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University of Plymouth PEARL https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk 04 University of Plymouth Research Theses 01 Research Theses Main Collection 2017 WHO AM I? SUBJECTIVITIES IN THE SOCIETY OF ACCOUNTABILITY BIANCHI, AMOS http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/10040 University of Plymouth All content in PEARL is protected by copyright law. Author manuscripts are made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the details provided on the item record or document. In the absence of an open licence (e.g. Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher or author. Copyright Statement This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with its author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without the author's prior consent. 1 WHO AM I? SUBJECTIVITIES IN THE SOCIETY OF ACCOUNTABILITY By AMOS BIANCHI A thesis submitted to the University of Plymouth in partial fulfillment for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Faculty of Arts School of Art & Media November 2015 2 Acknowledgements I am thankful to my directors of studies and supervisors, Prof. Pier Luigi Capucci, Prof. Derrick De Kerckhove, Prof. Francesco Monico, Prof. Roy Ascott for their constant support and criticism. I also thank all Planetary Collegium fellows whom I met during the Ph.D sessions, for making enjoyable but fruitful the time spent together in researching. I add to these thanks the former and the current management of NABA Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, for the essential support in funding my research, and Jesi Khadivi for the accurate editing. A special thank to my parents Giuseppe Battista and Lionella, for teaching me the value of beauty and good readings. While writing the text, several times I would have liked to say: ‘I should discuss about this with Antonio’. But he is no longer here. Antonio Caronia (1944-2013), in memoriam. Gabriela is always by my side in the business of living. Without her this work would have never appeared. 3 Author’s Declaration At no time during the registration for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy has the author been registered for any other University award. Work submitted for this research degree at the Plymouth University has not formed part of any other degree either at Plymouth University or at another establishment. This study was financed with the aid of a studentship from NABA Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano. Relevant scientific seminars and conferences were regularly attended at which work was often presented; external institutions were visited for consultation purposes and several papers prepared for publication. Publications: Bianchi A., and Leghissa G. (eds). 2016. Mondi altri. Processi di soggettivazione nell’era postumana a partire dal pensiero di Antonio Caronia . Milano: Mimesis. Bianchi A. 2016. Chi sono io?. Soggettività nella società dell'accountability. In Bianchi A., and Leghissa G. eds. Mondi altri. 4 Processi di soggettivazione nell’era postumana a partire dal pensiero di Antonio Caronia . Milano: Mimesis, pp. 73-86. Bianchi, A. and Galati, G. 2014a. A screen is a screen is a screen: A screen is not an image. Techno-Ecologies II. Acoustic Space (12), pp. 236-242. Bianchi, A. and Galati, G. 2014b. The Threshold. An Iconological Analysis. In Loetscher C. et al. eds. Transitions and Dissolving Boundaries in the Fantastic Volume 2. Berlin, Zuerich: Lit Verlag, pp.19.28. Bianchi A. 2013. Che cos’è un dispositivo. AdVersuS (X, 25) diciembre 2013/abril 2014, pp. 220-230. Bianchi A. (ed.). 2012. Limina n.2/2012 . Milano: M-Node per NABA Libri – Laureate Education Bianchi, A. 2012. Never Say I! Networking as a disciplinary system: Exit strategies . Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research 10/1, pp. 79-85. Bianchi, A. and Roio D. 2011. Frames from the Life and Death of Jean Charles de Menezes. In Computers, Privacy and Data Protection: an Element of Choice , Gurtwirth S. et al. eds. Berlin: Springer. pp. 101- 109. 5 Bianchi, A. 2010. Frames from the Life and Death of Jean Charles de Menezes. Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research 8/1, pp. 5-9. Bianchi A. (ed.). 2010. Limina n.1/2010 . Milano: M-Node per NABA Libri. Bianchi, A. 1999. La teoria dell’immagine dei libri carolini [internet] Doctor Virtualis , available from: http://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/DoctorVirtualis/article/view/29/40 [Accessed September 16th, 2011] Presentations and Conferences Attended: 2015, June. Paper title: ‘Sedotti dal cerchio’. Logic Lane: Giornate di studio Antonio Caronia . Milano: Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. 2013, October. Paper title: ‘The Threshold-Part III’ (Co-authored with Gabriela Galati). Media Art Histories-RENEW . Riga: Stockholm School of Economics. 2012, May. Paper title: ‘NEVER SAY I! Networking as a disciplinary system: exit strategies’. Consciousness reframed XIII Technoetic Telos: Art, Myth and Media . Kefalonia: Ionion Center for the Arts and Culture. 6 2011, June. Paper title: ‘ADD AS FRIEND. On the Use and Abuse of Facebook for Life’. Society and Technology 2011 . Lovran. 2010, November. Paper title: ‘The Chance Keepers’. New Media Art Education and Research 3: Always Already New . Milano. 2009, November. Paper title: ‘Three Frames from the Life and Death of Jean Charles de Menezes’. Consciousness Reframed X . Munich. 2008, June. Paper title: ‘The Post-Show’. Society and Technology 2008 . Zadar. 2008, April. Paper title: ‘The Students’s Work’. New Media Art Education and Research 2 . Milano. 2007, October. Paper title: ‘Playing TV’. Researching the Future 2007 . Prato: Museo Pecci. 2007, June. Paper title: ‘TV Series and Net’. Society and Technology 2007 . Split. Word count of main body of thesis: 72,185 Signed…………………………………… Date……………………………………… 7 Abstract The doctoral thesis Who Am I? Subjectivities in the Society of Accountability aims to demonstrate that accountability is one of the most powerful processes of subjectivation in our contemporary era. The background is constituted by ordinary daily practices, born from the propagation of digital media in the last twenty years. Accountability is defined as the peculiar anthropotechnic that derives from the extension of the subject in the form of the account. Account is defined as every extension of the subject in the digital world, so that these extensions are univocally attributable to a singular physical body of a singular human being. The concept of subjectivity is considered as outlined by Michel Foucault in the period 1977-1984. The dissertation also aims to demonstrate that the society of control, investigated by Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, finds its present fulfillment in the form of the society of accountability. Accountability is considered in three moments, connected by a circular movement instead of a causal sequence. The first moment describes how dispositives act on subjects. The scene of address is constituted by the request of performativity made by dispositives to the subject. This request takes place in the account, to be understood as the interface between dispositives and subjects. Secondly, the same process is taken in consideration from the point of view of the subject, who is 8 invited to answer the question: Who am I? Thus the subject understands him/herself as a subjectivity without ground, because the hermeneutics of the self, derived from dispositives, finds the foreclosure of the referent as its foundation. In a third moment accountability is considered from the point of view of the statements ( énoncés ). The conversion of statements into information, and the statistical inferences operated on it (basically, the processes related to big data), are the focus of this moment. The outcome of this analysis is a second hermeneutics of the subject, characterised by the discourse of the master. Convergences and divergences between this (digital) hermeneutics, the Christian hermeneutics derived from the confession and the Cartesian moment are explored in order to outline the actual accountability as pastoral power and discourse of the master at the same time. In conclusion, accountability is considered as a possible ethics. If anomie and anonymity are excluded as far as they exclude the scene of address, and consequently the very possibility of existence of a bios , the valorisation of opacity is identified as the grounding of a possible ethical action based on freedom, an exercise of freedom to be understood as resilience to the complete panoptical visibility and the consequential proceduralisation of the scene of address. Keywords: Accountability, Account, Subjectivity/Subjectivation, Dispositive, Ethics 9 List of Contents Introduction ....................................................................................................... 13 The Banality of the Digital ...................................................................... 13 Subject and Power ................................................................................... 21 Workplan ................................................................................................. 29 1 Scenario ......................................................................................................... 34 1.1 Being Digital ..................................................................................... 34 1.1.1 New Media Numbers ............................................................ 51 1.2 Accounting .......................................................................................