Being-as-body: Quantification, Self-affectivity and Resistance
James Dyer
November 2014
Being-as-body: Quantification, Self-affectivity and Resistance
James Dyer
November 2014
-
New Media and Digital Culture
Utrecht University
SID: 4202465
Supervised by Dr. Imar de Vries
My most sincere gratitude is to a patient cat and a common gladiola.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... 4
KEYWORDS .................................................................................................................... 5
INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................... 5
METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................................... 8
FRAMING BIOPOLITICS .......................................................................................... 13
QUANTIFYING TECHNOLOGIES .......................................................................... 18
QUANTIFYING TECHNOLOGIES AND BIOPOLITICS ................................... 20
TELEOLOGY AND SELF-AFFECTIVITY................................................................ 24
TELEOLOGICAL QUANTIFICATION ................................................................... 28
SELF-AFFECTIVE QUANTIFICATION .................................................................. 36
RESISTANCE ................................................................................................................ 44
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 47
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 50
BEING-AS-BODY:
QUANTIFICATION, SELF-AFFECTIVITY AND RESISTANCE
ABSTRACT
Quantifying technologies and practices have emerged as ubiquitous phenomena
in new media and digital culture. An increasing amount of commercial devices
are being used to record intimate and vital data types on a daily basis, yet the
normative form of quantification appears to rely on teleological ideals. They are
ideals to improve health, wellbeing and fitness through strategized
normalisation and regulation of the body. It is proposed that the normative
instrumentation of quantifying technologies implicates a particular resonance
with biopolitical power. This is a power, which renders the body as a “domain of
intervention”, that “massifies” the individual so as to govern and maintain an
average body and establish homeostasis. Via a discursive analysis of these
emergent phenomena, this thesis aims to explicate the cultural value in
developing an alternative form of quantification, a self-affective quantification,
which may be regarded as a tool for transgression and resistance against
biopolitical ideologies.
KEYWORDS
Foucault, biopolitics, quantifying technologies, self-tracking, self-affectivity,
resistance.
INTRODUCTION
At present there are a vast amount of commercial and academic writings on the
topic of quantifying technologies (Anderson et al., 2009, Gard 2014, Lupton 2014,
Wolf 2010). The varying arrays of disciplines and niche interests have cast the
topic as both subject and object of interest in many critical and analytical reports
(Boesel 2014, Butterfield 2012, Lupton 2014b). Explicitly, the specific focus of this
thesis is orientated around quantifying technologies, which are being used as
devices to communicate, motivate and inform the body, by quantifying the
“intimate” and the “vital”.
Arguably, there is no single definitive invariable academic debate in concern
with quantifying technologies and practices. Rather, the expanse of research
interests are structured around multiple contextual levels of critical and
analytical readings of these emergent phenomena. For example, there is research
engineered to frame the relevance of quantifying technologies and practices as a
valuable contributing tool to existing disciplines, such as ethnography and
anthropology, which are being developed into practices of “ethno-mining”
(Anderson et al., 2009). There are also anti-universalist debates (Bloch 2008),
which call the rigorous dogmatic application of intimate and vital data, which is
collected through developing quantifying practices, as being “blatant theoretical
bad faith” (ibid, 24). Similarly, it has been noted in other studies that the
recapitulation of quantifying technologies and practices, as an evocation of a
“computational panacea”, projects the potentials for these phenomena as a
source of “both tremendous promise and disquieting surveillance” (Levy 2013,
73).
As such, the deployed multiplicity of perspectives and focuses of interest in
current academic writing inherently produces multiple inconclusive
heterogeneous ends. However, the scale of interest, both academically and
commercially, demonstrates the cultural currency of “quantification” as a topic
of interest. Importantly the conditions that enable this research question to be
asked; in what way may quantifying technologies and practices transgress and
resist, rather than implicate, mechanisms of biopolitical power? Are not
reactionary towards current academic research, in the sense that the impetus for
this questioning is not to resolutely and holistically produce conclusive work in
regards to quantifying technologies and practices. Instead the research is active
as a critical academic contribution to the overall discourse in concern with
emergent forms of quantification. Explicitly, this thesis does not purport to be a
closed or conclusive argument; rather it should be regarded as a developed
critical alternative perspective.
To further legitimise and contextualise the research question; it may be noted as
being in some way grounded in Carlos Novas and Nikolas Rose‘s framing of the
“somatic individual” (Novas and Rose 2000). In which, they note the effects of
newly developing domesticated notions of health, fitness and wellbeing as
producing a mutation in personhood; where "new and direct relations are
established between body and self" (Novas Rose 2000, 487). Written in 2000 their
work deals with the inference and possibilities of risks within relatively new
"molecular genetics", specifically in concern with "genetic responsibility", selfactualisation and governance. The impetus for their work was in the developing
landscape of medical practices and the causal ramifications upon the “patient”.
As such, they are marking and exposing an alteration in the terrain of
intervention over “vital” and “intimate” faculties of life. Therefore, this thesis is
pushing these sentiments of intervention into the domain of quantifying
practices, as it presents a radical progression within the relationship and
experience of the body that Novas and Rose previously researched.
The contemporary relevance of this topic may be further noted in the market
expansion and governmental interests. In a whitepaper published for the Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation, it was estimated that “personal sensor data will
balloon from 10% of all stored information to 90% within the next decade”
(Pentland et al. 2009, 2). Additionally, to contextualise the scale of these
quantifying technologies, in a 2014 greenpaper, published by the European
Commission, a reported 97,0001 mobile healthcare applications are currently
available. The report was published to provoke interest in, and to “unlock”, the
potential beneficiary possibilities of mobile health (mHealth).
Through the methodology of discursive analysis, the research will regard how
quantifying technologies and practices are “put into discourse”. Particularly,
these statements of discourse will be revealed as registering an intrinsic
resonance with the ideologies and mechanisms of biopolitics. Specifically, the
revealed statements will be acknowledged as promoting biopolitical notions of
“regulatory mechanisms” within quantifying practices (Foucault 2003, 246). In
this way the theoretical scaffold of biopolitics will take shape as an extended
hypothesis and continuing discourse that expresses the contemporary condition
of governance (Politika) as an intervention over life (Bios).
1
It should be noted that not all “mobile healthcare applications” would fall into the category of
‘quantifying technologies’ as some applications are used to book appointments and review latest
healthcare news.
This exposure of intervention will then be framed within two postures towards
quantification - teleological quantification and self-affective quantification.
“Teleology” in quantification enacts a “massifying” effect over the individual, its
evocation is to produce an “equilibrium, maintain an average, establish a sort of
homeostasis, and compensate for variations within this general population and
its aleatory field” (Foucault 2003, 246). A teleological form of quantification is to
achieve general goals and to validate, strategize and schematize the body. This is
introduced as a posture towards the practice of quantification that will be justly
framed as implicating the fundamental ideologies of biopolitics.
Alternatively, self-affective quantification uses quantifying technologies to reflect
on the body beyond standardising practices, and as such is dislocated from the
normative teleological practice. It is a technological enlargement of perception
within the contemporary expansion over ones own developed intimate and vital
vistas, it is a process of acknowledging presence and realising the body as being,
rather than becoming. As such, self-affective quantification is regarded as a form
of transgression, which exposes the limits of biopolitical influences in teleological
practices, and thus indicts itself as a potential tool of agonism in resistance.
METHODOLOGY
This thesis will utilise the method of discursive analysis, it will be used as a
transient methodology to expose the subject of argumentation, namely
quantifying technologies and practices. Additionally, it will further justify the
cultural currency of such argumentation and provide rationale for the theoretical
framework of biopolitics. However, this goes beyond textual means and the
inherent digressive manner of discourse, and rather focuses on the multiplicity of
statements that contribute to the overarching discourse of concern, i.e.
quantifying technologies.
Furthermore, the strict entitling of "quantifying technologies" is not explicitly
required but instead may be justly attributed after a rational framing or
reasonable argumentation. For example, fitness trackers, self-trackers or digital
mobile health aides may all be reasonably denoted under the “quantifying
technologies” nomenclature. Therefore, this affords the methodology, being the
way in which the research is cast into a coherent sentiment, to be engaged with
multiple forms of statements from varying sources, such as literature, videos, still
images, commercials, websites and so on.
The contributions to this corpus of research will be accumulated from the more
dominant discourses, that is to say, from those with the ‘loudest voices’. The
status of dominance will be attributed predominantly through the presence of
specific devices and companies in aggregate forums and websites, such as the
Fitness-Trackers-Review2, Wearable3 and LifeHacker4 websites. Additionally,
once clear trending companies and devices are discovered, video-streaming
services will be used to search for commercial promotional material, and the
view counts will be assessed as an indicator of popular exposure, and thus will
be acknowledged as being discursively dominant. From that point, further
research will be conducted with focus on the exposed dominant companies,
specifically looking at more commercial and promotional materials, their
presence in the press and their competitors.
Specifically, the chosen methodology of discursive analysis is developed from
Michel Foucault, and will be particularly grounded within Foucault’s writings in
The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972). Michel Foucault’s method of discursive
2
http://fitness-trackers-review.toptenreviews.com/
http://www.wareable.com/fitness-trackers/the-best-fitness-tracker
4 http://lifehacker.com/5907870/five-best-fitness-tracking-appliances
3
analysis was outlined in The Archaeology of Knowledge (ibid), which was
written so as to develop a definition of his unique “archaeological” method.
Additionally, it subsequently expands on his method of discursive analysis.
Foucault explains how his work attempts to dislodge and challenge dogmatic
categorisations, and confront stubborn "age old continuities" of thought. He
approaches this by detecting and exposing the "incidence of interruptions"
(Foucault 1972, 4) and systemic discontinuities.
The archaeological practice was a method of examination by 'unearthing' the
archived past so as to inform the present, revealing similarities and irregularities.
For Foucault, this was an attempt to move away from "vast unities" and instead
point towards the "phenomena of rupture, of discontinuity" (Foucault 1972, 4).
Foucault’s methodology of discursive analysis was utilised in this sense so as to
unveil the implicit ‘metanarratives’ in concerns with his subjects of choice, such
as the discursive formations of madness and power.
Foucault's reasoning for developing this enterprise of work was not as some kind
of anarchic desire to despond status quo. Alternatively, Foucault wished to
challenge the "tranquillity" with which traditional systems of thought and
precedent influential procedures are conceded. He attempted to disturb and
expose the ruptures in normative claims of categorisation, classification and
rules. As such, revealing that "they do not come about of themselves" but rather
are a synthesised construction, "and the justifications of which must be
scrutinised" (Foucault 1972, 25). He approached this through an analysis of
discourse which he outlined as structurally consisting of "discursive formations",
which itself constituted an array of "statements".
In Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), the key chapter “The Statement
and The Archive” is introduced with the intention to “return to the definition of
the statement" (1972, 106). Foucault declares discursive formations as being
“somewhat strange […] distant figures” (ibid, 79), writing with humility that he
is attempting to "recapture the general outline" of the enterprise that he had
devoted himself to, however it was developed "in a somewhat blind way" (ibid,
113). Therefore, in this account Foucault is presenting his methodology, in the
most part, as a post rationalisation, which evidently uproots the inconsistencies,
and contradictory uses of his own theories.
Firstly, Foucault dissects his concept of "statement"; the analysis of statements
"does not question things said as to what they are hiding, what they were 'really'
saying […] it questions them as to their mode of existence" (1972, 109).
Statements are in fact instances of "ways of speaking" (ibid, 93), as "performative"
acts of language and signs. An example of this may be seen in a passage of
Foucault's History of Sexuality’ (1978), in which he refers to the relationship
between sex, power and repression. Foucault claims that the manner in which
sex is "put into discourse" eludes towards the interplays of power and
subversion, it is worth quoting at length:
[T]he first demographers and psychiatrists of the nineteenth century
thought it advisable to excuse themselves for asking their readers to
dwell on matters so trivial and base. But for decades now, we have
found it difficult to speak on the subject without striking a different
pose: We are conscious of defying established power, our tone of
voice shows that we know we are being subversive, and we ardently
conjure away the present and appeal to the future" (Foucault 1978, 6).
In this sense, Foucault is methodically utilising his archaeological framework to
unearth artefacts, in the form of statements, which contribute to the discursive
formation of sex. Notably, these statements are used to inform the knowledge of
the present posture concerned with sex. However, what is revealed in the present
is in fact what is not said, the "unsaid". One no longer excuses oneself for
discussing the basal topic of sex, yet one is aware of a form of deviance, and this
position alludes to a subversive act of defiance (ibid).
Secondly, Foucault briefly addresses discursive formations. Discourse, according
to Foucault, is the accumulation of a group of statements that are in concern with
the same “formation”. Foucault directly avoids using the terminologies of topic,
genre or categorisation in his explanation of discourse, as that would inherently
contradict the core body of his enterprise. Nevertheless, this verbose dance
introduces a seemingly fatal contradiction in the conception and methodology of
statements and discursive formations. It appears that there is a reliance on
categorisation to acknowledge what the artefact is that is being examined;
consequently this seems to negate the prime motive of analysis. However,
Foucault had written in his original hypothesis that the discontinuities between
statements that had been categorised as belonging to a particular discursive
formation, do not in fact need to co-relate. Therefore, this would be regarded as
the discrepancies and non-unities between the multiplicities of formations
(Foucault 1972, 32).
As such, discursive analyses should not just act as a method of isolating and
describing instances of statements, but instead be revealing the multiplicity of
peripheral discursive relations within what Foucault calls the "unsaid" (ibid, 110).
Therefore, statements may transgress time and categorical dogmatic disciplines,
but may still pertain to a single discursive formation. As a cosmetic example of
this, to exemplify the interplay of differences within discursive formations, the
discourse surrounding mythology and folk legends may be noted.
The Loch Ness Monster does not exist, and the statements that are regarded to be
concerned with the categorisation, the “formation” of 'Loch Ness Monster', may
in fact not be in consonance. A small boy's perception of the monster may not
accord to that of a biologist, historian, toy manufacturer or fantasy author. Yet,
all the statements produced by these individuals present a unity of discourse
concerned with the 'Loch Ness Monster'. These statements exist strictly within
the "interplay" of differences as discontinuities, non-unities and breaks.
Therefore, the method of a discursive analysis permits allowances for the
multiplicity of interpretations concerned with singular discourse. It will be used
in this thesis to outline the defining qualities of the dominant discourses in
concern with the discursive formation of quantifying technologies and practices.
This will specifically focus on a corpus consisting of commercial works, such as
websites, advertisements and promotional videos. The discourse analysis will
also frame the cultural validity of this research and provide justification for the
chosen theoretical framework of biopolitics.
FRAMING BIOPOLITICS
The theoretical groundings to this research will be framed within the theory of
biopolitics, specifically as a concept derived from Foucault. This will take shape
as an extended hypothesis of biopolitics, which may be regarded as a continuing
discourse that expresses the contemporary situation of the governing affairs
(Politika) of life (Bios). Biopolitics has recently had an increase of interest and
popularity of usage in a wide array of academic circles. Yet, it remains to be an
insufficiently developed theory that is keenly applied and rarely expounded. The
ambiguous terminology and indeterminate status of biopolitics has had mixed
use; therefore there is a pertinent value in explicitly positioning a general
contextual arrangement of its application as well as reasoning for the relevance
of its use.
The multiplicity of conceptions of biopolitics inherently hold contradictory
factions, two of the more predominant conceptions may be summarised under
the headings of "naturalist" and "politicist" (Lemeke et al., 2011). A naturalist
orientation towards biopolitics may be perceived as that which takes "life as the
basis of politics" (ibid, 3). Whereas, a politicist focus of biopolitics may be that
"which conceive[s] of life processes as the object of politics" (ibid.). Whilst these
distinctions may seem to maintain a definite dichotomy, there is indefinitely
interplay between the boundaries of these preparatory definitions.
Social theorist Thomas Lemeke has outlined three key fundamental facets to
biopolitics that expose common thematic interests and objects of investigation
(2011, 16 - 17). In a brief account, the traditional understanding of biopolitics, as
presented by Lemeke, seems to effectively be a formalised institutional approach
to answering socio-economic questions. Briefly, this appears to be enacted by
addressing "nature" through explication, manipulation and interpretation. Whilst
there is a long history of biopolitical action that diverges from the
aforementioned generalised sentiment, the key focus in this thesis will be Michel
Foucault's conception of biopolitics, specifically in his writings from the 1970's.
Foucault's theorisation of biopolitics "broke with the naturalist and politicist
interpretations" (Lemke et al. 2013, 33). According to Lemke, for Foucault,
"biopolitics denotes a specific modern form of exercising power" (ibid.).
Additionally, theorists Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose claim that the analysis of
these modern forms of exercised power “might provide a perspective from
which we might address [the] larger question of the transformations in [modern
man]” (2006, 23).
Foucault's biopolitics may be understood as a substrate layer to his theory of
biopower. Biopower is a socio-political theory which addresses, what Foucault
believed to be, an ontological cultural shift, specifically regarding the invasive
interventions of power over human existence (Foucault 1978, 9). Foucault maps
the dynamic shift in the “techniques of power" directly to the moment where life
and politics became intertwined. As cohered by sociologist and philosopher
Maurizio Lazzarato, "[b]iopolitics, understood as a government-populationpolitical economy relationship, refers to a dynamic of forces that establishes a
new relationship between ontology and politics" (2002, 102). Therefore,
biopolitics is directly concerned with the governing affairs of life.
Arguably, one of the more predominant references to biopolitics has been
presented in relation to the nationalist socialist movement. In which, modes of
management, validation, control and inclusion of life, as well as the
administration of death, was of elemental political focus (Agamben 1998).
During the Nazi regime politics became a mobilising force that solicited and
prohibited, normalised and socialised; in the nationalist sense power was
articulated as a position to steward life and administer death (Enoch 2004, 65). In
this socialist context, conformity and normalisation was configured through a
discursive construction of Otherness, of a Jewish subject. This created an
undesirable 'thetic' form, which was expressed through medico-political
discourse (Enoch 2006, 54, Kohl 2011). However, this is an extreme case of
governmental bodies politically engaging in life, as the Nazis “‘biologized’ social
concerns over gender, crime, poverty and other substantial social issues" (Enoch
2006, 56). The sovereign power of socialism was the predominant form of focus
for philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s conception of biopolitics. Whilst the severe
conditions of Nazi rule seem to exemplify the quintessential essence of
biopolitical power, as intervention over and politicisation of life, it should be
noted that Foucault is specifically orientated towards the issuing of power
through government, not sovereignty. For Foucault, governing is an enactment
of regulation and control through heterogeneous power structures that create
connections, tensions and relations, not hierarchies.
Specifically, the framework of biopolitics that Foucault presents demonstrates
that "power is exercised from innumerable points" (Foucault 1978, 94). Therefore,
the model of binarisms, such as that presented in the centralised power exertion
of the sovereign Nazi regime, is not contained within Foucault’s biopolitical
structure: "[T]here is no binary and all-encompassing opposition of rulers and
ruled" (ibid). Furthermore, Foucault states that sovereignty makes “law the
fundamental manifestation of power” (Foucault 1997, 59). As such, the
Foucauldian formation of biopolitics should not be interpreted as a desire to
divulge a sense of hierarchical order or dichotomies between those with power
and those without. Instead, it is to analyse particular forms of knowledge in
terms of power relations (ibid, 92).
In this difference, Foucault illustrates a shift in the ways power is enacted upon
the body. From discipline in the sixteenth and seventeenth century as a power
directed over “(hu)man-as-body”, to control and regulation emerging in the
eighteenth century upon “(hu)man-as-species”, as a continual regulation of life’s
mechanisms, enacted upon “the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena
of population”(Foucault 1978, 137).
Foucault first introduced the notion of biopolitics in The History of Sexuality
(1978). It was first featured as a substrate of biopower, however there is never a
consistently maintained definition or application of biopower or biopolitics. It is
even noted that Foucault displayed some hesitancy in using the term biopolitics
in his later work, as it is written within apostrophes, suggesting the term to be
more of an approximation (Macey 2009, 188). Possibly, it may be claimed that
this is one of the key conditions of the popularity of Foucault's conception of
biopolitics. As Foucault’s ambiguity and indeterminate application allows vast
leeway for interpretative mutations of definitions and uses in a variety of
disciplines and contexts.
Foucault first discusses biopolitics in concern with sexuality, as he claimed sex
presented an intense evocation of "polymorphous techniques of power" (1974,
11). That is to say, the multiplicity of modes and channels of controlling powers
are intrinsically present within the acts of, and discourses concerned with, sex.
This concept arose in Foucault's outlining of a somewhat alternative history of
sexuality, in which he explicitly states the issue as "the way in which sex is 'put
into discourse'" (1974, 11). Foucault was focusing on the history and
transformations of sexuality in regards to "discursive production", "the
production of power" and the "propagation of knowledge" (ibid, 12). Arguably,
this is an implicit theme present within the entirety of Foucault's work. He
inquires on a more heterogeneous level that is not dependant on, and in fact
actively discourages, a succinct linearity of causal progression as forms of preexisting continuity.
Foucault is keen to dispel any misplaced interpretation of his work on biopower
as an attempt to locate a central point of explicit enacted power. He inculcates
that there is no singular directly deducible source of actuated power, but rather a
series of interlacing hegemonic power relations. He states, when advancing his
position on the employment of biopolitics:
"One must suppose rather that the manifold relationships of force that take
shape and come into play in the machinery of production […] are the basis
for wide-ranging effacers of cleavage that run through the social body as a
whole […] Major dominations are the hegemonic effects that are sustained
by all these confrontations" (Foucault 1974, 94).
In the previous excerpt Foucault is explicitly stating that power is a continuous
and ubiquitous force that runs through the “social body as a whole”. As such, the
methodology of discursive analysis will be used to expose statements within the
discursive formation of quantifying technologies. In concurrence, biopolitics will
be used as a theoretical grounding to frame these “performative acts of
language”. It is a frame in this sense because, as cultural critic Slavoj Žižek
phrases it, “the frame does not add anything, the frame opens the abyss of
suspicion” (Žižek 2012). This suspicion is engaged so as to reveal the peripheral
discursive biopolitical meanings within statements of quantifying technologies.
QUANTIFYING TECHNOLOGIES
What is referred to in this thesis as "quantifying technologies" primarily concerns
technologies with the capabilities of recording a myriad of experiences and
environments into quantifiable data, effectively numbers. This may range in a
spectrum from recording positional GPS data to measuring the PH levels of
urine. Whilst suffixing these quantifying practices with the title of 'technology'
may elude towards the insipid idea that this is somehow a new or progressive
phenomena, it should be noted that the practice of quantifying experiences and
environments have been under application, arguably, since records began. Yet,
under the latest enthusiasms for 'big data' and 'smart' technologies, this topic has
become (re)-invigorated as subject and object of interest.
There is a litany of other titles that have been attributed to specific niches of
quantifying practices. Namely they may be noticed as life logging, life streaming,
personal-informatics, self-ethnography, bio-pedagogy, quantified-self and so on.
The array of names itself is testament towards the diversity of interests that are
involved in this somewhat ambivalent arena. However, the specific focus of this
paper will be concerned with practices of quantification that specifically regard
the recording of vital and intimate data. That is to say vital, as being essential or
pertaining to life or of the body, such as heart rate, blood pressure, body weight
and so on. The quantification of intimate faculties is the relation of body to
external bodies/phenomena, such as interpersonal relations, geographical
positioning, ultra violet exposure and so on.
Quantifying technologies enable the possibilities of self-tracking, which is
effectively a regime of autobiographical practice. Automatic recordings on a
micro and macro scale are documented, such as counting how many bites one
makes whilst eating, or ones overall general fitness or sleep patterns. These
events may be recorded using biosensors, haptic sensors, smart-phones, GPS
devices, dedicated commercial tracking devices and more. Additionally, they
can be worn on the body, ingested into the body, stitched into cloths or placed in
spaces inside houses, cars, gardens and the list goes on. The recorded data is then
accumulated into a dataset that may reveal something unique and previously
unseen about the tracker; such as having asthma attacks in particular areas or at
particular times, or that eating certain foods effects sleep patterns.
An exemplary case of this may be seen in a presentation by ‘self-tracker’ Paul
LaFontaine, titled We Never Fight on Wednesday (2014). LaFontaine wished to
implement a self-tracking regime in an attempt to explain his patterns of anxiety
and stress. Using the phone based application “TapLog”, when LaFontaine felt
any kind of distress he would select the custom category that pertained to that
particular cause of behavioural or mood change. There were variant categories
such as co-worker, health, travel, wife, money and so on. After six months of
tracking, LaFontaine deduced that the majority of the causes of his stress were
self-induced, as he anticipated the conditions of impending stress. Therefore,
rather than stress being caused as a reactionary response to his lifestyle, it was in
fact indicative of his own perceptions and attitudes of his environment
(LaFontaine, 2014).
As LaFontaine’s dataset grew, he also began to record more variables, such as
when he exercised and the ambient temperature. He then managed to form a
correlation between times when he exercised and warmer temperatures as being
the conditions when he was less inclined to self-induce stress. As such,
LaFontaine has developed a set of personal “remedies” for his stress attacks, and
developed a self-knowledge that was beyond his reach prior to self-tracking.
Gary Wolf, one of the ostensible pioneers of self-tracking, or the quantified self
(lowercase), due to his company Quantified Self (title case), states that
quantifying practices "remind us that our ordinary behaviour contains obscure
quantitative signals that can be used to inform our behaviour, once we learn to
read them" (Wolf 2010, 5). Therefore, LaFontaine could be said to be enacting the
essential gestures and movements of the self-tracker because he tracked,
interpreted and “learn[ed] to read” the intimate data, and altered his lifestyle
accordingly.
QUANTIFYING TECHNOLOGIES AND BIOPOLITICS
Mika Pantzar, contributing author of The Heart of Everyday Analytics (2014),
states that self-tracking "opens the intimately personal for scrutiny in ways that
have not been widely available before" (14, 2014). Undoubtedly, it is this practice
of revealing and opening of intimate and vital vistas, as well as an imposed
“bodily self-governing” (Williamson 2014, 3) which has attracted biopolitical
theorists to the practices of quantifying technologies. As personal events are
quantified via regulatory mechanisms, they become comparable and are cast
within correlative notions of self-optimisation and performance regulation. As
such, this positions the individual to be subjected to exclusion or normalisation
and inclusion.
An illustrative evocation of this may be seen in a Nike commercial for their
dedicated tracking device, the Nike+ FuelBand. In the commercial, the selftrackers are contacted en masse via social networking and encouraged to exercise
so as to gain access to an exclusive skate park. A security guard checks the status
of the trackers activity progress on their wristband and then admits or dismisses
them from the skate park (Nike 2013).
Explicitly, the commercial is demonstrating an ideological structure of reward
for exercise and ‘fitness’. However implicitly, within the peripheral discursive
meaning, this is also a demonstration of how the quantification of intimate data
may be used as rules for inclusion and exclusion. Furthermore, it is also
proposed that even if a body is excluded, if cast as ‘unfit’, the use of quantifying
technologies may rehabilitate and stabilise the body, so it may be regulated and
included. This is undoubtedly a form of what Foucault deems to be a “regulatory
mechanism”, which is initiated so as to produce an “equilibrium, maintain an
average, establish a sort of homeostasis, and compensate for variations within
this general population and its aleatory field” (Foucault 2003, 246). As previously
stated, biopolitics is not a form of discipline over the individual body, but rather
a persistent regulation of life, rendered as “the species, the race, and the largescale phenomena of population”(Foucault 1978, 137).
Another key example of this is present within the algorithmic processes of a
product such as Cue. Cue claims to allow access to ”deep information about our
bodies” (Cue 2014), therefore encouraging the self-tracker to be “proactive” in
concern to their wellbeing and fitness. Cue works on a molecular level; a swab
cartridge may be placed into the device that will read the levels of testosterone,
vitamin D and fertility or detect influenza. However, rather than visualising a
readout of the molecular information and allowing the self-tracker to make
judgements, Cue will make “smart suggestions”.
The “smart suggestions” invasively find gaps in the users schedule to book in
exercise, or suggest a change in eating habits with how-to recipes to help balance
a nutritionally deficient diet. Furthermore, Cue also contains contact information
for a personal “alert network”, which may include a doctor, friends or family,
that are automatically notified if Cue determines the user to be ‘ill’ (Cue 2014). It
is clear that Cue has a “massifying” effect over the individual body; utilising
generic processes to achieve the apparent ideal status of fitness and ‘inclusion’.
This is rendering the self-tracker as, what Foucault calls, “(hu)man-as-species”,
rather than “(hu)man-as-body”.
That is to say, the fundamentals of Cue are engaging in a “nondisciplinary” form
of power, as previously stated with Nike’s FuelBand. A disciplinary technique of
power is “all devices that were used to ensure the spatial distribution of
individual bodies” (Foucault 2003, 242) with attempts made to “increase their
productive force through exercise, drills, and so on” (ibid). These were
rationalising disciplinary techniques that were applied to “(hu)man-as-body”.
Adversely, the modern “nondisciplinary” techniques are not applied to
individual bodies, as “bodies that can be kept under surveillance, trained, used,
and, if need be, punished” (ibid). Instead, the body is addressed as “(hu)man-asspecies”, as bodies that form a “global mass that is affected by overall processes
characteristic of birth, death, production, illness, and so on” (Foucault 2003, 242243).
In this sense, the product Cue does not address the individual body, but rather
applies a generic normative logic, an algorithmic logic, which addresses the body
as species. Additionally, it may be evident that there remains a residual
disciplinary technique within the imposed fitness regimes and urged dietary
modification from Cue. However, Foucault explicitly states that the new
techniques, the “nondisciplinary” techniques of control, do not “exclude”
disciplinary techniques, but rather “dovetails” into and “modifies” them in some
way. That is to say, the presence of an explicit imposition of a disciplinary
mechanism does not renounce the situation of modern control. It only presents it
as existing “at a different level, on a different scale” (Foucault 2003, 242).
Through the use of quantifying technologies, such as Cue and the Nike
FuelBand, the recorded data is used to reveal apparent objective truths about the
tracker, which were previously not possible through regular techniques of
analysis. Past techniques may have relied on consciously logging events in
journals, or may have maintained a dependence on procedural symptomatic
diagnoses that required expert knowledge. Conversely, the self-tracker is now
equipped as a “proto-professional”, with increased technological capabilities and
a glossary of socio-medical terminologies (Novas and Rose, 2000).
At this juncture it should be clear how some quantifying practices may implicate
the fundamental ideologies of biopolitical power. This has been presented within
the “massifying” effect in the casting of (hu)man-as-species, and the nondisciplinary techniques of control through regulation and normalisation.
However, the original research question was to investigate in what way
quantifying practices may transgress and resist, rather than implicate,
mechanisms of biopolitical power. Currently the implication of biopolitics has
been explicated within the ideologies, symbolic uses, procedural logic and
functionalities of quantifying technologies.
Therefore, to be able to frame the possibilities of transgression and resistance
within quantifying technologies and practices, there must be an explicit
distinction made between two different modes, and postures towards, these
practices. These distinctions will be defined as teleological and self-affective
quantification.
TELEOLOGY AND SELF-AFFECTIVITY
It may appear at this juncture that the manner in which quantifying technologies
and practices may implicate the ideologies and agendas of biopolitics, far
outweigh the potentials for any form of resistance. Consequently, it is necessary
to validate two specific and divergent postures of quantification. Firstly, in this
capacity, “teleology” in quantification undoubtedly implicates the agendas and
ideologies of biopolitical power. It solicits the “massifying” of the individual as a
rendered “species” as opposed to an individual actant “body”. Secondly, is the
proposition of a “self-affective” mode of quantification, which is regarded as an
emotive, personal and non-ascribed mode.
This is to say, teleological forms of quantification engages the process of tracking
as a means to achieve ‘x’, a means to achieve goals. In this sense it is to conform
and validate the body through structures of schematize inclusion. This is the
perpetual enactment of biopolitical power as inculcated by the self upon the self,
as a kind of self-flagellation. It is mediated within the enactments and
encouraged uses of quantifying technologies, such as previously stated with the
Nike FuelBand and Cue.
Alternatively, to engage in self-affective quantification is to use quantifying
technologies to explore and relate to oneself in a manner that disregards the
intrinsic socio-political ideals of the goal and model orientated body in
teleological quantification. As such, rather than discerning levels of fitness and
wellbeing, so as to regulate and normalise the body, self-affective quantification
focuses on the reflection of self through data. It is a process of acknowledging
presence and realising instances of being, beyond prior comprehension. This is
enabled through the mediated use of quantifying technologies, as a technological
enlargement of perception. Both teleological and self-affective quantification will
be expanded upon individually in later passages; currently there is benefit in
framing the relationship between these conceptual terminologies and their
cultural relevance.
Tentatively, for concern of theoretical congestion, it is briefly proposed that these
considerations of teleological and self-affective quantification may in some ways
be synonymous with theorist Roland Barthes’ thematic classifications of
“studium” and “punctum”. Barthes developed these concepts as tools for the
critical reading of photographs. However, here they will be applied as an
illustrative tool for the aesthetic consideration of teleological and self-affective
quantification.
For Barthes, studium is a form of “general, enthusiastic commitment […] but
without special acuity” (1981, 26). It is a language or ‘lens’ imbued with a
cultural logic and political influence. The “demi-volition” of studium is
experienced as a “contract arrived at between creators and consumers” (ibid, 28).
Studium, in this instance, is proposed as pertaining towards the teleological
manner of quantification, in which the phenomena of intimate and vital data that
is experienced, i.e. calories consumed, miles walked and average heart rate, is
addressed through a general cultural and political logic. It is experienced as
either meeting or missing ones target, as either including or excluding the body
from the regulatory biopolitical forms of ‘illness’ and ‘well being’. As both
“creator” and “consumer” of the data, the self-tracker is regarding themselves as
an enacted form of “(hu)man-as-species”, as opposed to being an independent
embodied form.
A cosmetic example of this may be noted in the tracking application RunKeeper
(2008). It is an application that works with a smartphone and encourages social
interaction as the “motivation you need to hit your fitness goals” (ibid.). The
levels of activities measured by the users define their fitness statuses within
colour-coded categories of active, moderately active and inactive. If the tracker
has received admission into the “active” category, they may contact, via a
“shout-out”, people in the inactive category. They may send a motivational
template message “go for a run, go for a walk or go for a bike ride” (ibid). As
such, involvement in this application renders intimate activities within a generic
cultural and political logic.
Alternatively, Barthes also proposes an opposing theme to studium, or more
accurately, a theme that “punctuates” the studium, the punctum. Punctum was
used by Barthes to demonstrate the punctuation in a photograph; it stings,
specks and cuts the studium, the banality and generality (Barthes 1981, 26). The
punctum mobilises a deep personal self-affective encounter with the photograph.
As such, this will be noted as correlating with the notion of a self-affective
manner of quantification. This is due to the punctum being that which pierces
the mere numerical values and cultural validity of intimate and vital data, and
instead reflects and enables the possibility for a personal self-affective
“encounter”.
An exemplary form of the punctum in quantifying practices is Shay Moradi’s
Neuromirror (2004). Using an IBVA brainwave analyser, which is used to record
brainwave activities, Moradi maps the live data to directly manipulate live
streaming video footage of the participants face. When the participant is anxious
the image of their face distorts in a glitched manner. When the participant is at
ease the image of their face calms and regulates. In this sense Moradi has
presented the mapping of brainwave activity data into a personal self-affective
encounter. The metrics of brainwave activity are not cast as comparable between
multiple bodies; there is no discernable standard model. Rather, ones volition is
not to improve the reflected self-image, but rather to experience it as both
affecting and affected, creator and consumer.
Importantly, studium and punctum are not two opposing or parallel themes of
photography; instead Barthes presents them as two differing themes from within
the same photograph that may “occupy” the observer. Therefore, rather than
being mutually exclusive, they are in fact two co-existing experiential levels of
photography, ebbing and flowing in dominance. The studium, as the generalised
cultural and political logic, is an ever-present theme. However, it is only present
through its perpetuated acceptance, via enacting and recycling its discursive
logic. Inversely, the considered aesthetic introduction of punctum penetrates and
breaks the formulaic “demi-volitional” acceptance of studium, and proposes a
punctuation and sentiment of unique self-affective engagement.
This is to say, one may quantify all manner of intimate and vital data types, but it
is not imperative to ascribe a cultural or political ‘reading’ or interpretation of the
data. That would be to implicate the most fundamental agendas and motives of
biopolitical power, which is a gesture towards teleological quantification. To
practice quantification from a teleological perspective and to perceive intimate
and vital data forms within a generalised political and cultural logic, the
studium, is death. It is to present the body as docile, amenable and submissive.
However, the possibility to challenge these mechanisms of biopolitical control is
enabled through a self-affective mode of quantification. That is to to utilise the
practice of quantification, as a way to experience ones own being-as-body, as
outside of a cultural or political 'reading'. As such, quantifying technologies
become a potential “technical expansion” of affectivity. This will be explored
more in later passages.
Whilst the previous evocation of Barthes’ thematic structures of studium and
punctum may seem in someway divorced from the main voice of this study, it is
important to note that the aesthetic considerations of data, and the relational
values that they retain within the ‘creator-consumer’, is key to understanding the
possibilities of resisting the normative evocations of biopolitical power. To
purvey more explicitly the concepts of teleological and self-affective
quantification, the following sections will individually explicate the definitions of
the terms, their intrinsic synonymous connections with Barthes’ studium and
punctum, as well as framing the possible conditions of resistance towards
biopolitical control.
TELEOLOGICAL QUANTIFICATION
Teleological quantification is defined as the mode of quantification that most
readily enacts the ideologies of biopolitical power. It utilises quantifying
technologies as mechanisms that encourage and steward the regularisation,
normalisation and inclusion of the body. That is to say, teleological quantification
uses quantifying technologies as an appliance to direct and articulate goals and
ideologies of fitness and wellbeing through the self-tracker, as a “power of
regularisation”. To then participate in this mode is to present a docile-body, a
body that may be “subjected, used, transformed and improved” (Foucault 1977,
136). Therefore, this mode of quantification issues the body as being within, or
external to, the brackets of fitness and wellbeing. This is what Foucault distils as
“population-biological process-regulatory” (2003, 250).
However, as previously stated, the order of control through relations of power is
not exerted from a single source, instead "power is exercised from innumerable
points" (Foucault 1978, 94). Therefore, teleological quantification with a FitBit
device, for example, does not justify the brand ‘FitBit’ as a specific singular
source of biopolitical power. Instead, it may be regarded as, in some form,
contributing to the multiplicity of assemblages of power relations, which in turn
comprise the overall state of biopolitical control. To expand further, forms of
teleological quantification may be witnessed most readily in the surrounding
statements concerned with the dominant discursive formation of ‘self-tracking’.
Arguably, one of the leading brands of self-tracking devices is FitBit, a company
that claims to “makes it easy to track activity, sync stats, see trends and reach
goals” (FitBit 2014). Currently, the company offer four main tracking devices and
a cohort of accessories. Their most recent range of products may be used to
monitor active waking hours as well as sleeping hours continually for up to five
days. With the accompanying mobile and computer applications the user sets
their goals, be it for calorie consumption, steps walked, flights of stairs climbed
and so on. The FitBit device then monitors the self-tracker throughout the day,
notifying the user of their progress when prompted. Therefore, superficially the
FitBit arbitrarily directs and recognises the body as “general phenomena”
engaged in generic faculties of life (Foucault 2003, 252).
This is further compounded with the Nike FuelBand, a competitive product to
the FitBit. In an ostensible commercial, the vice-president of “digital sport” for
Nike claimed that during the development stages for their product they wanted
to create a “common metric”. This was to enable direct comparison with other
users, because “you can’t improve what you can’t measure” (Nike 2012). Again,
this quantifies the self-tracker into “general phenomena” as a multiple-body.
Additionally, in a 2013 commercial, FitBit states that “[e]very choice you make to
be active adds up to a healthier more awesome you […] it reminds you to make
little changes” (FitBit 2013). Featured on their website they demonstrate how the
device “lights up like a scoreboard, challenging you to be more active day after
day” (FitBit 2014). This presents the inherent competitive structure to the
participation of teleological self-tracking. In which, goals are set as strategies for
self-improvement and optimisation; goals are to be achieved and exceeded. This
shapes and frames inter-personal relations as well as experiences with the direct
environment, by framing intimate and vital faculties as schematized within
strategized frameworks of ‘self-improvement’. This is further exemplified in a
video commercial for FitBit.
The video commercial features men walking to work encouraged by their goal of
steps to be taken, a woman playing with her children because the device
“encourages you to get out and move” (FitBit 2013), as well as a man choosing to
walk to his destination instead of taking the metro because there is a calculated
2,000 steps that will contribute to his daily goal (ibid). Therefore, the idealised
applications and utilities of these quantifying technologies, revealed in the way
they are “put into discourse”, is the essential evocation of teleological
quantification. It is proactively directed towards an ineffable end purpose, as a
permanent task of becoming, as a regime residing within regulatory frameworks.
It is a mode of quantification that evokes the body as within the domain of
intervention, the domain of biopolitical power. The intrinsic discursive meanings
within these statements are literally rationalised attempts of intervention upon
the vital characteristics of human existence (Rabinow and Rose 2003, 2).
That is to say, teleological quantification is the model of quantification that is
orientated towards the purpose of reaching goals, and that directly fosters
(inter)-personal comparative analysis of intimate and vital data. Therefore, the
intrinsic value of this practice is evoked through the “power of regularisation”,
encouraging the body to be “subjected, used, transformed and improved”
(Foucault 1977, 136). As such, it may generally be surmised that teleological
quantification induces and implicates the key fundamental ideologies of
biopolitical power.
The proposed intervention over the conduct of body is concordant with what
theorist Ben Williamson frames as “biopedagogy”. This is a form of “conduct,
knowledge and practice acquired from someone or something considered an
appropriate provider” (Williamson 2014, 8), almost as a diluted form of
enlightened despotism. This kind of coercion and reforming is (re)-producing the
body as “visible in terms of data, calculable as numbers, and on that basis
amenable to enhancement” (ibid, 9). Indefinitely, this actuates and implicates the
body within biopolitical mechanisms (dispositifs). The “pastoral care” of the body
is politicised and sieged into conditional categories of general fitness and
wellbeing. In concurrence, writing about the beginning reflections of life in
politics, the fundamentals of biopolitics, Foucault states: “Western man gradually
learns what it means to be a living species in a living world, to have a body,
conditions of existence, probabilities of life, an individual and collective welfare
[and] forces that could be modified” (Rabinow 1984, 264).
The key terms in the previous excerpt from Foucault are: conditions, probability,
welfare and modification. Each one of these terms is addressed through
contemporary teleological quantifying practices. In a recent green paper
published by the European Commission on mobile health (mHealth), it is
claimed that the use of “big data” – as the “capacity to analyse a variety of
(unstructured) data sets from a wide range of sources” (EC 2014, 9), may be a
“vital element of epidemiological research” (ibid)5. It is stated that collated
mHealth data will provide a “holistic picture of patients’ illnesses and
behaviour” (EC 2014, 5). However, the definition of a “patient” using mHealth
5
Epidemiological research is the key authoritative voice in identifying health risk factors and in
the development of preventative healthcare. With a focus on ‘population’ the research is
orientated around revealing the conditions of health and illness through patterns and causally
linked reasoning.
technologies is effectively anyone with a smartphone and an mHealth
application – of which there are a reported 97,000 available applications (EC
2014, 7). As such, it is clear to see biopolitical ideologies deeply rooted not only in
quantifying technologies and practices, but also in the retrospective analyses and
utilisation of these phenomena.
Additionally, the European Commission holds enthusiasm for the
implementation of “interoperability”; this is the encouragement of “exchange”
between “linguistically and culturally disparate clinicians, patients and other
actors or organisations” (EC 2014, 14). The conflation of a “holistic picture” of
patients via mHealths “big data” and the desire for “interoperability” would
doubtlessly fuel a stronger evocation of biopolitical power mechanisms, as
reliant on “forecasts, statistical estimates and overall measures […] to intervene
at the level at which these general phenomena are determined” (Foucault 2003,
246). This may be specifically evoked within, what Foucault regards as, “pastoral
power”, as a developed system of obedience and a “power that assumes the task
of conducting men in their life and daily existence” (Foucault 2009, 267).
Expressly, in this instance, the apparatuses of biopolitics are enacted once one
begins to regard oneself as acting accordingly or discordantly towards the status
of ‘fitness’. However, fitness is not confined to the notions of health, but is as
previously stated a ‘status’, be it a status of fitness as a parent, a taxi driver, a
young male and so on. As such, it may be claimed that this is the definite
contribution towards the developments of a “new cartography of biopowers”
(Lazzarato 2002, 100). Whilst superficially, it may appear that the self-tracker is
acting autonomously in accordance to their individual fitness. It is also clear that
the generality of distilling fitness and wellbeing within gestures of goals, renders
the apparent autonomous acts of self-tracking within an intrinsic unity of fitness
and wellbeing. Which is to say, self-tracking is a self-governance, which does not
excuse the body from the rendering of (hu)man-as-species or external to
mechanisms of control. Rather, it is another iteration of the relations of power
within biopolitics.
This is further instructed within Carlos Novas and Nikolas Rose‘s framing of
what they have termed the “somatic individual”, which is a mutation in
personhood, in which "new and direct relations are established between body
and self" (Novas Rose 2000, 487). They focus on the influence of medical
procedures, both in discourse and in their effect on the individual “genetically at
risk”. Arguably, the state of being diagnosed as perpetually “at risk” is in many
ways reflected within the teleological manner of self-tracking; as one is
unendingly fighting for inclusion and risk aversion within a goal-orientated
quantification. Novas and Rose claim that the procedure of framing illnesses and
pathologies to a genetic causal root, and by extension the possibilities of altering
behaviours and relations to circumvent the diagnosed risk, is the basal
groundings for the birth of a somatic individual. In this sense, life becomes an
execution of strategy, in which there is a manifest “obligation to act in the
present in relation to the potential futures that now come into view” (2000, 486).
It is the “coming into view”, as a developed vista, that informs and validates
ones choices, yet also implicates the ideologies of biopolitics. Writing more
generally about power relations within the administration of life, Foucault states:
“[P]ower applies itself to immediate everyday life which categorizes the
individual, marks him by his own individuality, attaches him to his own
identity, imposes a law of truth on him which he must recognize and which
others have to recognize in him” (1983, 212).
This statement by Foucault may be contextualised in the functioning of a data
visualisation, or data artefact. Through the lens of what Novas and Rose term
“molecular optics” (2000, 486), or a technically expanded purview of the body,
the quantification of intimate and vital faculties may be visualised as a data
artefact. For the teleological self-tracker, the data artefact is intrinsically
perceived via the logic of the studium, as an appropriation of political and social
logic, as an imposed law of truth (Foucault 1983, 212). Concordantly, Mika
Pantzar and Minna Ruckenstein write in their paper concerned with everyday
analytics, a passage dictating the value of visualising data states: “Self-tracking
devices break down the body into culturally legible images” (Pantzar 2014, 10).
The legibility and validity of these images, the data artefacts, is the imposition of
power which the teleological self-tracker “must recognize and which others have
to recognize in him” (Foucault 1983, 212).
Consequently, it may be projected that the “demi-volitional” state of the
studium, as perceived in the produced data artefact of teleological quantification,
does not penetrate or puncture with vital meaning. Nor is it a mode of reflection
so as to regard the self as ‘being’, it only perpetuates the notions of becoming. It
is the interpretation of the acquired data artefact that elicits the political and
cultural awareness of being within a collective existence as species, “populationbiological process –regulatory” (Foucault 2003, 250).
It is the studium as being without “delight” or “pain” (Barthes 1981, 28), which
enables the creator-consumer of intimate data types, the self-tracker, to herd their
behaviour so as to align with the intrinsic biopolitical logic of fitness and
wellbeing, as a “law of truth”. Teleological quantification is regarded as a
manner of guidance towards an idealised enlightened maturity, however it
remains ineffectual, as a ritualistic scaffold of ‘becoming’ and of prescribed
purpose.
An exemplary form of the studium logic within teleological quantification is
clear in the BBC Horizon documentary, Monitor Me (2013). A group of four
individuals undergo an experimental “exposure” to self-tracking practices,
monitoring sleep patterns and steps taken. The aim of the experiment is to reveal
apparent truths about the self-trackers that may help them get fitter and loose
weight. Whilst the model of the programme is more a sensationalist exposé of
quantifying technologies and self-tracking practices, it also functions as a
fundamental example, or blueprint, for using these technologies. They are
engaged in a teleological practice because from the beginning the goals were set
to “understand the consequences of the things [they] do in [their] lives” (Horizon
2013), and to change ones behaviour in accordance to the quantified information.
It is stated by the presenter: “Each of us will be bombarded with numbers […]
the question is if simply seeing those numbers will be enough to make us
change” (ibid.).
The studium logic is apparent once the visualised data artefact is produced; the
volunteers do no experience their personal data in isolation as an independent
reflection of their singular intimate and vital bodily activities. Instead, their data
is compiled into a mass dataset, so as to derive an aggregated logic of
population, or what Foucault may have called a new body, a “multiple body”
(2003, 245). A comparative analysis is encouraged between the volunteers, and
this ‘multivariate analysis’ creates inclusion and exclusion. Inclusion is granted
for those reaching and exceeding their goals. Exclusion is administered for those
who have not been able to reach the “general guideline to keep active” (Horizon
2013). This format of ‘social motivation’ is also seen in Fitness sites like
SparkPeople, Fitocracy and MyFitnessPal, which all promote themselves as social
encounters that increase motivation to lead fit and healthy lifestyles through
points, rewards and status. The contributor becomes fit or unfit, active or inactive
within the logic of the social multiple-body.
Therefore the studium is present within the produced artefact of data as being
inoculated with an overall external nomological order of logic. Actions are
ordered as being comparative to others and to “general guidelines”, so as to
administer a normative prescribed regulation of action. Therefore, the studium is
the respondent to the posture of teleological quantification. It arises as a response
through the approach towards quantification and is actuated through the
perspective of the visualised data artefact by the creator-consumer.
However, as previously stated there are two distinct modes of quantification.
The second, self-affective, will be framed as being most capable to form grounds
for a resistance to biopolitical control. Teleological quantification was
demonstrated as being within the pastoral care of an “appropriate provider”
(Williamson 2014, 8). This is to avoid the rationalities of ‘being’, and rather be
ushered towards the sensibilities of ‘becoming’. Self-affective quantification is to
be mindful of and sympathetic with the body, it is to experience the body with a
volitional and emotive resonance that punctures (punctum) and transgresses
biopolitical ideologies and mechanisms.
SELF-AFFECTIVE QUANTIFICATION
Self-affective quantification is designated as a mode of quantifying practice that
may develop emotive responses to recorded intimate and vital data. It is
practiced with no didactic goal of bettering fitness, happiness or wellbeing.
Instead, it is a posture towards reflecting on the contemporary expansion over
ones own developed intimate vistas. As a cursory example, such an expansion
may be noted in the recent development of “vein visualisation technology”. It is
a tool used by the Australian Red Cross currently on a trial basis, it scans the arm
of a blood donor and projects a live image of the donor’s veins on their arm
(Passary 2014). It has been developed so as to reduce anxiety for blood donors by
reducing the difficulty of finding veins.
However, it may also be perceived as a mediated intimate viewing of ones body,
literally, on an infra level, under the skin. In this sense, the quantifying
technology, which is visualising veins, constitutes the conditions of possibilities
of which the individual may experience their body. However, its application
does not necessarily need to be medical, it may be used just to “see” oneself, to
bring oneself into view, as an expanded experiential range of the body.
Self-affective quantification is a basic corruption of the cultural merit that is
inherent in the aforementioned teleological practices. This is what composes the
radical ‘alterity’, and consequently less intuitiveness, of affectivity in the uses of
quantifying technologies. Self-affectivity, in this capacity, is an encouragement
towards a practice being enacted for its own sake; this attitude is elegantly
mirrored in Edgar Allen Poe’s The Poetic Principle (1850). Poe describes a
contained “dignity” and “nobility” in a “poem which is a poem and nothing
more, [a] poem written solely for the poem’s sake” (ibid, 1). This is an act of
writing poetry beyond the inculcation of moral justification or lust towards a
merit of ‘truth’ (ibid). That is to say, in this context, affectivity in quantification is
the noted value of being the creator-consumer of ones own vital and intimate
data, beyond the ostensible logic of, what has been termed, the studium of
teleological quantification.
Affectivity is not about truths, as such, it is not the proposition of a technology of
the self, as being “the belief that one can, with the help of experts, tell the truth
about oneself” (Dreyfus 1983, 175). That would be the illusory objective quality
of data that fetishizes absolute logic to an absurd level of enlightened despotism.
Instead, self-affective quantification is more to experience oneself
sympathetically, as a community of feeling, between recording, visualising and
experiencing vital intimate data - as the creator-consumer, affecting and affected.
This is opposed to creating a general metric of activity; self-affective
quantification works on the level of the “infraempirical”, or what theorist Mark
Hansen calls the “pre-perceptual” level (Hansen 2004, 497). It is enacted to
expose the moment(um) in-between, so as to affectively reify the ephemeral
through “technical expansion” (ibid). That is to say, through the emergent
ubiquitous technical abilities of quantifying technologies, one may now make
visible the previously fleeting and invisible faculties of the body.
Affectivity, specifically from a technical and expressive perspective, has been
well illustrated within video artist Bill Viola’s work, by theorist Mark Hansen.
Hansen defines this relatively emergent affectivity as “opening the imperceptible
in-between of emotional states” (2004, 589). Consequently, Hansen claims that
Viola’s work, Passion (2000), a series of almost imperceptibly changing slowmotion video images, exemplifies “a technical enlargement of the threshold of
the now” (2004, 589).
In Hansen’s paper The Time of Affect, or Baring Witness to Life (2004), he
focuses predominantly on the (re)-configuring of self-affectivity, as the affected
and the affecting being one and the same, that is embodied within new media
and contemporary art. Claiming that the “technical expansion of self-affection
[allows] for a more intimate experience of the very vitality that forms the core of
our being, our constitutive incompleteness, our mortal finitude” (ibid, 589).
Without wanting to grossly reduce Hansen’s paper to a single paraphrased
sound bite, Hansen’s concern is well engaged with new media practices,
specifically in contemporary art, as evoking “contaminated and expanded”
forms of self-affection. Hansen critically conflates theorist such as Bergson,
Deleuze, Kittler, Derrida and Husserl to analytically assess the implicit horizon
of possibilities within new media, specifically how they may challenge the
ordered conceptions of time, consciousness, image, body and more, to divulge an
altered conception of subjectivity. This is ultimately leading, in a round about
way, to the altered “expanded” state of self-affection.
Hansen is focused on the hyper-fidelity, for the most part, in connection to Bill
Viola’s Passion series. He claims that, “Viola exploits the recording potential of
film to its fullest: each second of film encompasses (roughly) 384 increments of motion,
384 discrete captures of information! (Original emphasis)” (2004, 614). Therefore,
Hansen’s focus is most notably anchored to time, and how emotional states may
reside outside of perceivable time, beyond the “neurophysiological threshold of
the perceptual now” (ibid, 615), i.e. consciousness. He therefore, equates the
utility of new media (such as high speed cameras), as awakening the
imperceptible in emotional self-affective ways, as a “temporal expansion”;
specifically regarding Viola’s work, Hansen calls this the “supersaturation of the
image” (ibid, 613).
In this context, quantifying technologies designate the potentially non-perceptual
lived experiences within an informational structure, which expands perception
beyond existing biological faculties. It is the ubiquity, penetration and intimacy
of quantifying technologies that evokes a new exposure of the body, in a sense of
“coming into view” of oneself. This is what enlarges the possibilities of an altered
self-affectivity within quantifying technologies, as well as what “mutates”
personhood in the way the self is rendered in relation to itself as subject
(Foucault 1978, 278-280). That is to say, the fundamental operations of
quantifying technologies expose an expanse of intimate and vital data, and that
data far surpasses the possibilities of conscious cognition. As such, the self
experiences the subject of their body on a new level; this is closely related to
what Novas and Roses propose to be a mutation in personhood (2000, 487).
There is value in returning to a previous cursory note concerned with the
synonymy between self-affective quantification and Roland Barthes’
conceptualisation of the punctum. Barthes describes the punctum as being
“lightning-like”, with the ability to “arouse great sympathy” and “tenderness”
with its “power of expansion” (1981, 45). The punctum is a detail to prick and
puncture the studium, as noted in teleological quantification. The punctum is not
as a novel artifice, but is an artefact of specificity that transgresses the generic
metric of the studium. It is a partial phenomenon with a particular significance,
exemplified within the intrinsic refusal to “inherit from another eye other than
[ones own]” (ibid, 51).
An exemplary case of this is noted in anthropologists Dawn Nafus and Jamie
Sherman’s paper about the ‘Quantified Self’ movement, defined by them as
being an alternative practice within the discourse of ‘big data’. They document a
self-tracker, Charlie, who has been tracking his cardinal direction. Charlie
presented his data in a visualisation of coloured pixels, which “indicated the
direction he had been facing every few seconds over the past three years” (2014,
1785). Specific pixel colours were used to denote north, south, east and west.
Whilst presenting the produced data artefact “somebody asked what the long
string of yellow pixels in the upper left was” (ibid). Charlie responded that it
must have been when he travelled to his parents, who live far north from him.
For the audience watching the presentation the “long string of yellow pixels”
was a curious data anomaly, however for Charlie it was a personal event, a
partial phenomenon with a particular significance.
The string of yellow pixels had the power to expand Charlie’s sympathy with the
data, as a community of feeling. Nafus and Sherman go on to state that Charlie
“felt this kind of tracking showed him what his perspective was at a given time
in his life” (2014, 1785). This is undoubtedly the technical expansion of selfaffection; the affected is the affecting, as the creator-consumer, utilising new
media, quantifying technologies, to evoke emotive responses within themselves
of themselves. The logic of studium, as a teleological practice, may have been
present if Charlie’s cardinal direction was compared with the average middle
aged American, and if it was possible to declare a common cultural metric. Such
as, during the Super Bowl most Americans face northwest, as a superficial
example. Instead, Charlie withdraws from the general docile logic of the
studium, and allows the self-affective arousal of sympathy between himself as
creator-consumer and his intimate vital data.
The withdrawal and extraction as a way to allow and encourage the creatorconsumer to be punctured with the vitality and intimacy of their data, is
captured in an excerpt from Barthes’ writing about the punctum:
“The photograph touches me if I withdraw it from its usual blah-blah:
‘Technique’ ‘Reality,’ ‘Reportage,’ ‘Art,’ etc.: to say nothing, to shut my
eyes, to allow the detail to rise of its own accord into self-affective
consciousness” (Barthes 1981, 55)
For Barthes, “Technique, Reality, Reportage and Art" are the generic principles of
the practice of Photography. Yet, these factions maintain relevance to quantifying
practices, as what may be regarded as a dominant voice of noise. This is how the
commanding discursive formation of quantifying technologies is put into
discourse. Phone applications like ‘OptimizeMe’ have slogans such as “optimize
your life” and “get the best out of every day of your life” (OptimizeMe 2014). As
well as devices like UP by Jawbone that claim “the path to better starts here”
(Jawbone 2014), or the self-tracking company MisFit that apparently wish to
provide “simple healthy living” (Misfit 2012). This is the illusory pith that
generates a continual confrontation between the encouraged demi-volitional
encounters of intimate and vital data in teleological practices, and the potential
technological expansion of self-affection.
At this stage it has been clarified that through a discursive analysis of
commercial materials, the clear dominant idealised form of quantifying practice
is teleological. This form of quantification relies on casting the body as a
procedure of population, as a new “multiple-body” that may be intervened upon
and strategize through becoming optimised, fit, healthy and ultimately ‘included’.
Consequently, returning to the original research question: in what way may
quantifying technologies and practices transgress and resist, rather than
implicate, mechanisms of biopolitical power? It is proposed that through a
refusal, the ‘closing of eyes’ in Barthes’ phrase, that one may transgress and
consequently resist biopolitical ideologies and mechanisms. That is to withdraw
from the univocal acquisitions of quantification, which harbours illusory
sentiments of self-improvement and “optimisation” through teleological
practices. Teleological quantification is an implicit prohibition of self-affection.
Self-affective quantification is a momentary emancipation from regulatory
biopolitical controls, precisely because it provides an alternative perspective on
the revealed intimate vistas that have technically expanded ones possibilities for
self-affection.
Therefore, self-affective quantification is framed in this way as a propositional
mode of behaviour. Far from being a flippant process, it may accent the intimacy
of vital data. Thusly, creating an empowered sense of ownership and
responsibility within the uses of quantifying technologies, as well as the
outputted data. As such, affectivity within quantifying practices creates and
instigates emotional responses and ties within the creator-consumer, as a
mediated sense of mindfulness and awareness. I claim this to be the core
fundamental site for the cultural value of this paper.
Briefly, the current potential ‘value’ of intimate and vital data is being assessed
under a market value with a retail price. In an online Financial Times article
there is a featured multiple-choice questionnaire, which calculates the “current
value of my data” (Cadmen et al., 2013). Options include selling personal data on
“Demographics”, “Family & Health”, “Activities” and so on. The results are then
finalised in dollar values.
Additionally, there are companies such as Datacoup. Founded in 2012, the
company is promoted as “the world’s first personal data marketplace”. The user
selects the “data attributes they wish to share”, such as “gender, education, or
monthly spending” (Datacoup 2012) and are paid in return for their shared data.
However, it is revealing that the way Datacoup puts quantifying practices into
discourse holds a synonymous resonance to that between testator and executor.
Terms such as the “compensation” for data and “beneficiaries” of data, vividly
presents the scene of a bereavement of something personal, intimate and
meaningful. As such, within the practice of self-affective quantification, the selftracker may discern a specific responsibility for, and ownership of, their intimate
and vital data. Thus challenging the more normative values and uses of personal
data.
In this sense, self-affectivity is a key tool of resistance because it may transgress,
and thus exposes, the limitations of the normative teleological quantifying
practices, which inhibit the pertinent value of intimate and vital data. Selfaffective quantification intrinsically undermines the reflexive biopolitical merit of
becoming ‘included’ through generic metrics of fitness and wellbeing, as forms
of regulatory mechanisms. It is a self-empowerment though acknowledging
oneself as affecting and affected, and as creator-consumer, rendering the self as
being-as-body as opposed to “(hu)man-as-species”.
RESISTANCE
It has been established that resistance against biopolitical power is proposed
within self-affective quantification. It is a peripheral and marginal mode of
practice that contests, through a counter-discourse, the dominant central notions
of power and regulation in the normative practices of teleological quantification.
Self-affective quantification instils the rationalities of being-as-body by reifying
the ephemeral “infraempirical” through quantifying technologies, and exposing
the value of intimate and vital data. Adversely, teleological quantification ushers
towards the ideological sensibilities of becoming, becoming optimized, included,
‘fitter’ and efficient. This necessitates the implementation of biopolitical power
through regulation, manipulation and control over “(hu)man-as-species”.
It is important to note that Foucault claimed, “[w]here there is power, there is
resistance, and yet […] one is always ‘inside’ power, there is no ‘escaping’ it,
there is no absolute outside where it is concerned” (1978, 95). As such, there
seems to be an inbuilt futility and paralysis within the structure and prospect of
resistance (Fraser 1981). However, Foucault still maintains that power may be
“undermined”. Generally, the undermining of power took multiple forms in
Foucault’s enterprise of work; theoretician Brent Pickett claims there to be three
distinct stages of emphasis: “difference” in the 1960s, “revolutionary agitation”
in the 1970s and “diffuse localized resistance” in Foucault’s later writings (1996,
245). As such, Pickett claims that “[a]ny reasonable interpretation of Foucaultian
resistance will necessarily have a large amount of indeterminacy” (ibid, 461).
However, he notes that the ubiquity of power counter intuitively “means that
there are multiple opportunities for resistance” (ibid).
Importantly, the form of resistance acknowledged in this thesis is a connection
between Foucault’s proposition of “agonism” and “transgression”. These could
be regarded as a transitory middle phase between what has been outlined by
Pickett as “revolutionary agitation” and “diffuse localized resistance” (ibid, 245).
Firstly, agonism is to compete, rather than to resist or oppose with an
antagonism, it is a relationship of “mutual incitement” and “permanent
provocation” (Rabinow 2001, 342). Therefore, agonism is a form of resistance that
“relies upon the situation against which it struggles” (Foucault 1997, 168).
Secondly, “transgression is neither violence […] nor a victory […] Transgression
contains nothing negative, but affirms limited being—affirms the limitlessness
into which it leaps as it opens this zone to existence for the first time” (Foucault
1997, 35). In this sense, to transgress does not mean to violently dispose of
limitations by moving beyond them victoriously. Rather, transgression is
temporary “like a flash of lightning in the night” (ibid). It exposes the truths of
limitation, so as to affirm difference. As such, transgression undermines
limitations through exposure and elicited contestation, “[t]ransgression then is
nothing less than the affirmation of negation” (Picket 1996, 451).
Therefore, self-affective quantification is a device of transgression, and to
specifically implement it, in any form, is an act of agonism. To experience ones
own intimate and vital data on the level of punctum, is to expose the
surrounding dominant demi-volitional logic of the studium, the “docile cultural
subject” (Barthes 1981, 43), within teleological quantifying practices. As such, the
transgressive properties of self-affective quantification exposes and reveals, what
Foucault calls, the “intolerable”. In this instance, the "intolerable" is the
dominance of teleology that relies on a particular exploitation of self-conduct,
which casts the body within a biopolitical regime, as “subjected, used,
transformed and improved” (Foucault 1977, 136).
Therefore, rather than presenting a resistance orientated around a self-defeating
task of a ‘counter-truth', as some kind of parrying enlightenment or new
normative system. It is presented that the proposed resistance is elicited through
a propositional shift in perspective of vital and intimate data, to develop an
affective tie and volitional bond. As such, the proposed resistance has no treaties
or explicit formation of conduct, it is not an ascription, nor is it a mere negation
of power, or construction of “antimatter” (Pickett 2996, 459). It is rather
pronounced as revealing the specific condition for the technical expansion of selfaffection, which exposes the radical value of ones intimate and vital data. This is
through independent emotive responses, which render the individual as beingas-body, rather than subjected to the cultural order present in the logic of
“(hu)man-as-species”.
Consequently, the promoting of self-affective quantification is to foster the
condition of resistance, as a kind of aesthetic self-empowerment. This is because
it is "the swarm of points of resistance [that] traverses social stratifications and
individual unities" (Foucault 1978, 96). That is to say, resistance is local in the
sense that it is not the rallied accounts of collective groups that productively
incite transgression; it is the local radical self-empowerment that solicits
transgression as a "swarm of points of resistance (emphasis added)" (ibid).
Briefly, one way in which this may be evoked is through a relational aesthetic of
data visualisation (Dyer 2014).
As expanded from art critic Nicolas Bourriaud’s conception of a relational
aesthetic of art (Bourriaud 1998), the relational aesthetic of data visualisation is a
sympathetic form of visualisation, which explicitly connects the data with the
visualisation, and the visualisation with the beholder. As such, it is a form that
possesses no generic procedure of production. Rather, each visualisation is
informed by directly considering the specific data type and source. Originally,
this was proposed to create a critical response to traditional iconographic data
visualisation procedures, and to engage a possible supplementary alternative
process of data visualisation. This had a specific impetus in the developing
immediate horizon of intimate and vital data (Dyer 2014, 5). In the context of
resistance, the relational aesthetic of data visualisation inherently uncouples
intimate and vital data from the dominant demi-volitional logic of the studium.
As a cosmetic example, within a relational aesthetic, the perspective of ones heart
rate no longer resides within Barthes’ “blah-blah” of health, diet, age or potential
risk. That would be the teleological framework that engages the studium logic;
graphically this would be visualised probably as a graph showing progression
over time, or in a chart displaying comparison between social networks.
However, in a relational aesthetic, a heart rate may be visualised through gently
pulsing lights in a room, such as Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s interactive installation
Pulse Room (2006). This would reflect and visualise the vital recorded data, as a
kind of reflection on being, as a technical expansion of self-affectivity. This rerenders the vital and intimate data from being a generic unit of measurement, to
a unique recording of being. This is a singular cosmetic example and should not
be recognised as the limitations of relational aesthetics in data visualisation or as
the limited capacity for resistance in self-affective quantifying practices.
Finally, this thesis acts as an informed contribution to the action of resistance
through self-affective quantification as an act of transgression and form of
agonism. It sanctions the explicit necessity for a formulation and reaffirmation of
one’s own discourse, specifically in the way the self is rendered in relation to
itself as subject (Foucault 1978, 278-280).
CONCLUSION
To address the question: in what way may quantifying technologies and
practices transgress and resist, rather than implicate, mechanisms of biopolitical
power? This thesis outlined specifically, through a discursive analysis, how
biopolitical mechanisms and ideologies are present within the normative
teleological modes of quantification. An alternative approach to quantifying
practices, self-affective quantification, was then outlined as being a possible tool
of resistance. The explicit differences and relations between these two forms of
quantification were expounded within Barthes’ concept of the studium and the
punctum. These concepts were used to further illustrate and validate the
argumentation for a self-affective mode of quantification as a form of resistance.
This specific form of resistance was explicitly rendered within the notions of
transgression and agonism, which were implicitly defined as manners of
exposure and action.
As such, the ways in which quantifying technologies may resist mechanisms of
biopolitical power is through a radical re-appropriation of the technologies, and
via a fundamental shift in the perspective of intimate and vital data. In this sense,
self-affectivity within quantifying practices and technologies becomes an action
and tool of resistance against biopolitical mechanisms of power. Ultimately, the
encouraged resistance is developed as a necessary formulation and reaffirmation
of one’s own discourse, specifically to form a critical awareness of the way in
which the self is rendered in relation to itself as subject.
It has been outlined that the elementary uses of quantifying technologies regard
the general body (in intimate data), as well as life (in vital data) and as such, it
was justified to utilise the theoretical framework of biopolitics to frame the
current phenomena of quantifying practices. As fundamentally, biopolitics is
concerned with the governing affairs of life, and may be described more
generally as a developed politics of everyday life. However, beyond the more
traditional uses of biopolitics, the theory was also used as a structure to form a
resistance. That is to say, by revealing the fundamental biopolitical ideologies
within performative signs and acts of language concerned with quantifying
technologies, the thesis not only articulated the state of current condition, but
also elicited the potentials of action beyond that current condition. However, the
proposal of resistance was explicated in value and not formulated in structure,
because this would be a self-defeating task of producing a normative model of
action and would thus be another iteration of power and control.
The method of discursive analysis was used to reveal peripheral discursive
meanings within the ways in which quantifying technologies have been put into
discourse. However, the weakness of this method is within what Foucault calls a
“perspectival and strategic truth” (Foucault 1997, 61). Which is to say, due to the
fact that the research is focused on a specific discourse, it is also, in some way,
contributing to the discourse. That is to say, the research may not be outside of
the discourse under analysis. As such, the research is admitted to one or another
perspective, creating a “strategic truth”, so as to frame the argument. Therefore,
this thesis may in no sense be regarded as a closed and conclusive argumentation
concerned with the discourse of quantifying technologies. However, it may be
acknowledged as contributing to the overall discourse, and potentially providing
a critical alternative perspective and impetus for further proceeding research.
Finally, further research may be critically engaged in the potential developments
of standardisation in quantifying technologies (EC 2014) and the implicit counter
measures against it. Such as, with growing open-source communities like Ada
Fruit and Make, where the model of ‘do-it-yourself’ and ‘hacking’ is strongly
promoted. This is a model in which products and projects are localised and
shared, rather than standardised and distributed. Furthermore, there is a
deficiency in epistemological, specifically anthropological, studies into
quantifying practices that explore more than the mere superficial practices of
quantification. A curious study may utilise the notions of teleological and selfaffective quantification as analytical tools to critically assess specific end user
practices and how it is these users put their practices into discourse.
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