Self-tracking, embodiment and resistance: A phenomenological enquiry

Hughes, Kathryn

Abstract

For the first time in human history we are experiencing the convergence of biology with technology at an immense socio-cultural scale, with affordable digital media devices and self-tracking technologies being ubiquitously disseminated, employed en masse by a populous both desirous of bodily data, and confused by conflicting discourses of idealised models of 'healthy' subjectivity. While these ‘smart technologies’ proclaim to endow us with empirical knowledge and control over our own bodies (amassing quantifiable physiological and biological data that asserts to render us knowable to ourselves, through biometric insight into ontological dilemmas of body and identity), this research contests that the constant calibration, analysis and optimisation of the body-through-data, at a subjective level, binds us to a wider, ambiguous system of 'control-through-self-surveillance', at play in digitised society; one where our individual subjective worth is measured in terms of narrowing standardised models of body and health capital. This research paper will discuss methodologies of resistance, towards utilising the body as medium for disrupting binary standardisation, resisting ambiguous objects of control (‘activity-tracking’ devices such as fitness trackers and smart watches that serve to contain empirical embodied experience within a growing culture of self-surveillance), by re-writing our own narratives of individual embodiment and experiential identity, through creative strategies of performative praxis that engage the body in process.

Citation

Hughes, K. (2017, June). Self-tracking, embodiment and resistance: A phenomenological enquiry. Paper presented at Metric Culture: The Quantified Self and Beyond, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Metric Culture: The Quantified Self and Beyond
• Conference Location: Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark
• Start Date: Jun 7, 2017
• End Date: Jun 9, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jul 15, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 15, 2024
• Keywords: self-tracking, wearable technologies, digital mediation, embodied methodologies, affect, praxis, performance, critical autoethnography, rhythmanalysis, technologies of the self, surveillance capitalism
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/12126190
• Publisher URL: https://aias.au.dk/fileadmin/www.aias.au.dk/Conferences/AIAS_Conference_Metric_Culture_Abstracts.pdf