Optimization: the self as a laboratory_DFF Dorthe Brogård Kristensen

This project explores technologies of optimization of self in everyday life. It focuses on technologies of optimization through studies of substance use, self-tracking and spirituality, and how these technologies relate to potentialities and processes of self. Scholars have pointed to the quest to improve as a cultural dictum, but this has not been explored in depth yet. This project generates an empirical understanding of how the use of technologies has led to a shift in representation, knowledge and practices of the body and new subjectivities. It also contributes to theoretical development and re-invigoration of Foucault’s notion of technologies of self by exploring complex ontological and ethical issues in relation to how human/technology assemblage is constructed and reconstructed.

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