Download The Optimizing Self Dorthe Brogård Kristensen, Matthias Bode, Ming

The Optimizing Self
Dorthe Brogård Kristensen, Matthias Bode, Ming Lim
Optimization was originally a concept used within computer science and public management. It
denotes the maximization of the beneficial output(s) of some process. In mathematics, computer
science, economics or management science, optimization is referred to as the selection of a best
element (with regard to some criteria from a set of available alternatives). Later the term appeared
in the service industry and public management and became a logic that increasingly informed and
entered the microphysics of everyday life. Increasingly, however, the term has been popularized,
and has entered the microphysics of everyday life and the notion of the “self”; it now refers to a
mode of living, as a way of “making the most” of life, on a physical, economic, social, mental and
spiritual level. This takes place against a moral imperative and public discourse that encourages
self-management and responsibility. Citizens are expected to stay informed, to make the right
choices for themselves with regards to exercise, diet, rest and sleep based on government guidelines
and to evaluate health risks (Henderson and Peterson 2002) as a strategy of “making the most” of
life, on a physical, economic, social, mental and spiritual level.
Consequently, we are witnessing a surge in new technologies that are designed to
optimize mental and bodily well-being and capability for its own sake, such as medical
enhancements, cosmetic surgery, meditation techniques, dietary fashions, as well as a variety of
technological devices for tracking and monitoring the self (Askegaard 2002, Hogle 2005). In this
context, the aim of this paper is to analyse how the concept that originally emerged from a public
and scientific domain increasingly characterizes strategies among consumers for making the most of
life – in other word to be optimal in all aspects. Scholars have pointed to the cultural dictum to
improve one’s health and well-being, but there is a gap in the literature regarding how different
types of technologies are utilized to “optimize” the self In his seminal introduction to the social
study of the body, Body and Society (1984), Bryan Turner suggests that the human pursuit of health,
wholeness and perfection in contemporary Western society interacts with wider social
transformations relating to individualization, technological and socio-economic change. This
resonates with the call within Consumer Culture Theory to pay attention to the link context in the
context (Askegaard & Linnet 2011). We here present the theoretical background for the term selfoptimization and subsequently focus on two characteristics of the technology of optimization.
Based on the case of self-tracking, these are the interior world of dialogue and evaluation, and it’s
dynamic, and relational, character.
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Optimization: Theoretical Background
The term technologies of optimization was introduced by Nikolas Rose (2007) as a term for medical
technologies that, he argues, do not seek merely to cure diseases but also to control the vital
processes of the body and mind . What is new is not so much the technology, but that human beings
have entered the age of “biological control” where they experience much greater responsibility in
the realms of the biological (2007: 19). The key feature of technologies of optimization is a
forward-looking vision, as they seek to “reshape the vital future by action in the vital present” (Rose
2007: 18). The new processes of the self can also be coined as the “entrepreneurial self" (Sennett
1998) as the bodily self is regarded a personal enterprise under the efficiency regime of
managerialism. This goes hand in hand with developments in so-called neoliberal governance
structures, where the responsibility for an optimized self (in terms of age, health, productivity etc.)
is increasingly transferred from collective systems to the individual (Lupton 1995; Bauman 2001).
According to Emily Martin this can be associated with the shrinking of social institutions, which
leads to the consequence that the individual becomes the site for investment perceived as “a flexible
collections of assets” (Martin 1999: 582). Hence Martin argues people increasingly come to speak
of themselves as mini-corporations and as a project that must continually be invested in, nurtured,
managed and developed (ibid.) Embedded in the urge to manage and improve the performance of
the self is the administrative practice of performance reviews, from corporate organizations to
educational and creative institutions, from managers, employees, to individual entrepreneurs of their
own self.
As a result, we need to deal with the modern body/self and processes of objectification
and subjectification as framing a new possibility as well as a new imperative for personal
improvement and optimization. The new imperative of personal responsibility can be seen in light
of a performative normativity, where a “yes we can” is turned into a “sure, and we have to”. We see
the new technologies of the self in a context, where it is not only repression, nor disciplinary
mechanisms alone that produce the performing self in the post-industrial world. We here focus on
new developments with roots in social communities that are less rigid, less normalizing and more
fluid, fractured and networked In this context, wellbeing and well-doing become a personal project,
like a piece of clay that can be formed and molded (Christopher and Hickinbottom 2008). By using
techniques that promise to give an insight into the body and the psyche, it is possible to measure,
identify and adjust aspects of the self and to control the vital processes of body and mind. Such
technologies bring futures into the present by visualizing the potential as either beneficial options or
risk scenarios (Lupton 1999). They make futures subject to calculation and object of intervention
(Rose 2007: 19), and yet, as people reach for potentialities, which can never be truly known, they
engage in a phenomenological experience always bound to embody surprise.
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Optimizing the Self through Self-tracking
The phenomenon of self-tracking takes place in a context of self-help, where consumers actively
seek to track their lives, visualize the generated data and try to improve themselves by learning
from connected data patterns. Through the use of mobile health devices, in this case, commercial
apps used on smartphones, tablets and computers, citizens are given the opportunity to monitor
sleep, eating habits, weight, sport activities, calorie intake etc. These data can be connected to social
media sites, where, say, one’s running route, speed, or details of one’s diet are shared by users. The
use of technologies has led to a shift in representation, knowledge and practices of the body that do
not only imply new forms of visualization, but also new subjectivities and modes of embodiment
(Ruckenstein 2014; Lupton 2012, 2013).
What happens when optimization is transferred in to area of the human machine?
Mette, a self-tracker of 39 year talks about how it affects the senses. According to her, in normal
everyday life, people tend to see things in black and white terms, and let their mood affect how they
respond to the world, which also affects their perception of who “they really are”. People act
according to an image they have of themselves. Tracking, according to her, means becoming more
conscious of who she really is and her actual acts. So it is all about making a “checklist” and asking
questions like “where am I?”, “how am I doing?”, that is, by making the data speak for, and
through, her. Through self-tracking and connecting different data sets - for instance, how the
consumption of different food products affect well-being, or how sleep patterns affect daily
performance - a visible concrete gestalt emerges for the tracker that is perceived as a whole: the
digital doppelgänger. Mette explains it in terms of how, as human beings, we have two separate
tracks in life: one is our perception about who we are, and how we live (where we have a tendency
to deceive ourselves), and the other is the actual truth about who we really are, that is reflected in
raw data from tracking devices. Gradually, through tracking, these two tracks start to merge in ways
that allow the self-tracker to become more conscious of who they really are, and the ultimate goal is
to connect the two tracks into one, thus becoming a whole and more conscious person.
Among the self-trackers in the Danish example, the constant feedback and digital feedback loop
produces a sort of inner tension from the dialogue with the other me. Self-trackers internalize an
imperative of self-responsibility and self-improvement; the question is how far can it be taken? An
example is Axel, a 36 Danish man and the father of two children, who describes a constant inner
dialogue with himself. For instance, he is using an app that constantly encourages him to run longer.
The question is, is it he or the app who decides to turn it off? He would like to try to run without all
the self-tracking equipment but then he will be losing a part of the chain; he admits that it is rather
OCD like. But he is willing to pay that price because he sees that it works. Many of the informants
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know that they have been pushed too far when bodily injuries start to emerge, as in the case of Axel,
when his knees started to ache due to too much running. Self-tracking makes it possible to regard
the body as a laboratory, where you can get insights about how the body works, and then adjust and
retune parts of it. Klaus is a 40 year old Danish man, married with three boys aged 3, 7 and 10. He
works as a senior manager in a consultancy within the area of insurance and pension, and has
specialized within strategy, human resources, productivity and process. He is an example of a selftracker who embodies tensions. He talks about his own body using highly mechanical metaphors:
“To me it has been like building up a racer car from the ground..., to build up a diesel motor, that only
needs fuel from time to time and then it can go on endlessly. So it has been all about rebuilding the
machine. I am very conscious about that.
However, on the other hand, he also talks about his body with a vocabulary that reflects intimacy
and sensitiveness.
The body is your best friend. It is the one who helps you to fulfil your dreams- So to me it is all about
listening to the body and to be united. Now I am much more attentive on small details from my body, I
can feel things in my foot that I did not know before how worked. I am very aware of the small signals
my body gives. Do I feel sore skin? Does it hurt when I move my feet? You really learn to listen to the
body”
To him tracking serves to optimize his bodily performance, on the one hand, and to raise bodily
awareness, on the other. So, to see tracking as the product of a feedback loop between data and the
bodily self is too simplistic; rather, they mutually constitute each other. This resembles the process
Nafus and Sherman (2014:1784) describe, that is, this is how one learns to feel the body through the
data. We also see from Axel’s statement that self-tracking leads to an increased awareness of one’s
motivations and desires, and thus and thereby serves to realize the potential of the body, through
inventing and performing the self. So the digital tracking one performs is entangled with realizing
one self, with reaching one’s full potential and raising self-awareness, in a back and forth exchange
between the data and the bodily self, where both are considered to be reflective of the “real”
“authentic” self. This argument partly resonates with Nafus and & Sherman’s notion that selftrackers use their bodies and cultural resources around them to see outside the frame that is set by
the technological devices. Further, they see the self-trackers as active participants in a dialogue that
moves between data as externalization of the self and a subjective understanding of what the data
means (Nafus & Sherman 2014:1793). We take this further as we see the cracks and tension as part
of this dialogue that is embedded with the data entanglement, through which the self is realized and
performed.
In the 21th century, the tensions and dynamics of self-tracking link to the experience of
hyphenated identities and fractal subjects, posthumanist individuals and avatars, as well as
genetically and neurobiologically dispersed selves. The imperative is not just perceived as an
external, disciplinary force (“They force me to become a better person”), but it is also not just an
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internalized biopower (“I feel like I should become a better person”). The power is enfolding in the
tension between the “me, as a tracker” and the “me", as the digital doppelgänger”. It replays a
dynamic that is typical for the self-help discourse: self-governance and self-disciplining is
confronted with the experience of auto-insubordination. To become a better person, I have to
become part the person who is in charge and the person who is given new orders. The to-beoptimized subject needs to be split into a controlling part that can govern the stubborn lazy,
ignorant, obese, or procrastinating part (Schulz 2013). It is a process that is always in becoming,
fuelled by the tensions between a useful and a not-yet perfect, therefore potentially misguided
double. In this way, the dynamic is manifested in a constant reconfiguration and adjustment. Every
change in the evaluation of the “copy self” (“Now I can see the future me in him/her, now I can
trust, now I cannot”) can only occur by simultaneously redefining the “original self”. It is in this
relational dynamic that the self-tracker is engaged in the performance of the self.
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