The Digital Subject: People as Data as Persons

• Published in: Theory, culture & society Vol. 36; no. 6; pp. 125 - 145
• Main Author: Goriunova, Olga
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.11.2019; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Data; Documentary evidence; Social networks; data; individual; social networks; subject; neural networks; posthumanities; algorithm
• ISSN: 0263-2764; 1460-3616
• DOI: 10.1177/0263276419840409

This essay explores the return of the subject in the computational context, which I address as a digital subject. This digital subject encompasses a digital identifier, correlations in data or a data profile, moving between biological characteristics and symbolic expression. I focus on the processes through which digital subjects are constructed by matching, correlating, modelling, as well as how they become enactive. The ways of pulling data together into a digital subject is often presented as a logic of fact, where data is equated with documentary evidence. Instead, I propose the notion of the distance in which digital subjects are produced. Indexicality comes from outside of data, whereas the regard for the thick distance becomes a mark of the form of knowledge. I conclude by arguing for a posthumanities approach that establishes the distance while allowing for different subjects to be called upon.