Algorithmic Negentropy and the Digital Management of Jouissance

Abstract

The digital algorithm has allowed the management of data from web users by informational conglomerates. In a discreet and personalized way, the new form of governmentality collects, organizes, exchanges and returns data to the individual in the form of more information. More and more, it comes up against the singular dimension, touching the field of jouissance via the proliferation of objects a which, in the Lacanian theory of discourses, assumes the double function of loss and an incessant attempt to supplement jouissance. With the increase in information, the object reaches the social apex and the digital reaches a discursive level. Inserting itself in the same niche of know [savoir], digital information takes advantage of the subjective division, leaving little space for the subject to deal with the entropy of his jouissance via desire. If negentropy is the attribute of savoir that limits the dispersion of jouissance, in the information processed and returned algorithmically this process is accelerated, acting directly on the economy of affections. To the detriment of the subject, what remains is an experience of jouissance that is increasingly direct, raw, less mediated by savoir and the Other.