This issue of Angles, the new online journal published by the SAES, aims to examine the evolution of subjectivities and our sense of self in response to digital technologies, apparatuses and practices.
Submission Procedures:All submitted articles are subject to a double-blind review process.
- Abstract submission due: April 30, 2017
- Completed paper submission due: September 30, 2017
- Publication date: spring 2018
We encourage submissions from both graduate students and established researchers in the field. Submitted papers should not have been previously published, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere.
For further information, please contact the guest editor: Claire Larsonneur, claire.larsonneur@univ-paris8.fr
2. Call for papers :
The latest developments in digital technologies -- cloud computing, digital personal assistants such as Siri or Alexa and connected objects, from smartphones to smart fridges -- redefine interactions between humans and machines. These devices constitute as many prostheses of our bodies: they signal the advent of the augmented self on an industrial scale.
We are enticed in a myriad ways to spend more and more time online; simultaneously we are being subjected to the digital harvesting and exploitation of our personal data on a massive scale, through the systematic collection of the traces we leave in the digital world, willingly or unwillingly. What remains of our privacy or our autonomy in the age of the quantified self? How do these techniques and devices affect political and social categories such as public space, social interactions, accountability, engagement etc.? The standardisation of interfaces, together with the focus on code and calculus, also impact our use of language and the general rules of self-expression.
It thus appears that networks, screens and connected objects all have a bearing on our experience of self. Do information techniques redefine how we relate to the world, for instance by altering our modes of perception or our forms of expression? What can we make of our digital environment, defined by the continuous flow and loop of digitally produced and digitally distributed information? How do contemporary works of art and fiction deal with these digital selves?
Contributors may wish to explore the following avenues:
- How digital technology changes our body: revisiting the notion of cyborgs, of man-machine hybrids, of technological prostheses.
- How digital technology changes our perceptions: chartering the impact of digital sensors and captors (for e.g. medical probes and imagery) on our perceptions.
- How digital technology changes our social life: online personas and avatars, selfies, online codes of social interaction (conversation, banter, wit, harassment and trolling), online forms of celebrating and mourning life events.
- How digital technology changes our relation to society: investigating new forms of control (from political surveillance to consumer data harvesting) and new forms of resistance (whistle-blowers, Wikileaks, online petitioning etc.)
- How digital technology changes our representations of self: from the utopia of transhumanism (nursing the dream of becoming immortal through technology) to the dystopia of alienated mass enslavement.
This issue welcomes contributions from the fields of media studies, literature and the arts, linguistics, sociology and history, philosophy and language sciences.
3. Corpus suggestions and bibliography:
Films or TV series: Her, The Congress, Black Mirror, Real Humans, I.A, SimOne, Elyseum, Time Out, Westworld.
Literature: The Stone Gods (J. Winterson), Cloud Atlas (D. Mitchell) Demokratia (M. Mase), Never Let Me Go (K. Ishiguro), Infinite Jest (Foster Wallace), The Raw Shark Texts (S. Hall), Bleeding Edge (T. Pynchon), Implementation (S. Rettberg), Autopia (N.Montfort)
Theatre and the performing arts: DV8, Big Art Group (Real-Time Film), Blanca Li (Robot), The Participatory Virtual Theatre, Art Grid’s Interplay, Plain Text Players, Lori Hepner (#crowdsourced#landscapes), Maria Mencia (Transient Self-Portraits)
Bibliographical suggestions:
Badmington Neil, Alien Chic: Posthumanism and the Other Within, London, Routledge, 2004.
Baudrillard, Jean, La Transparence du Mal, Paris, Galilée, 1990.
Gallaway, A. and Thacker, E., The Exploit: A Theory of Networks, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
Harris, Jan and Paul Taylor, Digital Matters: The Theory and Culture of the Matrix, London, Routledge, 2005
Harraway, Donna, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York: Routledge, and London: Free Association Books, 1991.
Hayles N. Katherine, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Hayles N. Katherine, How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Hoquet Thierry, Cyborg Philosophie, Paris, Le Seuil, 2011.
Kac, Eduardo, Telepresence and Bioart: Networking Humans, Rabbits and Robots, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2005.
Larsonneur C., Regnauld R., Touiza S. et Cassou-Noguès P. (ed.), Le Sujet digital, Paris, Presses du Réel, 2015.
Sadin Eric, L’Humanité augmentée, Montreuil, L’Echappée, 2013.
Serres Michel, Hominescence, Paris, Éditions Le Pommier, 2001.
Stiegler Bernard, La Technique et le temps, 1: la faute d’Epiméthée, Pari, ed Galilée, 1994.
Van Dijck, Jose, The Culture of Connectivity, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.
Wiener, Norbert, The Human Use of Human Beings, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1950.
Wolfe Cary, What Is Posthumanism, Minneapolis, University of Minneapolis Press, 2010.
Persona. Etrangement humain. Musée du quai Branly/Actes Sud, 2016.
Further resources may be found online here: http://sujetdigital.labex-arts-h2h.fr/fr
We welcome all manner of theoretical inquiry into these fields, but we are looking specifically for contributions that will combine theoretical questions with concrete examples drawn from actual research. We are also looking for critical self-examination, uncompromising self-analysis—including of failures—and even iconoclastic contributions, provided they are grounded on practice and not simply on programmatic statements.
Scholars from all disciplines are invited to submit 500-word proposals addressing these or other topics. In addition to traditional academic articles, Angles accepts scholarly contributions addressing the topic partly, or wholly, in non-traditional forms (documentary film, short story, comic book, manifesto, pamphlet…). Angles also encourages proposals meeting high standards of scholarship from academics wishing to experiment with different disciplinary perspectives.