Pastorate Digitalized: Social Media and (De)Subjectification

Abstract

Taking its cue from Michel Foucault’s analyses of the pastoral ‘conduct of conduct’, this paper considers social media as a specific dispositif that derives its mode of operation from the religious techniques of individualization. It argues that today’s preoccupation with digital performances, far from exorcizing the pastoral logic, in fact manifests its secular intensification. By examining social media practices through the lens of the sacramental paradigm of confession, the article shows how the digitalization of the pastoral directive culminates in the production of spectral subjects. These spectral subjects, it contends, function as the conduits of the dominant power, guaranteeing the persistence of capitalism by embodying the imperative to complete economization.