The Stack On Software and Sovereignty · 第 271 页

1. Death of the User

In the disappearance, or at least displacement, of the essential human User, a multitude crowds into and overflows the evacuated position. ³² As the existential incorporation of information into the User-subject works to consolidate and then explode its humanist register, it does so by placing the biological materiality of the human subject onto a common plane with other actors and events. It doesn ’ t unwind human privilege into formlessness; it leverages and augments its form with other, perhaps livelier posthuman (nonhuman, inhuman, ahuman) agents and subjects. Along a legal axis, this spans from the recognition of the prospective “ personhood ” of other species (dolphins, apes, rainforests, artificial intelligence, robots) to the formalization of the personhood of corporations, complete with constitutional rights to free speech and to bear arms beyond those of the individual people who may comprise them. ³³ We may see interesting combinations of these claims, for example, artificial intelligences or rainforest carbon sinks, not just as possessed by corporate persons but which are corporate persons in their own right and enjoy the political benefits thereof.

We ’ ll visit some of the current denizens of this space, but first, I consider what the appearance of these kinds of posthuman Users means for the more general understanding of User subjectivization already discussed above (including in the City chapter). When “ things ” are subjects, then what are the “ apparatuses ” that provide platform subjectivity to Users? Only other apparatuses and envelopes? Or do people subjectivize things and give them platform sovereignty through interaction in the same way? Turning momentarily back to Agamben ’ s disposition on dispositif, he writes that “ we have then two great classes: living beings and apparatuses. And, between these two, as a third class, subjects. I call a subject that which results from the relation and, so to speak, from the relentless fight between living beings and apparatuses [emphasis added]. Naturally, the substances and the subjects, as in ancient metaphysics, seem to overlap, but not completely. In this sense, for example, the same individual, the same substance, can be the place of multiple processes of subjectification: the user of cellular phones, the web surfer, the writer of stories. ” ³⁴ So while any one entity can surely step into many different User positions depending on the demands of different apparatuses, for Agamben the very possibility of that position arises in the interplay between organic and inorganic bodies (and given his example, the humanist agent is the presumed exemplar of the former). He goes on to concede (a half-nod in the direction of Gilbert Simondon, perhaps) that while, yes, it is true that technological individuation is insep arable today from species-becoming ( “ apparatuses are not a mere accident in which humans are caught by chance, but rather are rooted in the very process of ‘ humanization ’ that made ‘ humans ’ out of the animals we classify under the rubric Homo sapiens” ); the sheer proliferation of such apparatuses demands, however, a different kind of encounter between that (already-formed?) “ human ” and the bewildering gizmos in his midst, asking strange and unwanted things of him. “ It would probably not be wrong to define the extreme phase of capitalist development in which we live as a massive accumulation and proliferation of apparatuses. It is clear that ever since Homo sapiens appeared, there have been apparatuses; but we could say that today, there is not even a single instant in which the life of individuals is not modeled, contaminated, or controlled by some apparatus. In what way, then, can we confront this situation, what strategy must we follow in our everyday hand-to-hand struggle with apparatuses? ” ³⁵ While he goes on to say that that the appropriate response is not one of simple refusal or acclimation, it does not seem for him that the landscape of apparatus might make worlds (and User-subjects) through encounters with things other than what he would qualify as (human) “ living beings. ” In fact, for Agamben, our engagement with apparatuses seems to work in the opposite direction: “ We must also immediately consider the apparatuses that crowd the Open with instruments, objects, gadgets, odds and ends, and various technologies. Through these apparatuses, man attempts to nullify the animalistic behaviors that are now separated from him and to enjoy the Open as such, to enjoy being insofar as it is being. At the root of each apparatus lies an all-too-human desire for happiness. The capture and subjectification of this desire in a separate sphere constitutes the specific power of the apparatus. ” ³⁶ Not only do animals and machines have no place inside this User position, they are, he observes, foremost subservient apparatuses through which humans inject, invest, and sublimate their own desires for reconnection (through disconnection). It would seem that by this doctrine, a more active subjectivity for machines and animals is, if not impossible, then at least archaeo logically or politically perverse. Things (and other humans) are what make humans into subjects; humans don ’ t give subjectivity to things, nor do things do this for other things. The “ third class ” of subjects between “ living beings ” and “ apparatuses ” is his diagnosis, now a unidirectional accomplishment.

User Layer

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