Continuous surveillance violates the bounded self-space whose absence destroys selfhood

Evidence

Working under the influence of the European ideology of possessive individualism, Hegel calls this space of freedom a “property,” a property that is inalienable and nontradable. But we can challenge data colonialism in a way that does not depend on possessive individualism by reformulating Hegel and defending the minimal space without whose boundedness the self would not be a distinct self at all. This is the space from which the self listens out and experiences the world. We fear the moment when that space is ruptured; George Orwell’s novel 1984 provides the most famous example of this in literature. Hegel himself discusses slavery as an external capture of this space and insists on “the slave’s absolute right to free himself.” Continuous surveillance of the self from the outside is not as absolute and violent as slavery—it does not amount to the direct transfer of all control of the self’s space of freedom—but it unquestionably violates that space. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 508

Categorization

• XREF: Directly contrasts with the privacy-as-property framing that dominates US surveillance critique — challenges the possessive-individualist basis of most liberal defenses against data extraction. — connects to: Surveillance harms by invading the self’s space on another’s behalf. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 471; Automated surveillance threatens the open-ended self-transformative capacity that defines selfhood — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 489; Compliance with surveillance regimes can threaten the minimal integrity of selfhood — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 501 (+6 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does the reformulation truly escape possessive individualism, or does positing a ‘bounded minimal space’ smuggle the Lockean self back in?

Broader Connections

• Data appropriation threatens the minimal space of the self #corroborates (0.90) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 75
• Datafication may disrupt autonomy at the level of self-boundedness itself #expands (0.88) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 500
• Automated surveillance threatens the open-ended self-transformative capacity that defines selfhood #corroborates (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 489
• Surveillance capitalism rewards ‘boundarylessness’ to extract predictive surplus from inner life #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 903
• Compliance with surveillance regimes can threaten the minimal integrity of selfhood #qualifies (0.82) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 501
• Quantified-self data systems collapse the reflexive space in which freedom operates #corroborates (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 520
• Self-presence requires an internal separation that is itself nothing #expands (0.72)