ANTOINETTE ROUVROY: ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENTALITY – THE TAMING OF MULTITUDES @ Cent­re for Di­gi­tal Cul­tu­res

ANTOINETTE ROUVROY: ALGORITHMIC GOVERNMENTALITY – THE TAMING OF MULTITUDES

01.09.2014 18:00Hybrid Publishing Lab

Phi­lo­so­phy of the Web Lec­tu­re Se­ries

Ve­nue: Cent­re for Di­gi­tal Cul­tu­res, Sülz­tor­str. 21–35, 21335 Lüne­burg, 2. Floor

Al­go­rith­mic go­vern­ment is a form of go­vern­ment fed with raw data (in­fra-per­so­nal si­gnals), af­fec­ting in­di­vi­du­als and groups by way of in­dus­tri­al per­so­na­liza­t­i­on and preemp­ti­on. An un­pre­ce­den­ted ra­tio­na­li­ty/​mode of go­vern­ment, al­go­rith­mic go­vern­men­ta­li­ty is, An­toi­net­te Rouvroy will try to de­mons­tra­te, the mode of go­vern­ment ty­pi­cal of the age of multi­tu­des, and a uni­que­ly power­ful neo­li­be­ral re­ab­sorp­ti­on of the cri­ti­cal ethos in­heri­ted from the six­ties. The type of “know­ledge” it is fed with and pro­du­ces, the man­ner it ac­tual­ly af­fects/​neu­tra­li­zes in­di­vi­du­al and collec­tive agen­cy, and the mo­des of in­di­vi­dua­ti­on sus­cep­ti­ble to in­flux or re­sist al­go­rith­mic go­vern­men­ta­li­ty are what this talk will be about.

Antoinette Rouvroy, Doc­tor of Laws of the Eu­ro­pean Uni­ver­si­ty In­sti­tu­te (Flo­rence), is per­ma­nent re­se­arch as­so­cia­te at the Bel­gi­an Na­tio­nal Fund for Sci­en­ti­fic Re­se­arch (FNRS) and se­ni­or re­se­ar­cher at the Re­se­arch Cent­re In­for­ma­ti­on, Law and So­cie­ty, Law Fa­cul­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Na­mur (Bel­gi­um). She is also mem­ber of the French CNIL (Com­mis­si­on In­for­ma­tique et Li­bertés)’s Fo­re­sight com­mit­tee. She aut­ho­red ‘Hu­man Ge­nes and Neo­li­be­ral Go­ver­nan­ce: A Fou­caul­di­an Cri­tique’ (Rout­ledge-Ca­ven­dish, 2008) and co-edi­ted, with Mi­reil­le Hil­de­brandt, ‘Law, Hu­man Agen­cy and Au­to­no­mic Com­pu­ting: Phi­lo­so­phers of Law meet Phi­lo­so­phers of Tech­no­lo­gy’ (Rout­ledge, 2011). In her wri­tings, she has ad­dres­sed, among other things, is­su­es of pri­va­cy, data pro­tec­tion, non-dis­cri­mi­na­ti­on, equa­li­ty of op­por­tu­nities, due pro­cess in the con­text of “data-rich” en­vi­ron­ments (the so-cal­led ge­ne­tic re­vo­lu­ti­on, the so-cal­led in­for­ma­ti­on/​sur­veil­lan­ce so­cie­ty) with an ap­proach com­bi­ning le­gal and po­li­ti­cal phi­lo­so­phy. Her cur­rent in­ter­di­sci­pli­na­ry re­se­arch in­te­rests re­vol­ve around the con­cept of al­go­rith­mic go­vern­men­ta­li­ty. Un­der this fou­caul­di­an neo­lo­gism, she ex­plo­res the se­mio­tic-epis­te­mic, po­li­ti­cal, le­gal and phi­lo­so­phi­cal im­pli­ca­ti­ons of the com­pu­ta­tio­nal turn (Big Data, al­go­rith­mic pro­filing, in­dus­tri­al per­so­na­liza­t­i­on). She ex­plo­res the im­pact of al­go­rith­mic go­vern­men­ta­li­ty on our mo­des of pro­duc­tion of what counts and ac­counts for “rea­li­ty”, on our mo­des of go­vern­ment, and on the mo­da­li­ties of cri­tique, re­sis­tan­ce or re­cal­citran­ce.

This event is part of the se­ries Phi­lo­so­phy of the Web, or­ga­ni­zed by Dr. Yuk Hui, CDC. 

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