DATA NECROPOLITICS v2

Algorithmic Governmentality’ (A. Rouvroy), ‘Expository society’ (B. Harcourt), ‘Black Box Society’ (F. Pasquale), ‘Surveillance Capitalism’ (S. Zuboff), ‘Techno-Feudalism’ (C. Durand), ‘Radical Anti-Humanism (E. Sadin), increasing literature has been highlighting how our societies and subjectivities are being modified and threatened by new technologies and Big Techs . While these debates are grasping how our social existence and future are being shaped by the development of novel technologies, guided by profit rentability and power struggles, I would like to suggest another critical layer. The current deployment of new technologies also relies on a novel circulation of violence. Borrowing the expression from Achille Mbembe I call this phenomenon Data Necropolitics, which is also the title of the book I am working on. Necropolitics is ‘the generalized instrumentalization of human existence and the material destruction of human bodies and populations.’ My intuition is that Data Necropolitics is at the intersection of these two phenomena. Data and new technologies are reifying human’s lives, through different procedures of ‘mortification of the self’ labour exploitation , and in some cases, and especially among vulnerable populations, they can foster violence and eventually death. Violence should not be understood as ‘mere’ physical aggression or violation of private property rights. It is also socio-economic and symbolic. When I refer to Data Necropolitics, I have in mind not only the physical elimination of given individuals, but also a predatory/digital form of governance that expose and produce social violence, vulnerability and eventually (social) death. It circulates below and set the foundations of our technological ‘welfare’.