On the Production of Subjectivity and Surveillance: The Case of Amazon “Machine”

• In Event: Innovating, Interrupting & Regenerating the Human-Technology Frontier - I

Abstract

Michel Foucault’s conception of discipline has seemingly been viewed by Foucault’s critics as being outdated and failing to adequately grasp the problem of contemporary surveillance practices. These critical perspectives point to the ways in which today’s technological advancements have dramatically transformed the economies of production and consumption that move beyond the enclosed nature of institutions and the problem of subjectivity.
The publication of Signs and Machines by Maurizio Lazzarato (2014), however, complicates the above-noted perspectives of Foucault’s formulation. Lazzarato’s diagnostic reading of the capitalist living conditions draws attention to the fact that the production of subjectivity is the primary driving force of contemporary capitalism that affects all aspects of life. The key point, here, is that Lazzarato revives Foucault’s approach to subjectivity and Deleuze-Guattari’s concept of machine to argue that the capitalist system essentially relies upon two apparatuses of social subjection and machinic enslavement. Given that every individual is both subjected and enslaved to a machine, one can extrapolate that understanding contemporary surveillance practices is entrenched in the understanding both processes of subjection and enslavement.
This paper seeks to apply this insight into the everyday surveillance practices to understand the human-nonhuman interaction, in particular the case of Amazon’s technological apparatus, within which subjectivity is produced, i.e. human subject as a user/customer and as component parts, functioning like “input/output elements.” Amazon consumption, as a result, creates a sophisticated human-nonhuman system, in which the technical machine of production and distribution functions. Ultimately, the paper suggests that the inspiration Lazzarato drives from Foucault and Deleuze-Guattari helps with the theories of surveillance subjectivity.

Author

• Bahar Nasirzadeh, York University