2022 •
The narrative manipulation of human subjectivity : a machinic exploration of psyche as artificial ready-made
Authors:
Desrochers Ayotte, Alexandre
Abstract:
With the acceleration of narrative production in the twenty-first century, as well as the attempted appropriation of means of production and collective myths by market economy, there is an increasing need to question the effect of these new myths on the human psyche. The persistent and sustained ingestion of narratives infused with capitalist symbols produces a transformation of subjectivity, which mutates from unicity to increased standardization. Through a rereading of Aristotle’s Poetics, the first section of this thesis offers a political (...)
With the acceleration of narrative production in the twenty-first century, as well as the attempted appropriation of means of production and collective myths by market economy, there is an increasing need to question the effect of these new myths on the human psyche. The persistent and sustained ingestion of narratives infused with capitalist symbols produces a transformation of subjectivity, which mutates from unicity to increased standardization. Through a rereading of Aristotle’s Poetics, the first section of this thesis offers a political conception of catharsis that theorizes the receiver of narratives as programmable and guidable towards attitudes and postures. This conception leads directly to a machinic definition of the narrative and the concept of machinic enslavement. These concepts conceive of human subjectivity as engaged in processes of networking where it loses fragments of its unicity. The third chapter of this thesis theorizes Deleuze's society of control and its conceptual successors, surveillance capitalism and ectosubjectivity. Both these concepts attempt to theorize the reigning regime of power of the twenty-first century, based on personal data and the standardization of the human psyche. Finally, the fourth and final chapter of this research analyzes the notion of truth as described by Michel Foucault in The Courage of Truth. In the Greek notion of parrhēsia, and especially in its platonic development, Foucault identifies the homogeneity of a truth system based on a hierarchization of ethics. The reversal of this system by the Cynics into an assumed bestiality is crucial to this thesis as it opens new territories of existence and truth. In sum, the Cynic reversal permits us to conceive of a free existence, outside of a regime of truth that desubjectivates and homogenizes. (Read More)
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