Quantified Care: Self-Tracking as a Technology of the Subject

Abstract

The debate concerning the Quantified-Self Movement (QS) has been extremely polarised. As Tamar Sharon has pointed out, each aspect of the lifestyle promoted by Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly has provoked opposite reactions, generating a debate that revolves around some basic conceptual dichotomies: empowerment versus surveillance, self-awareness versus reductionism, and personalised healthcare versus disintegration of public assistance (Sharon, 2017). The aim of this chapter is to provide a critique of QS, namely an assessment of its limits and its (technological and social) conditions of possibility. In particular, the author’s analysis will focus on the relationship between technology and subjectivity, and its main theoretical framework will be Michel Foucault’s research on the notion of ‘care for the self’ (Foucault, 1986, 2005). Quantification is an essential and unescapable aspect of our present technological environment. The devices that make our onlife (Floridi, 2014) possible are connected with a complex technological system made of GPSs, satellites, computers, and networks. Health is no longer managed through a distinct set of practices within the limits of a well-defined space (the hospital or the ambulatory), but it rather becomes a dataset integrated into a system where all aspects of life (health, law, leisure, work, social relations) are treated and managed simultaneously. This technological condition implies a new form of cognitive and practical delegation (Ippolita, 2016; Morozov, 2013), which makes the very notion of ‘self-tracking’ at least problematic. Individuals do not track themselves anymore: on the contrary, they are tracked by prosthetic extensions of their own bodies. This, however, does not mean that they do nothing. Our digital devices require a specific set of practices, a determinate way of life. The author will argue that these practices are the product of design, understood as a specific way of conceiving and organising the interaction between subject and technical object (Flusser, 1999). Through our technological environment, design reshapes the social and political function of bodies, their interaction and the set of practices connected to them (Bratton, 2015; Dyer, 2016; Vial, 2014). Automated quantification is an aspect of our designed user experience. As such, this chapter discusses design as a key element to understand the role of quantification in our digital milieu. It analyses the QS movement as a specific way of responding to our new technological condition. The main research question will be the following: is QS to be regarded as a simple acceptance of a new form of delegated – and thus alienated – subjectivity, or is it a kind of practice that allows the subject to overcome his passivity, and to take part in the process through which quantification is designed and managed? Is it possible to understand QS as a technology of the self (Foucault, 1988, 2005)?

Citation

De Cesaris, A. (2021), "Quantified Care: Self-Tracking as a Technology of the Subject", Ajana, B., Braga, J. and Guidi, S. (Ed.) The Quantification of Bodies in Health: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 49-67. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80071-883-820211005