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Jenseits der Autonomie: Die De/Problematisierung des Subjekts in Zeiten der Digitalisierung

Author: Block, K., & Dickel, S.
Published in: Behemoth – A Journal on Civilisation, 13(1)
Year: 2020
Type: Academic articles
DOI: 10.6094/behemoth.2020.13.1.1040

In the socio-theoretical discourse on digitisation there is, among others, a strong sceptical to explicitly critical perspective towards socio-technical developments. The focus of this scepticism is the autonomous subject as the normative guiding value of modern society, which seems to be at stake due to the progress of digitisation processes. Accordingly, there seems to be a broad consensus that these developments will be problematic. However, the fact that they cannot be it either – i.e. that they may not be problematized in social practice – is not taken into account. We would therefore like to plead in our contribution for a problematisation of this practical non-problematisation. The non-problematisation of human autonomy is not only a possible vision of the future, but, as an already present undoing autonomy, empirical object that calls for a theoretical exploration that is not limited to a mere diagnosis of a problem in need of correction. Instead of theoretically assuming that the acting subjects must be interested in their autonomy, our contribution takes seriously the practical non-problematisation as a real possibility of future dealings with digital technologies and, against this background, pleads for a theoretical problematisation of this non-problematisation, which takes into account the possibility of posthuman social orders.

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