Lifelogging: Digital technologies of the self as the practices of contemporary biopolitics

Abstract

In the paper we apply a theoretical concept of technologies of the self developed by Michel Foucault to the field of lifelogging practices. Lifelogging is a global social phenomenon, a part of contemporary experience of everyday, especially in the developed societies of the West. Our hypothesis is that, despite different ways of quantifying self, lifelogging practices have some characteristics in common: they all belong to the field of biopolitics. This is demonstrated on the levels of the body, identity and subjectivity, since they are influenced and changed by lifelogging. At the same time, lifelogging practices blur the relationship between coercion and consent, power and resistance. The theoretical framework for addressing lifelogging is the concept of biopolitics, also developed by, since it refers to the mechanisms, techniques and technologies, as well as the forms of rationality that regulate life and its various manifestations. In conclusion, we claim that it is still not possible to explain lifelogging exclusively in the terms of biopower, since it has a potential for the ?counter-conduct? and resistance. This also makes lifelogging practices open for development of new forms of subjectivity.