By Piia Varis and Massimiliano Spotti

Introduction

With the emergence of social media, our life projects and the ways in which they are written into being have become increasingly complex. Different socio-technological advances have permeated our everyday existence, and in one way or another we are ‘always on’ (Baron 2008) – always within the reach of others, always able to reach others, always updating and checking one or the other medium. It is undeniable that, with these new developments, we have been introduced with new practices that can certainly make our everyday lives easier – on a very practical level, we are able to (re)connect and communicate with other people, find information and be mobile more efficiently and easily than ever before. The implications of these new advances are, however, much more fundamental and far-reaching than that: not only do we have the opportunities for new forms of organization (of our social lives, everyday practices, etc.), but also new forms of subjectivity. This is what Elliott and Urry (2010: 3) call portable personhood – subjects who are increasingly mobile, and have life trajectories influenced by and saturated with different technologies. That is, the very way in which we are in the world has been influenced by the new developments: “(…) the rise of an intensively mobile society reshapes the self – its everyday activities, interpersonal relations with others, as well connections with the wider world.” (Elliott and Urry ibid.; our emphasis).

Social network sites (SNSs) such as Facebook are of course one specific instantiation of all this – they enable and encourage particular forms of communication, selfpresentation and community formation. What is more, SNSs are specifically about these reshaped selves Elliott and Urry refer to: a medium in which one’s self is the center of attention. As Boyd and Ellison (2008: 219) suggest, “While websites dedicated to communities of interest still exist and prosper, SNSs are primarily organized around people, not interests. Early public online communities such as Usenet and public discussion forums were structured by topics or according to topical hierarchies, but social network sites are structured as personal (or “egocentric”) networks, with the individual at the center of their own community.” The emergence of these new technologies of the self (Foucault 1988) has also meant the emergence of a new discourse of self-presentation, often with criticisms of ‘egocentricity’ and ‘narcissism’ that social network sites encourage (see e.g., Mendelson and Papacharissi 2010). As Rosen (2008: 16, emphasis in original) puts it, “The Delphic oracle’s guidance was know thyself. Today, in the world of online social networks, the oracle’s advice might be show thyself.”

Indeed, Facebook and other social network sites are about me – technologies of subjectivity and subjectification, of being and becoming a certain kind of subject. They offer new opportunities for self-presentation, for writing oneself into being (Sundén 2003), and making oneself and one’s network visible. We might even describe the phenomena and practices enabled and encouraged by these sites as “selfabsorbed publishing” (Shirky 2008: 85). These are, consequently, also technologies of agency – they provide us with new opportunities for being social agents, and of being and becoming certain kinds of subjects.

From all this it is clear that these new socio-technological tools do have an empowering dimension. However, they also shape our subjectivities by regulating them and limiting our agency – by imposing certain forms of communicating, sharing, publishing and being on us. Here, we discuss these new developments through the case of Facebook – arguably one of the most significant social phenomena at the moment. In our discussion, we focus on the implications social media such as Facebook have for subjectivity – our life projects – and the new practices that we consequently have to develop now that our lives have become saturated and, at least to some extent, controlled by the media we engage in. With the emergence of new forms of self-presentation and subjectivity, social interaction and community formation, we now have to negotiate new dynamics (see e.g., Boyd 2010) and are faced with the (re)creation of new social practices. These new practices are not only shaping and actively used to shape our lives, but also our deaths, and, consequently, the affects and practices associated with mourning.

Keywords: Facebook, subjectivity, self-presentation, communication, social media, death, mourning

How to quote (APA):  Varis, P., & Spotti, M. (2011). In beloved memory of: Facebook, death and subjectivity. (Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies; No. 5).

Read the full working paper here: In beloved memory of: Facebook, death and subjectivity