TRANSFORMATION OF THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE MODERN INDIVIDUAL IN THE CONTEXT OF THE DIGITALIZATION OF SOCIETY

Abstract

The article examines the state of formation of subjectivity in a modern individual, in particular, his or her attitude to social freedom. It has been clarified how these attitudes to freedom differ significantly from established, traditional ideas about this most important factor in the formation of a person. It is traced how ideas about freedom are connected with three types of societies, according to the conceptualization of M. Foucault – the society of the sovereign, the disciplinary society, the society of control in its current digital version – as a society of surveillance capitalism. The history of the emergence of the concepts of biopower, biopolitics and biomass in M. Foucault is analyzed, starting with the study of disciplinary society. It was revealed that in order to ensure the management of the masses of people and the control over each individual, biopower embodied a mechanism even in the times of the disciplinary society, which has gained further development in the modern society of control. Its main content involves the transformation of an individual into a social subject while preserving the totalization of the population as biomass. It is shown that the formation of modern subjectivity is simultaneously undertaken by the state in the form of performing a totalizing and individualizing function, from which the individual tries to slip away with the help of his practices and techniques of freedom that guarantee subjectivation. It is considered how the latest digital technologies adapt the socio-philosophical doctrine of neo-behaviorism, which justifies the control and formation of an individual's behavior at all levels of his life, and how this ensures the manipulation of freedom in the broadest sense and puts the population on the verge of endless survival. It can be stated that the launched worldwide technologies for managing the behavior of individuals as biomass and the process of individual digitization significantly transform the subjectivity of modern individuals. As a result of this long-term process of modern biopolitics, there is a possibility that individuals will lose the significance of freedom and the role of democratic institutions in society will decrease, and neoliberalism can become a «nurture medium» for the formation of digital totalitarian regimes.