“I Flip, Therefore I Am”: Smartphone Detoxing as a Practice of Sovereignty

Abstract

This article theorizes smartphone detoxing as a practice of sovereignty. The article begins by arguing that the smartphone enables the exercise of psychopolitical control, a new mode of neoliberal governmentality under which individuals are governed through the algorithmic modification of behavior. Against this background, smartphone detoxing can be seen as a practice of sovereignty in the sense that it aims to recover the subject's autonomy and rationality—qualities that are lost as humans become smartphone addicts. Ironically, however, smartphone detoxing is also a neoliberal practice in the sense that it plays on an ethos of self-care and cultivates market-oriented notions of freedom. As such, the article contends that the detoxing subject is a post-smartphone subject that performs political subjectivity by negotiating the tension between sovereignty and neoliberalism. To explore how smartphone detoxing performs political subjectivity in practice, the article analyses the testimonies of four influencers who share their detoxing journeys on YouTube. The analysis finds that detoxers recover sovereignty by rediscovering the Self, reconnecting with Others, and reclaiming time, and that they—through these very practices—also strive for the neoliberal virtues of wellness, authenticity and productivity.