The Facebook experience: digital expressivism and cyber-biopower Cover Image

EXPERIENŢA FACEBOOK: EXPRESIVISMUL DIGITAL ŞI CYBER-BIOPUTEREA
The Facebook experience: digital expressivism and cyber-biopower

Author(s): Cristian Iftode
Subject(s): Social Philosophy
Published by: Editura Academiei Române
Keywords: Facebook; Foucault; subjectivation; digital self-writing; expressivism; normalization; cyber-biopower;

Summary/Abstract: The core idea of this study is to make use of Foucault’s three “axes” – veridiction / governmentality / subjectivation – in order to investigate Facebook as a contemporary field of experience. I focus my analysis on FB key function as digital self-writing ‘apparatus’, briefly going through previous historical stages of this technique of the self and trying to outline what is really new in self-writing 2.0, but also what doesn’t amount to anything but an interesting cross-fertilization of older elements. My conclusions are rather skeptical in respect to the possibility of transferring the FB digital self-fashioning into the real life. In the end, I even try to warn about the pitfalls and dangers that digital expressivism entails (narcissism, self-absorption, splitting up genuine community life), up to the point where it risks becoming a true digital instrument of biopolitical normalization.

  • Issue Year: LXIII/2016
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 555-570
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Romanian, Moldavian
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