not dealt systematically with the development of 'social body relations' and their significance in terms of ecological problems. The paper focuses on the phenomena of a progressive 'technisation' of everyday life 'body management', and proposes an analytical framework for empirical studies."

Dei due diversi significati che si possono attribuire al corpo politico – il corpo come metafora atta a caratterizzare lo Stato e la sovranità e l’opposizione tra corpo sovrano e corpo assoggettato – è il secondo a essere prevalente nel pensiero di Michel Foucault. Una parte importante dell’opera del pensatore francese è infatti dedicata sia alla descrizione del potere disciplinare, cioè di quelle dinamiche di sapere-potere che, nell’atto stesso di costituire la soggettività, producono forme di assoggettamento che passano attraverso il controllo del corpo; sia all’analisi del biopotere in quanto potere che, attraverso il controllo della popolazione, coinvolge direttamente la dimensione corporea degli individui e dei gruppi. In quanto si esercita non su soggetti di diritto, ma sui corpi e sulle vite, il biopotere costituisce secondo Foucault un modello di potere diametralmente opposto a quello della sovranità basata sul contratto di hobbesiana memoria. La posta in gioco nel biopotere, nelle pratiche di governo in cui esso si concretizza e nelle “tecnologie del sé” che lo accompagnano, è la normalizzazione delle vite. Se attraverso le nozioni di disciplina, biopotere e “governamentalità” Foucault descrive fenomeni importanti dell’attuale condizione “post-statuale” del politico, resta da chiedersi se la normatività e le istituzioni (intendendo questo termine anche nel suo senso simbolico), possano essere ridotte a forme di normalizzazione e assoggettamento o non siano invece elementi costitutivi dell’individualità e della società e rinvianti alla loro origine nel potere creativo della “natura umana” (H. Plessner).

Global Brain is a concept used to describe and understand the distributed and self-organizing intelligence currently emerging from all people and information-communication technologies (ICT) connected via the Internet. This network in its future form could be more intelligent and coherent than the current structure of the Internet with the capability to coordinate all necessary functional operations of human civilization. Such a system would represent a qualitatively new level of complexity and organization which would allow humans to solve planetary problems that cannot be solved by our highest contemporary controls. Thus, in a Global Brain metasystem, the human possibility space would allow levels of freedom and opportunity which have never existed in evolutionary history.

This essay provides a concise reappraisal of the philosophical discussion on technology of the last 30 years in the light of the technologically induced political and cultural crisis of our present time. It starts with a philosophical assessment of popular discussions on transhumanism and interprets the more backwards-oriented mindset of this movement as a symptom of the cultural decline of liberalism. After a short genealogy of this decline, it concludes with an outline of the real anthropological challenges of the digital revolution and its implications for the Christian image of man.

Целта на този текст е интерпретирането на някои понятия в работата на Мишел Фуко и заедно с това прокарване на по-ясни граници относно значението, употребата и отношението между самите термини. Заедно с интерпретацията ще бъде направен опит да се разпознаят и решат (или поне да се осмислят) конкретни проблеми, извикани от срещата на понятията. И по-точно, ще се наблегне на сложната в теоретично отношение ситуация на понятието „практики/техники на себе си“ като средина, граничен топос между свобода и управляемост.
Текстът се състои от три основни части. В първата част се разглежда проблемът за „практики на себе си“ и начинът, по който са отнесени към въпроса за свободата или по-скоро освобождаването при Фуко. Втората част тематизира три понятия, които са коментирани на едно място, доколкото са силно свързани – власт-свобода-субект. В последната, трета част, текстът се насочва към проблема за управляемостта. Въпреки разделението на три части, постоянното препращане на понятията едно към друго е нужно, доколкото те са смислово съотнесени едно към друго.

Showing how Americans have massively turned to a self-help empowerment model to manage chronic feelings of insecurity, Anxiety in Middle-Class America explains why no group has ever been as anxious about anxiety and interested in tackling it as a moral and personal problem.
Anxiety is the focus of increasing preoccupation and intervention in middle-class America and the late modern world. It is reportedly the most common mental illness in the United States, affecting almost a quarter of its adult population every year. Views diverge on what this means. This work is for readers who are intrigued by the exponential rise in reported rates of anxiety across the lifespan and by all the talk about anxiety, dissatisfied with non-sociological and symptom-based accounts of mental health, and open-minded enough to consider the self-help phenomenon as more than an oppressive craze driven by capitalist industry, neoliberal ideology, complicit publishers, formulaic writers, and irreflexive consumers.
In providing a sociologically informed account of some of the most widespread emotional troubles of late modern life and the unique historical pressures that promote them, this work will be of interest to researchers in a broad range of fields, from sociology, anthropology, and mind/body/society studies, to cultural history, communications, and social philosophy. It will also interest mental health professionals and cultural critics.