The Ontology of the Subject in Digitalization

Abstract

This chapter is about the ontology of subjects in digitalization. Questions of ontology emerge as a response to contemporary concerns about the ways digitalization is transforming our lives. In this chapter the author’s suggestion is that any understanding of digitalization and its relationship to identity and/or subjectivity need to be considered within a more general horizon of ontology such as for instance suggested by post-representational views on the relationship between identity, self and technology (Badio 2006, Barad 2003; 2007; 2010, Heidegger 1977, Hekman 2010, Pickering 1995; 2011). The chapter highlights three broad principal responses characterizing contemporary entanglements of the self and digitalization contemporary life (Technoselves) – Disclosure, Performativity, and the Real. These three responses are each exploratory illustrated as well as theoretical bracketed by among others Heidegger’s thinking on technology (Heidegger 1977). The chapter tentatively concludes that contemporary digitalization brings the subject back to fundamental ways of existence—that of being-in-the-world (Heidegger, 1996/1927: 49–58). As such, the author contends that any considerations regarding the ontology of the subject in the digital age need to take serious non-modern stances on existence in the search for new imaginaries of the world and the subject’s becoming.

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