Digital Hermeneutics as Hermeneutics of the Self

In this article, I am going to deal with the status of the self and personal identity in the digital milieu. In this context, I am going to privilege theoretical considerations over the analysis of a series of case studies. In particular, I contend that despite many nuances, digital media and technologies have today something in common both in their structure and consequences on us. The article is articulated in three sections. Firstly, I will present my general approach to digital media and technologies that I have recently called «digital hermeneutics». I will also argue that digital hermeneutics has many potential dimensions that has not been explored yet. One of this is precisely digital hermeneutics as hermeneutics of the self. Secondly, I am going to consider the specific issue of personal identity and subjectivation. In particular, I will confront two notions: Paul Ricoeur’s narrative identity, and Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus. My thesis will be that the habitus can be seen as a concept about subjectivation that ends up neglecting an important part of the subject. Narrative identity offers, in this sense, a sort of remedy to such a negligence. Thirdly, I will show that while a certain social theory has walked, in the past years, the path that goes from Bourdieu to Ricoeur, digital media and technologies went somehow in the opposite direction. In other words, I am going to contend that digital media and technologies are today “habitus machines” both in their ontology and in their effects. In the conclusion, I will present three series of potential replies to this situation that articulate each other. The first one is a sort of indifference – digital media and technologies actually reveal who we already are. The second and the third ones are somehow Ricoeurian and Bourdieusian, respectively.