Abstract
Pervasive implementation of media technologies of digital self-tracking and self-quantification with the aim of self-improvement to an increasing extent entangle users in bio-political feedback loops: At the same time intimate and interconnected, sensory and technical as well as private and public, datafied procedures of access to one’s self link in with predominant neoliberal ideologies of 24/7 and with the imperative of potentially interminable self-optimization. Against this backdrop, the article discusses popular sleep-tracking-apps regarding their modes of action as algorithmic governmental media and their inherent politics of blurring the boundaries between work and leisure: Working on the ‘Self’ by means of self-tracking thus becomes recognizable as an interface that introduces complex processes of subjectivitation into a realm of technical feasibility under platform-capitalist conditions and reformats them according the conditions’ requirements.
Translated title of the contribution | Fit While You Sleep!: Algorithmic Governmentality and the Media of 'Self-Work' |
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Original language | German |
Pages (from-to) | 41-53 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Cahiers D'Études Germaniques |
Volume | 80 |
Early online date | 27 May 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2021 |
Keywords
- governmentality
- self-tracking
- biopolitics
- self-optimization
- neoliberalism