An earlier version of this essay was part of Electronic Voice Phenomena Blog/Tour which concluded

in ????. There proved to be substantial resonance between the essays thematics and the imminent
Torue ???! and the author was invitied to present at the Torue symposium.This te"t is the outcome of
that overlap
??? idea of brain lateralisation, the last significant upgrade in human wetware, as incurring
consequences for the outliers of normal cognition is tempting. As many subsequent scholars have
theorised, the advances in intellect that have transpired since could be part of our extended mind.
External representations and extra corporeal abstractions.
Nathan Jones described the ambition of Electronic oice !henomena as moving beyond the occult
trappings of E! towards a deeper consideration of what "hearing an electronic voice# means. Arguably
a defamiliarisation of the electronic voice is needed. $n an era of %iri and uncanny &echanical 'ur( call
centres it can help to recall how odd it is to hear and listen to an electronic voice) to reflect upon the
nested technological complexity and opaque rationales that ma(e such occurrences quotidian. $f it
proves impossible to appreciate the weirdness perhaps we can turn to an occasion where voice hearing
still holds an air of abnormality * hearing a voice without an obvious source of exterior emanation.
+eclarations and commands, issuing from within your own s(ull. 'his essay begins here and aims to
unravel why such an experience is commensurate with alterity. 'hrough this essay we will afford ,voice
hearing, its due as an integral human quality. As we will see, it points to an under ac(nowledged
alternative way of attuning to ones immediate environment. -ith that facet of our psyche ac(nowledged
we are better placed to reflect upon the technological mediation of ,voice hearing, that the legacy of
E! suggests. 'echnology is deemed inseparable from being human, and accordingly considered in
broad terms. .oth strands of enquiry enable speculation on how the electronic mediation inherent to our
daily lives might spea( to us in new ways. /ur wa(ing hours are modulated by the edifices and
infrastructures wrought through and by our technologies, and those same modulations set the
parameters for what degrees of action 0and change1 are possible to us. 'o step outside those
parameters, should they be unacceptable to us, or indeed should necessity demand it, entails finding
new flows of thought * premonitions of alternate modes of being*in*world. %uch a fundamental shift in
disposition to ones technologically saturated world has been declared an imperative by scholars of the
post humanities 0most stirringly by 2osi .raidotti1 * this essay see(s to lin( this imperative to historical
precedent for such reconfigurations of mind.
3earing voices is a symptom of schi4ophrenic patients. $t numbers as one of many forms of
hallucination which the schi4ophrenic sub5ect may experience
6
. 3allucinations are categorised within
the ,positive symptoms, of schi4ophrenia. N$&3 distinguishes ,positive symptoms, thusly) "positive
symptoms are psychotic behaviors not seen in healthy people#. 'here is a sense of surplus here, that
the experiences of hallucinations, delusions, and thought 7 movement disorders are excesses which
non*pathological cognition never needs to buffer. Hallucinations are not limited to hearing voices,
1 Symptoms derived from NIMH
but they are the most prevalent register of hallucination diagnosed in schi4ophrenic patients. &ore
importantly however has been recognition 0accentuated in the last three decades1 that voice hearing is
not limited to patients experiencing schi4ophrenia. 'he 3earing oices Networ( 03N1 developed
following the research of two +utch psychiatrists, &arius 2omme and %andra Escher, who had
revealed that many more members of the population heard voices than had ever been previously
estimated 82omme and Escher,Accepting oices 0&$N+ publications 699:1;. 'he 3N is an important
initiative allowing those who hear voices to cope with their experiences by naming the voices they hear)
identifying them through historical or emotional points of reference, and imbueing the communication
with meaning. !erhaps most importantly, its a process which provides therapeutic benefits to the patient
without entailing an attendant psycho*pharmaceutical regimen. !rofessor <isa .lac(man wor(ed with
the group during its formative years. =or .lac(man voice hearing is a modality of knowing 0that1
cannot that be reduced to irrationality or disease#. $ts a claim bac(ed up by her research 0,3earing
oices) Embodiment and Experience, =ree Association .oo(s >??61 which illustrates that the taxonomy
of voice hearing in conventional psychiatry cannot contain or explain the many occasions and
circumstance wherein voice hearing is part of the human experience.
'he non*pathological framing of auditory hallucination is a central part of Julian Jaynes maveric(
manuscript on the origins of consciousness) @'he /rigin of Aonsciousness in the .rea(down of the
.icameral &indB. Jaynes thesis is transfixing) in his view, prior to approximately 6???.A humans were
not conscious as you and $ are consciousC 'hrough conducting a cognitive archaeology of early western
civilisations he arrives at a conclusion that consciousness was radically different prior to the advent of
written cultures, phenomenologically a(in to command and response utterances relayed between
separate entities housed within the same s(ullC $t,s a radical claim, one that evinced s(epticism among
his contemporaries, and it remains no less contentious today 0-illiam .urroughs and 2ichard +aw(ins
8in the Dod +elusion; have respectively attested to the influence and notoriety of the hypothesis1.
Jaynes thesis is adopted as a plausible ,5ust so, story for the scope of speculation it affords on our
contemporary relation to technology. $n Jaynes account technological disruption was the impetus for the
change in consciousness. Jaynes identifies the lac( of what we could deem ,the self,, or sub5ectivity in
cultural artefacts from ancient civilisations. 3e melds this 0elsewhere noted1
>
absence of contemporary
self consciousness with the theories of schi4ophrenia available to him when he wrote the boo( in the
E?s 0it,s worth noting that many of Jaynes predictions F pertaining particularly to aural hallucinations F
were confirmed by later brain imaging research
:
1. =rom this he posits the bi*cameral mind F a
metaphoric conception of mind based on a brain where the two hemispheres were partitioned and not
an integrated communicating unit.
.icameral humans instead operated by means of "automatic, nonconscious habit*schemas#. -hen
2 Daniel Heller-Roazens The Inner Touch
3 http:!!!"nc#i"nlm"nih"$ovpmcarticles%M&'()**'+
habit was insufficient to "novel circumstances or stressors facing the human#, the stress gripping the
.icameral sub5ect caused neural activity in the dominant, habitual, hemisphere to be modulated by
auditory hallucinations emanating from the silent hemisphere. GbqHIn 'do or die' crunch moments
Bicameral Humans would hallucinate the orders requisite to survivalGIbqH. Jaynes cites the
attribution of volition to Dods in ancient iconography 0and within the 3omeric $liad1 as evidence for this
experience, reasoning that persistently hallucinated voices would be collectively attributed to some
consistent emanation. $n Jaynes account verbal communication and societal coordination provided the
first consensual hallucination. 'wo things about Jaynes thesis are relevant to this essays inquisition.
Jaynes elaborates that the hierarchical organisation of societies contemporary to this period 06????.A
F 6???.A1 were li(ewise determined by the tendency to hallucinate orders from a loci of sub5ectivity
perceived as ,other, to ones internal habitual schema. 'his resulted not 5ust in Dods, but also god*Jings
and the rule of law ubiquitous to &esopotamian 0and other contemporaenous1 civilisations. %econdly is
Jaynes impetus for the morphing of .icameral cognition into our contemporary consciousness. A
lamentation of .lac( swans 0environmental tumult and disruptive technology among them1 caused
.icameral cognition to malfunction. /racles, divination and other cultural mechanisms mushroomed to
help societies of individuals accustomed to holding private dialogue with their gods cope with their
internal voices falling silent. -riting was crucial in the brea(down of the .icameral mind because it
weakened what had been an exclusively auditory culture prior to its advent. 'his resonates with other
scholars who have stressed writing as disruptive technology capable of rewiring it,s users 8short list F
/ng I /rr F oral culture, preceded &c<uhanK &erlin &ac+onald and whatever field he specialises in;.
Jaynes thesis, if ta(en as plausible, suggests that the reoccurrence of a mind reorganisation is possible
again, given the right circumstances. -hich, if you,ve read %herry 'ur(le,s earlier
technologically*evangelic texts 8'he %econd %elf 069LM1 <ife on the %creen 0699N1; or are acquainted
with counter cultural manifestos that treat psychadelics as ,brain technology, 0a(a entheogenics1 in
their own right, is not such a radical claim. &any scholars through the years have pondered whether our
consciousness can be transformed with the aid of some technology prosthesis. Arows cerebral torque
considers the neurotypicality that followed in the wa(e of genetic changes evincing brain lateralisation.
$n 'imothy Arows account genetic inscription precedes societal reorganisation F in Jaynes account
external inscriptions provo(es societal reorganisation. .etween the both of them they consider the first
two phases of <ogan,s succession of extended mind technologies, which <ogan considers as
auto*poeitic informatic systems. =or both authors the phenomenological edge case of schi4ophrenia is
important. Jaynes is a hard ta(e on the notion of torque. $t considers the exteriorisation of faculties into
a mnemotechnique and what consequences that might have had for the shared umwelt. $n so doing, it
provides a benchmar( for what changes other informatic extended mind overhauls could entail. $t,s the
attunement to alterity, and the alignment of corporeally disruptive technology to societal upheaval and
crisis in Jaynes account that suggest his framewor( as pertinent to contemporary circumstances. 'he
contention from here on out is that we might 5ust be approaching another cognitive reorganisation F and
so clarity about what criteria constitutes comparable circumstance is important. 'he .icameral sub5ect
faded because the human sub5ect interacted with a changed exterior world, prompting signals within the
brain to be more integrated. $ntegrated is the (ey concept here F it echoes neuroscientist Ahristof
Joch,s determining criteria of the point at which a system becomes conscious
M
. O ADD M!"
#!"DI$% $ $HI% A%%"!$I& =or Joch the intensity of integration of a given system correlates to
the sophistication of consciousness it can attain. Joch is inferring parallels between the sophistication
of our neural circuitry and a world where every ob5ect, flora and fauna is networ(ed to the Aloud. $
however would li(e to consider the ,system, of interest as consisting of brain*body*world * the human
system.
'o conceive of the mind as a system of brain*body*world is consistent with the embodied cognition
perspective of cognitive science. 'he idea has gained purchase with some neuroscientists and A$
researchers, precisely because it lets you conceive of an organisms existence in its immediate
environment in ways different from the "brain in the vat# conception that the cartesian mind*body split
0and its conceptual descendants1 entails. Dilbert %imondon,s theory of inviduation offers conceptual
purchase on the 'world( portion of the brain*body*world system. $ndividuation is the process by which
sub5ects become distinguished0as in distinct, rather than re(nowned1 from their environment. $n
%imondonian terms, what the sub5ect individuates from is termed the pre*individual) a set of extra*bodily
forces F a milieux F including societal norms, technology, and interactions with human and non human
others. %imondon considers technology as a fundamentally inseparable part of being human. 3is
,general phenomenology of machines, emphasises the agency of technology and resists accounts
which treat technology as mere utility. 'echnology is inherent to how ,we are, in the world around us.
%imondon,s ,pre*individual, goes a step beyond a comparable concept) Ja(ob von Pex(Qll,s umwelt.
'he umwelt was nicely described by +aw(ins in his ,middle world rumination,, which $,ll quote at length.
"-hat we see of the real world is not the unvarnished world but a model of the
world, regulated and ad5usted by sense data, but constructed so itBs useful for
dealing with the real world. &iddle -orld R the range of si4es and speeds which
we have evolved to feel intuitively comfortable with Fis a bit li(e the narrow range
of the electromagnetic spectrum that we see as light of various colours. -eBre
blind to all frequencies outside that, unless we use instruments to help us. &iddle
-orld is the narrow range of reality which we 5udge to be normal, as opposed to
the queerness of the very small, the very large and the very fast.#8.$.<$/;
.oth the Pmwelt and %imondon,s individuation are expansive in terms of what they encompass F the
human sub5ect is but one of many entities individuating in the world. =or the purposes of this essay $,m
conflating ones self with ones individuation, and should you deep dive into that theory you will see that
some nuance is elided in such a conflation. %imondon,s inclusion of technology within his milieux of
exterior forces 0that co*constitute our interior sense of self * our individuation1 allows us to
4 Again Jaynes was prescient in this regard Christian Koch posits the measure of consciousness as correlated to the
level of integration inherent to a system
http:www!wired!comwiredscience2"1311christof#$och#panpsychism#consciousness
comprehend beyond the phenomenological limitations which +aw(ins intimates in the above passage.
As the breadth and complexity of our instrumentation sophisticates the topography of ,middle world, is
transfigured. -e should expect this to impact our sense of self, given the feedbac( occurring between
the world exterior to our perception and our construction of our own ,middle worlds,. =rom a
%imondonian perspective, you could consider writing as a new technological factor in the preindividual
fields which the .icameral %ub5ect was accustomed to individuating from
'he slow development of writing into a u)iquitous technology reordered pedagogy, politics, societal
organisation and many other domains which were li(ewise part of the collective pre*individual. Each
brain*body*world system could integrate the sum total of incoming information in different means
0+aniel +ennet li(ens the reorganisation to the epiphany one can experience shifting from procedural
programming to coding in <$%!1. 'he .icameral sub5ect began to atrophy as it was supplanted by a
different register of consciousness. Jaynes was wor(ing archaeologically and there are limits to how far
you can believe educated and rigorous guesswor( F for guesswor( it shall always remain. .ut maybe
we could s(etch how a comparable crisis of utility confronts our contemporary sub5ectivity F the rational
sense*of*self? #ur criteria for evaluating any such shift can borrow from both $imondon and %aynes
together by considering what is transfigured in the technological portion of the pre&individual and
attending to upheaval which attends on any such transfigurations.
'his is not a discussion of how the internet massages and twea(s your neural plasticity, but more an
overview of how the sum effects of ,our contemporary technological condition, might resemble the
conditions which accompanied the millennia long brea(down of the .icameral mind. 'he ,year ?, is
accordingly further bac( than the advent of computing and the internet. %imondon,s analysis suggests
the state of industrialised labour at the turn of the >?th century as a point of origin. 'his period roughly
approximates to western society in the aftermath of decades of industrial revolution * a period where
an assemblage of technologies had become embedded into everyday life and practice. -ithin this
period of technological rupture, and corresponding afterglow, %imondon contends that an embodied
relationship to technology had been lost. %imondon deems that ,corporeal schemas, were requisite to a
knowing, rather than utilitarian 0or reactionary1, relationship to technology. %aid schemas were lost in
the shuffle, following industrial revolution. A mar(er was laid down in terms of how technology operated
within the pre*individual milieux.
'he turn of the >?
th
century, roughly contemporaneous with the aforementioned corporeal rupture, was
also a period of intense interest as far as historians of the psychological sciences are concerned. $t was
in this period that empirical interest in mediumship, seance and mesmerism and other spiritualist
pursuits was to irrevocably alter the tra5ectory of the psychological sciences. <isa .lac(man,s research
of this period ta(e us a step beyond Jaynes 8as detailed in S$mmaterial .odies) Affect, Embodiment,
&ediationS, 0%age >?6>1;. Jaynes efforts established voice hearing as a vestige of a since supplanted
mode of consciousness. 'o Jaynes, fringe and parapsychological aspects of cognition were remnants
left over from the .iAameral .rain period, like the a**endi+ of the mind. $he flu+ of mind intimated
)y individuation lets us entertain that those *roclivities are not hard coded for redundnacy.
.lac(man,s scholarship focuses on how topics which we today consider the preserve of
parapsychology F telepathy, hypnotic suggestion, communicating with the dead 0voice hearing if you
will1 F were serious topics of research. 'he rationale which saw those experiences dismissed as
marginal was explicitly tied to constituting the normalised sub5ect F the baseline or ratified individuation
if you will F with which we are familiarIaccustomed to. %he notes that 'new technological forms and
practices demanded a sub(ect who could )pay attention* in ways which were integral to new labour and
educational practices+. A sub5ect that could impose their will on reality was closest to ideal in that
regard, and all else that didn,t fit as snugly found itself pathologised, a tra5ectory intensified in the latter
half of the last century. -here Jaynes endeavoured to depathologise voice hearing, .lac(man,s wor(
0and that of <uciana ieira Aaliman1 unearths the reason why voice hearing was pathologised,
unpic(ing the gendered and colonial assumptions of a sub5ect capable of imposing their will on reality. $t
helps account for some of the more effusive and occluded forces operating within the pre*individual
field from which a sub5ect can emerge. &oreover it highlights an explicit lin( with technology that was
becoming ubiquitous in peoples lives and which was significantly reordering labour practice, their daily
infrastructure and surrounding environment.
<et,s consider that the ubiquity 7 indispensability of disembodying 0in %imondons meaning1 technology
to everyday existence first experienced during the post*$ndustrial period has intensified since the
invention of computers and subsequent digital media. <et,s entertain that this period is comparable in
tra5ectory and intensity to the period which saw the brea(down of the .icameral mind in terms of a
powerful change to the preindividual milieux 0if not yet comparable in duration1. 'he driving imperative
in removing the pathology of voice hearing lets us accept that there are faculties and functions of mind
which escape the bounds of ,what once made sense,. %uch acceptance may be crucial to better
adapting to our digitally mediated existence. Aarl Jung figured individuation as how the individual self
develops out of an undifferentiated unconscious. If the 'individual self' ,one of many *otential
individuations- is on the wane. in terms of the *urchase it affords us on our new technological
milieu+ ,like the Bicameral individuation that *receded it-. then it follows we need new
frameworks. new metaconce*ts / in short alternative individuations. A crucial step to formulating
such individuations involves ac(nowledging the psychic continuum between our minds and our digital
technologies. $f we,re ta(ing %imondon,s wor( as our model for psyche, there,s no need to invo(ed the
singularity and panpsychism 0though it would no doubt be intriguing to do so1.
<et,s entertain that there is a homology between neurological loops that produce perception,
computational loops that produce outputs from delimited inputs and individuating loops that produce
sub5ectivity in tandem with our exterior socio technological milieux. Joe .an(,s wor( on E! highlights
this tendency as indicative of the brains pattern see(ing prerogative. =aced with a random stream of
noise the human brain imposes pattern and order on what it hears, discerning voices and artefacts that
are not present on the media 0a process described as auditory pareidolia and apophenia1. .an(s
ambitious contention is that all perception is founded on fundamental pattern recognition mechanisms
comparable to apophenia. 'his ma(es all perception illusory in his estimation) "the capacity to form
such illusions is shared by all people as an important part of normal perception.# And there is an
intimation of consensual hallucination once more there, again helping us fathom how Jaynes .iAameral
3uman might ever have existed. $f the brain is considered as an information computing unit then one
can reason that these faculties emerged in order to help us ma(e sense of a complex and noisy world.
'he contrast with hearing voices in technological media, so the case against the veracity of E! states,
is that this innate illusory perception is permitted to stray beyond itBs boundary conditions. Apophenia of
this sort is superficial access to, or superficial sampling of, one facet of the schi4ophrenic form of
individuation which both Jaynes and Arow made use of. 'hey were not alone F i.e. +7D and &orrison.
$n both the figuration of the contemporay E! artist and &orrisson,s chaos magic( initiate there is an
image of an individual capable of dabbling in a register of perception not universally supported in todays
society. .y toying with the gates and threshold of ones feedbac( loops novelty can be unveiled.
$n both instances each person is gorging on apophenia, albeit in circumstance delimited form. .oundary
conditions, as described in Adrian &acJen4ie,s typology of loops 0s(etched above, and in detail here61,
can frame such delimiting factors. $n an effort to understand the agency of digital loops 0a means of
algorithmic computation and thus production1 &acJen4ie posits that understanding the boundary
conditions by which loops are delimited grants useful purchase on digital processes which might
otherwise evade perception F whether by dint of their speed or their execution nested within stac(s of
software. <et,s entertain that there is a homology between neurological loops that produce perception,
computational loops that produce outputs from delimited inputs and individuating loops that produce
sub5ectivity in tandem with our exterior socio technological milieux.. %ee(ing boundary conditions in the
latter category requires the greatest effort given that we,re dealing with fu44y categories li(e societal
norms, optimal patterns of labour fomented by technological affordances 7 mar(et imperatives, and
cultural 4eitgeists creolised into accepted wisdom. .ut $ believe we might find it productive to see( the
boundary conditions which a given individuated sub5ect cleaves to. $t could account for why a
commonality of sense*of*self exists. $t could go someway towards answering the question which <isa
.lac(man pursues in much of her recent research * "how do we live singularity in the face of
multiplicity#? =or each loop, there are boundary conditions which determine its termination. =or
instance, pre*individual boundary conditions are identifiable in the registers of cognition and perceptual
experience brac(eted as pathological or paranormal, including possession, schi4ophrenia, mesmerism
and voice hearing.
Entertaining the homology between differently instantiated loops and their respective boundary
conditions is important to reconciling ourselves to the unac(nowledged faculties and functions of mind
mentioned previously. 'he pattern recognition loops at the root of our perception evade conscious
apprehension F we are never aware of the fact that some of what our eyes see is partly imaginary. -e
can posit that there exists loops of pattern detection which li(ewise evade our conscious apprehension
at many levels F neurological, technological, societal. 'his patchwor( of nested loops are stitched
together by our bounded self and ma(e ever present sense to us because we possess a standardised
individuation. 3ere again entertaining a notion of psychic continuum is useful) there may be no material
lin( between these digital loops and our neural wetware, but the former constitute that from which our
individuated self emerges. A recent Aeon article addressed another schi4ophrenic symptom) delusions.
$n a discussion on schi4ophrenic influencing machines, &i(e Jay notes that the psychosis of a century
ago appears remar(ably prescient relative to our contemporary coexistence with technology.
'our world is now mediated in part by technologies that fabricate it and partly by our
own minds! whose pattern recognition routines wor, ceaselessly to stitch digital
illusions into the private cinema of our consciousness+.
'his sounds quite similar to .rian 2otman,s examination of 'sub(ectivies operating in electronically
patterned infrastructure+. 2otman is another author who considered how technology could change our
conscious selves. /ver the course of ,.ecoming .eside /urselves, 0>??L1 2otman drills into what
codifying speech, a contiguous analog experience, into discreet symbols entailed. 3e extrapolates out
these ramifications to contemporary digital media and its capabilities of ma(ing many forms of
experience discrete. 3is research drive is in the same ballpar( as Jaynes and %imondon. 3e is
intriguing to our purposes because he articulates what a future individuation might resemble. =or
2otman, it is a parallel self F a hypothetical future sub5ectivity emerging alongside parallel computing)
something that he believes will radically reorient our internal selfs relation to the pre*individual field
exterior to it. 2otman considers body*brain humans as (inaesthetic, corporeal, entities. As such this
future orientation is engaging bodily capacities which already inhere within us all F said capacities have
been merely awaiting the appropriate ensconcing affordances in order to be made manifest. -e don,t
yet possess that individuation, but 2otman deems we can discern it in what he calls ,Sghost effectsS,)
media effects, technologically induced agencies, emergent epiphenomena of mind plus pre*individual
technologies.
-e should see( areas where ,ghost effect, hauntings may transpire, sites of contestation which perhaps
foreshadow the brea(down of the post .icameral mind. $ believe such sites can be gleaned via the
wor( conducted on ,%tac(s, and "%tac(tivism,. $n said discourse, "-The $tac,- designates 'the chain of
interconnected activities and technologies of current and historical significance that spread far beyond
the individual+ * T5aymo. $t affords the necessary agency to technology, and retains a concern for the
sub5ects entanglement with increasingly ubiquitous technologies. $n the stac(, sub5ects become Psers.
'his is an area where the writings of .en5amin .ratton are essential reading. .ratton li(ewise deploys
the language of individuation, and his latest piece on the .lac( %tac( ma(es a case, to this authors
wide eyes, for several contemporary circumstances which one might identify as correlative to the
.icameral .rea(down milennia ago. .ratton,s account of the .lac( %tac(, a conceptual edifice
yet*to*come 0"not the platform we have, but the platform that might be1, treats the Pser as one of E
infrastructural layers. $n so doing .ratton teases out the nature of existing within vertical stac(s and
traditional nation states 0whose hori4ontally delimited territories operate perpendicular to the %tac(1.
=urthermore, .ratton identifies the geopolitical complexities of stac( existence as entailing crisis for
those who inhabit the position of the Pser)
'the $tac, .and the Blac, $tac,/ stage the death of the 0ser in one sense1 they do
so because they bring the multiplication and proliferation of other ,inds of nonhuman
0sers .including sensors! financial algorithms! and robots from nanometric to
landscape scale/! any combination of which one might enter into a relationship with
as part of a composite 0ser.+ & Bratton
'hese composite users, constituting a disposition perhaps better suited to thriving in the contemporary
techno*social landscape, echo technological affordances pulling forth the bodies latent proclivity
towards parallelism, 5ust as 2otman speculated might happen.
'The position of the 0ser then maps only very incompletely onto any one individual
body. 2rom the perspective of the platform! what loo,s li,e one is really many! and
what loo,s li,e many may only be one+ & Bratton
$n framing it thusly .ratton re*articulates the problematic how does the sub5ect cope with ,living
singularity in the face of multiplicity,. 'he ,linear self, individuation made perfect sense against a
bac(drop of a passing epoch of technology 0writing1. 'his triumph was remar(able in how it suppressed
capacities within the human brain*body*mind system that were amenable to non*sequential modes of
parsing reality. 'he question of how do we maintain singularity in the face of multiplicity is inverted,
begging instead the quandry of ,why persist in ,sequential*self, individuation,?
.ratton considers that 'the neoliberal sub(ect position ma,es absurd demands on people as 0sers...
.and/ elaborate schi3ophrenias already ta,e hold in our early negotiation of these composite 0ser
positions.+ %pea(ing of schi4ophrenias in this way is at once indebted to +eleu4ean philosophy 0and its
consideration of late capitalist drives1 and redolent of the outliers of individuation which prompted this
essays investigation. 'he sum of the positive symptoms of schi4ophrenia, surplus processes which the
existing common individuation never need buffer, present themselves as coo(ie*cutter individuations
which suddenly seem more appropriate to our current context F as indeed the Aeon essay on
influencing machines noted. &oving in parallel with .ratton,s rigourous analysis spins out the sta(es of
see(ing alternate individuations into the shifting, crisis riven, geopolitical sta(es of our contemporary
times F tumult that may usher forth new individuations. &any of the issues at sta(e in .ratton,s
discourse are topics ta(en up and engaged by critical internetUdigital artists, including the (een minds in
the orbit of %tac(tivism. E! as praxis, process or methodology, can segue into this field of
interventions through its powerful phenomenological lin( to historical alternate individuations F voice
hearing and the posited prior register of consciousness that it once instilled.
$n S$mmaterial .odies) Affect, Embodiment, &ediationS <isa .lac(man infers the processual coping
evident within the 3earing oices Networ( as 'an e"perience of the self as more divided and
distributed! of the )other* as part of me! and of living with automaticity as part of the spectrum of
e"perience+. Automatism 0perhaps best evinced in the studies of automatic writing1 is another concept
that .lac(man excavates, and it intimates another alternativeIshadow individuation relevant to future
sub5ectivities.
a sense of automatism... e"periences where a sub(ect might feel that they are being
directed or governed by an imperceptible force or agency! or even by a secondary
personality.+
'hat spea(s to the sense of being weighed upon by our data doubles, a ghost effect well surfaced by
critical data artists 0for instance, Networ(ed /ptimisation provides a poignant intersection of the
receding and advancing technological paradigms discussed in this essay1. %uch data personhoods are
described by .ratton as 'an aggregate profile that both is and is not specific to any one entity+. -ithin
the pre*individual field of digitally patterned sub5ectivities there are li(ely many automatisms which we
don,t ac(nowledge. %uch automatisms are perhaps Sghost effectsS which evade perception because
their boundary conditions haven,t been explicitly named, perhaps cannot be named, either because
their delimiting factors are proprietary statistical profiles, or precisely because their boundary conditions
care not for delimitation of a body to which we are accustomed 0say for instance, our membrane of
s(in1.
8 $N%E2' %'2/NDE2 A/NA<P%$/N 3E2E;
process for attuning to those ghost affects F
roiling forces of the preindividual,
exploiting the malfunctions of the engines inducing nascent individuations.