A stain in the picture

This article seeks to examine processes of subjectification as attaching oneself to and making oneself at home in networked technological screens and interfaces, particularly in the concatenated, concretized form of the smartphone. The selfie, as a pre-eminent object of social circulation on screens...

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Main Author: Prince, D
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: Anthropological Society of Oxford 2020
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author Prince, D
author_facet Prince, D
author_sort Prince, D
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description This article seeks to examine processes of subjectification as attaching oneself to and making oneself at home in networked technological screens and interfaces, particularly in the concatenated, concretized form of the smartphone. The selfie, as a pre-eminent object of social circulation on screens, provides a point of entry into the problematization of the subject's relationship with the technological screen and interface. Taking as my point of departure an image which depicts the act of clicking a selfie, I examine practices at the edge of interfaces such as ‘liking' and ‘scrolling'. I use the terms ‘technological screen' and ‘interface' in a broad sense as referring not just to smartphones, but also to other forms of everyday screens and interfaces, including those which are no longer extant, such as the telegraph key, so as to trace the operation of processes of subjectification in these cases as well. Through a series of anthropological encounters ranging from social situations in the domestic sphere of the home and ordinary social intercourse to larger politicized contexts where questions of nationalism hang in the balance, I examine the conditions that make forceful interruptions of the processes of subjectification possible.
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spelling oxford-uuid:d864a673-d714-4a14-b467-792728d7b4922024-08-24T11:39:45ZA stain in the pictureJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:d864a673-d714-4a14-b467-792728d7b492EnglishJASO_articles_35BulkUploadAnthropological Society of Oxford2020Prince, DThis article seeks to examine processes of subjectification as attaching oneself to and making oneself at home in networked technological screens and interfaces, particularly in the concatenated, concretized form of the smartphone. The selfie, as a pre-eminent object of social circulation on screens, provides a point of entry into the problematization of the subject's relationship with the technological screen and interface. Taking as my point of departure an image which depicts the act of clicking a selfie, I examine practices at the edge of interfaces such as ‘liking' and ‘scrolling'. I use the terms ‘technological screen' and ‘interface' in a broad sense as referring not just to smartphones, but also to other forms of everyday screens and interfaces, including those which are no longer extant, such as the telegraph key, so as to trace the operation of processes of subjectification in these cases as well. Through a series of anthropological encounters ranging from social situations in the domestic sphere of the home and ordinary social intercourse to larger politicized contexts where questions of nationalism hang in the balance, I examine the conditions that make forceful interruptions of the processes of subjectification possible.
spellingShingle Prince, D
A stain in the picture
title A stain in the picture
title_full A stain in the picture
title_fullStr A stain in the picture
title_full_unstemmed A stain in the picture
title_short A stain in the picture
title_sort stain in the picture
work_keys_str_mv AT princed astaininthepicture
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