The self comprises an open space of possibility invaded by monitoring

Evidence

The self’s minimal integrity is the boundedness that constitutes a self as a self. Often that boundedness is experienced in defending a minimal space of physical control around the body, but it can also be invaded without physical incursion—for example, by acts of power that intimidate, shame, harass, and monitor the self. By “the space of the self” we mean the materially grounded domain of possibility that the self has as its horizon of action and imagination. The space of the self can be understood as the open space in which any given individual experiences, reflects, and prepares to settle on her course of action. Hegel describes this space as both external and internal, like a circle that never-endingly turns in on itself. This, he says, is what makes “the free will … truly infinite, for it is not just a possibility, a predisposition; its external existence is its inwardness, its own self.” It is this continual interplay between internal and external, self and other, that enables the deeply social understanding of the self that, as a philosopher, Hegel advocated. From this understanding of the self, we salvage some ideas in this chapter as tools for challenging data colonialism. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 474

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘space of the self’ as a horizontal field of action connects to the ‘attention’ frame — monitoring and surveillance colonize the reader’s own attentional horizon. — 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; Continuous surveillance violates the bounded self-space whose absence destroys selfhood — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 508 (+4 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: whether tying the argument to Hegel (despite his colonial history) creates internal tension the authors resolve or leave open.

Broader Connections

• Continuous surveillance violates the bounded self-space whose absence destroys selfhood #corroborates (0.92) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 508
• Automated surveillance threatens the open-ended self-transformative capacity that defines selfhood #corroborates (0.90) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 489
• Unpredictable surveillance produces self-surveillance and disempowerment in its targets #expands (0.80) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 482
• Uninterrupted thought is itself resistance and holds possibility open #corroborates (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 289
• One’s own possibilities become instruments for the Other’s aims #expands (0.75)
• The drive to dominate external nature extends inward to the human self #expands (0.70)