A stain in the picture

Journal article

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.

Authors: Prince, D

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Anthropological Society of Oxford
• Journal: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Online
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 44-68
• Publication date: 2020-01-01
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-14rxjqnkm
• ISSN: 2040-1876
• Language: English
• Keywords: JASO