Algorithmic Management: Subjectivation under Question

Based on the concept of algorithmic gouvernementality by Antoinette Rouvroy, the article analyzes the elimination of subjectivation from governance practices based on algorithmic analysis of big data. First, based on the ideas of Kant and Foucault, the roots of the problematics of subjectivation are traced. Human is doomed to the labor of subjectivation, or becoming human. He is deprived of in­nate knowledge about himself; therefore he needs others and the production of such knowledge in order to build his way of existence by performing the work of subjectivation. In the approach of the gouvernementality studies, special attention is paid to how the governance produces the subjects it controls. Power thinks and cognizes individuals, informs them about the desired image of the subject and encourages appropriate subjectivation. Algorithmic gouverne­mentality pushes the quantifying logic of neoliberal governance to the limit. In governance based on algorithmic analysis of big data, reality in all its unpre­dictability and uncertainty is replaced by a controlled data space. Such control is naturalized and presented as an indisputable result of signal processing of reality itself, which no longer needs interpretation or signification. The signal displaces the meaning and the image. This neutralizes both the world and the subject. The individual as a subjective and objective integrity is replaced by the dividual as a set of data. Algorithmic control proceeds “in the dark”, since it no longer needs to translate any image of the world or subject. It guides behavior, but it does not subjectify. The possible consequences of the spread of such government techniques are traced.