Titre de thèse :
«Algorithmic Alienation»
Directeur(rice) de thèse :
J. Peter Burgess (ENS)
Année académique d’inscription :
2019-2020
Abstract:
What is coming to be known as digital colonialism has often been described as either the neocolonial nature of large technology companies’ politico-economic power in the Global South, or digital capitalism’s extraction of data resources. However, mounting examples of harms by digital technology along racial lines, illustrate that colonial continuities also manifest themselves in the role of race. It is thus an already racialized subject that navigates a digital colonial world. So far, research has often only implicitly alluded to this data subject but has not thoroughly focused on the subject’s own experience as a central analytical category. Therefore, this research project asks: How does digital colonialism appear to the subject engaging with it? With the help of Frantz Fanon, this thesis argues that digital colonialism can be understood as a process of algorithmic alienation, in which the very meaning-making of the subject is racialized.
Keywords:
Political philosophy; Phenomenology; Critical Digital Studies; Postcolonial