The Politics of Mediation: Subjectivity, Value and Power in the Digital Grid of Aadhaar - Tsvetelina Hristova

Date: Thursday 21 March 2019
Time: 11.30am–1pm
Venue: EZ.G.23, Western Sydney University Parramatta South campus

The Politics of Mediation: Subjectivity, Value and Power in the Digital Grid of Aadhaar

Presenter: Tsvetelina Hristova (Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University)

Discussant: Professor Gay Hawkins

Abstract

In recent years the vision of India’s PM Modi for Digital India has received a significant boost from two major initiatives of the government – the push for cashless transactions and the ubiquitous adoption of the unique identification (UID) Aadhaar. This UID has been linked to the politics of social welfare, as well as the transformation and digitalisation of the economy and the tension between liquidity and capture in the flows of data, value, and subjects.

The case of Aadhaar shows the complexities and the stakes involved in politicising the issue of mediation in the uneasy convergence between technologies of governance and digital technologies. The digitalisation of political subjectivity in Aadhaar rests upon an acute problematisation of the question of mediation. In this, it links to both theories of social organisation and political representation, as well as to the politics of data representation, organisation, and (re)production. This paper examines the principles that are laid out in the design of Aadhaar through the role of the medium and mediation in shaping new political praxes. It also explores their relation to the problem of value production, circulation, and distribution within the grid formed by the architecture of Digital India.

Biography

Tsvetelina Hristova is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. Her main research interests focus on labour, migration, digital infrastructures and the ways in which digitalisation transforms the political as a field of power and resistance.