Esta pesquisa tem como escopo geral um fenômeno que articula espetáculo e jogos digitais, chamado de eSport. Trata-se de uma cena competitiva de jogos digitais, composta de torneios, partidas transmitidas online e ao vivo para milhares de espectadores, além de patrocinadores e rotinas de treinamento. Dependendo do jogo em questão, diferentes competências são exigidas para um desempenho vitorioso, como reflexos rápidos, leitura e interpretação de informações que emergem durante uma partida, e comunicação para a coordenação de um time. Sobretudo, é uma expressão cultural que reverbera em aspectos sociais e tecnológicos diversos, sendo que interessa aqui deter-se sobre a subjetivação acerca dos jogadores quando se leva em conta os algoritmos de um jogo digital (o audiovisual produzido por eles, compondo espacialidades diversas, e as regras, que moldam a temporalidade de uma sessão de jogo). Argumenta-se que os jogadores, de modo geral, integram uma densa máquina social e tecnológica, onde a produção de mercadoria e de subjetividades acontece tanto na aquisição de periféricos e jogos quanto na própria atividade que engendra o jogo. Essa máquina se faz mais visível no nicho dos eSports, onde exploramse as lógicas que compõem o jogo e as capacidades do jogador. Entre as rotinas de treinamento dos jogadores profissionais e o parâmetro intangível que decide o sucesso de um jogo, a diversão, há uma zona cinzenta, já evidente em técnicas de gamification, onde atividade laboral e entretenimento embaralham-se. Daí a necessidade de se abordar criticamente que tipo de usuário resulta dessa relação específica com as tecnologias envolvidas em jogos digitais. / The scope of this research is a phenomenon that articulates spectacle and digital games, called eSport. eSport is a competitive scene comprising digital games, championships, sponsors, training routines and matches transmitted online and live to a crowd of hundreds of thousands. Depending on the game, different skills are required to achieve a competitive performance, such as sharp reflex, reading and interpretation of information that emerges during a match, and communication to ensure the team\'s coordination. Above all, it is a cultural expression that echoes in a multitude of social and technological aspects, emphasizing here the subjectivation of the players, considering the algorithms (that is, the audiovisual produced by them and the rules, that shape the temporality of a game session) that compose them. It argues that the players, broadly speaking, are part of a dense social and technological machine, where the production of commodities and subjectivities happens when someone purchases equipments and digital games, but also during and within the very activity that comprises the game.This machine makes itself more visible at the eSports niche, where the logics that compose the game and the capacities of the player are exploited. Between the training routines and the intangible parameter which decides the success of the game, called fun, there is a grey area, clear enough in gamification techniques, where labor and entertainment are shuffled. Hence the need to critically engage the type of user that results from this specific relation with technologies involved in digital games.

This thesis unpacks the social life of an alternative food "thing". It is empirically grounded in an intensive ethnography and draws on the conceptual resources of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to narrate alterity as it is manifest in an alternative food network (AFN). Following and tracing British Organic Biodynamic (BOB) wheat, the research weaves through the seed (from breeding to certification), the grain crop's cultivation, harvest and milling, and the final transformations from flour to real bread and its consumption. The storying of the BOB wheat's social life, its social relations and subsequent transformations reveals a persistent blurring of formal distinctions separating 'nature' and 'culture', humans and nonhumans, and production and consumption. Most importantly, it disrupts the traditional categorization of food networks as either 'conventional' or 'alternative'. The analysis of the BOB wheat's social life betrays the imagined purity of alterity of this supposed alternative food network, unveiling a heterogeneous web of hybrid actants and multiple performances of wheats. The analysis reveals a conflict within the BOB wheat network, by demonstrating how performances that are presented as deeply incommensurable are nevertheless inextricably and intimately connected. Consequently, 'conventional', and some 'more-than-conventional', performances threaten to undermine the BOB wheat networks' legitimacy as an AFN. Further, they intimate an ontological impurity that threatens the very possibility of alterity. Accordingly, my analysis narrates the BOB wheat network's efforts to stabilize alterity and expand the collective, through the purification of these incommensurable versions of the wheat. Ultimately, this process of purification works to persistently reconstitute modern ontological binaries, specifically the alternative-convention bifurcations of food networks. To conclude I suggest that this purification, the making and manifesting of alterity, is woven through the contemporary biopolitical dispositive - persistently circulating and remaking, Modern ontological framings of reality as well as the moral and ethical values therein.

O fio condutor desta tese é o caso de uma vala clandestina, oficialmente descoberta, em 1990, no Cemitério Dom Bosco, no bairro de Perus, em São Paulo, no qual foram encontrados mais de 1500 sacos plásticos contendo remanescentes mortais humanos, alguns deles identificados como sendo de desaparecidos políticos executados pela ditadura brasileira. A partir desse caso, a tese realiza um duplo movimento: primeiramente, trata-se de mostrar os limites das elaborações de Foucault, Esposito e Agamben para a compreensão da vala clandestina de Perus. Mais fecundas para isso se revelam as teorias do sociólogo camaronês Achille Mbembe sobre a especificidade das relações entre poder e morte nas regiões coloniais, imperiais e neocoloniais, nas quais ele identifica a existência da necropolítica, isto é, de um poder que produz morte e cria condições mortíferas para subordinar populações. Simultaneamente, o segundo movimento que realiza a tese consiste em explorar as contribuições que a análise do caso da vala de Perus, em particular, e dos dispositivos desaparecedores, em geral, oferecem para a complementação das teorias de Mbembe. Com efeito, esses dispositivos, dentre os quais os sepultamentos clandestinos ocupam um lugar importante, resultados, no Brasil, da associação entre diversos mecanismos de desaparecimento na ditadura militar, revelam um aspecto da necropolítica pouco explorado por Mbembe e que chamamos de necrogovernamentalidade. Com esse termo, queremos chamar a atenção para o fato de que a necropolítica, como mostram os dispositivos desaparecedores, não apenas utiliza da maximização das condições mortíferas para governar, como se ocupa, também, dos processos post-mortem, isto é, da administração dos corpos, dos rituais fúnebres, das rotinas burocráticas da morte e da gestão do luto. Assim, explicita-se o nexo entre necropolítica e subjetivação, pois, como novamente revelam os dispositivos desaparecedores, a necrogovernamentalidade, ao distribuir de maneira desigual a possibilidade de prantear publicamente as mortes, induz a generalização de formas de subjetividade melancólicas e, por isso, submetidas à dominação. / This thesiss guiding thread is an illegal common grave officially discovered in 1990, in the Dom Bosco Cemitery, in the neighborhood of Perus, São Paulo. In this grave, more than 1,500 plastic bags were found containing mortal remains, some identified as being political victims of enforced disappearance perpetrated by the Brazilian dictatorship. Taking its cue from this case, this thesis argues for two main points: first, we show the inadequacies of Foucaults, Espositos, and Agambens political theories in dealing with this particular case. Here, the Cameroonian sociologist Achille Mbembes theory are much more fruitful, especially his account of the particularity of the relationship between power and death in the colonial, imperial, and neo-colonial regions. Mbembe identifies in those regions the existence of a necropolitics, that is, a kind of power which produces death and that creates deadly situations in order to subjugate local populations. Nevertheless, Mbembes theories also have their own inadequacies, so the second main point of this thesis is to show how an adequate understanding of the phenomenon surrounding Peruss common grave and, more generally, what we call the disappearance dispositif, can help us to overcome these deficiencies. Indeed, this dispositif, which comprises, as an important part, the illegal burial, can be thought as of resulting from, in the Brazilian case, the association between, and unification of, several disappearance mechanisms by the Brazilian dictatorship. This type of association and unification reveals a necropolitical aspect not explored by Mbembe, namely what we call necrogovernmentality. We coined this term, necrogovernmentality, in order to call attention to the fact that necropolitics, as is uncovered by a careful analysis of the disappearance dispositif, not only maximizes deadly conditions in order to better subjugate, but also manages the post-mortem processesthe management of the bodies, of the burial rites, of the bureaucratic routines of death and mourning. This is important, because we are thus able to uncover a deep connection between necropolitics and subjectivation: the disappearance dispositif and its associated necrogovernmentality distributes in an uneven manner the possibility of public mourning, and hence induces a dissemination of melancholic subjects, subjects that are therefore more easily subjugated.

The tendency within science fiction to satirise and expose dominant political and social structures works in harmony with Agamben's paradigmatic, philosophical system, which seeks to similarly expose the functioning of biopolitical structures in the West. Agamben is known for his controversial statement that the concentration camp has become the paradigm of modern western government. A key aspect or biproduct of this process is the situation of bare life - a state of being excluded from the polis that emerges as a result of the suspended nature of the paradigm of western government. This state is one of political denudation, such that governments may sanction the abuse and even killing of certain groups: a chief historical example is the murder of Jews during the Nazi holocaust. Sf novels, particularly the work of Philip K. Dick offer unique insights into the process that produces bare life, partly by exhibiting its own specific examples: positing the inhuman or post-human, androids and even women as instances of such. This thesis argues that Womankind is perhaps the central and most pervasive case of bare life, given her long-standing historical oppression. Furthermore, the representation of women in sf often exposes and in some cases critiques the patriarchal power structures that have allowed women to inhabit this political state. The philosophy of Deleuze offers the much needed potential to break away from this never-ending system of female oppression that the current paradigm of biopolitics facilitates. His and Guattari's system of becoming and immanence provides a framework for discussing the position of women as, rather than hopeless victims of a stagnant system, one of potential that they term becoming-woman; this process can be manipulated in certain emancipatory directions, freeing women from patriarchal, political practices. The sf figure of the gynoid in particular acts as a zone of indeterminate becoming whose presence in sf popular culture, literature and also in sf video games (e.g. the Mass Effect and Deus Ex series) is a conduit for exploring and imagining alternatives to current modes of being that are not necessarily gendered. I call this process becoming-gynoid, which offers new avenues for exploration in terms of gender and feminist theory both in sf fiction and sf video games.

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No. of bitstreams: 1 paschoalotte_lm_dr_arafcl.pdf: 3219474 bytes, checksum: 3d1561985da9b8d968b144a96442458a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-04-03 / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Há pelo menos três décadas a esfera pública vem sendo banhada pela figuração do humano como um ser de natureza igual – nem mais nem menos – a todos os outros seres viventes sob a rubrica da biologia molecular, mais precisamente da genômica. Do DNA como representação da “essência do nosso ser” aos “homens geneticamente criminosos”, vemos inúmeros enunciados serem vocalizados em livros, em reportagens e mídias em geral – especializados ou não – que, como diria Gyorgy Lukács, derivam ontologicamente as características do ser social daquelas constitutivas do ser natural. Desde a inauguração, na década de 1970 com a sociobiologia de Edward Wilson e Richard Dawkins, até os dias de hoje, a figuração do humano baseado na Teoria Sintética da Evolução vem se aperfeiçoando e se propagando nas distintas áreas do saber e da cultura. De forma geral, parte dominante desse pensamento interpreta as qualidades ontológicas dos humanos e, por consequência, suas características como resultados adaptacionista da evolução da nossa espécie com base na fitness genética. Sendo assim, no sentido de contribuir na compreensão do cenário no qual subiu ao palco tal figuração, este trabalho assume a tarefa de capturar alguns de seus significados históricosociais contemporâneos. Por consistir numa figuração com suportes teórico-científicos, a intenção, num primeiro momento, é identificar alguns dos seus fundamentos epistemológicos e ontológicos através da construção do que denominamos de grade de inteligibilidade genômico derivacionista, cuja característica central consiste na “dedução ontológica” das esferas menos complexas do ser em geral as mais complexas. Posteriormente, para levarmos a cabo o nosso objetivo, explicaremos o que consideramos efetivamente novo em seu significado histórico-social mediante as suas manifestações ideológicas – pelas quais práticas políticas e econômicas se operacionalizam. A nossa tese é de que, sob a crise estrutura do capital e seus aportes financeiros, emergiram tanto uma bioeconomia quanto uma biopolítica que imprimiram significados radicalmente novos ao modo com que tal figuração do humano se transmuta de discurso científico ao ideológico. / For at least three decades the public sphere has been bathed by the figuration of the human as a being of an equal nature – no more and no less – to all other living beings under the rubric of molecular biology, more precisely genomics. From DNA as a representation of the “essence of our being” to "genetically criminal men," we see innumerable utterances being spoken of in books, in reports, in advertisements and media in general – specialized or not – which, as Gyorgy Lukacs would say, derive ontologically the characteristics of the social being of those constitutive of the natural being. Since the inauguration in the 1970s with the sociobiology of Edward Wilson and Richard Dawkins, to this day, the human figure based on the Synthetic Theory of Evolution has been improving and spreading in the different areas of knowledge and culture. In general, a dominant part of this thought interprets the ontological qualities of humans and, consequently, their characteristics as an adaptational result of the evolution of our species based on genetic fitness. Thus, in order to contribute to the understanding of the scenario in which such figuration came to the stage, this work assumes the task of capturing some of its contemporary social-historical meanings. In the first place, the intention is to identify some of its epistemological and ontological foundations through the construction of what we call a “reductionist genomic intelligibility grid”, whose central characteristic consists of the "ontological deduction" of the less complex spheres of “being in general” the more complex. Subsequently, to accomplish our goal, we will explain what we consider to be effectively new in its historical-social meaning through its ideological manifestations – by which political and economic practices become operational. Our thesis is that, under the crisis of capital structure and its financial devices, both a bioeconomy and a biopolitics have emerged that have given radically new meanings to the way in which such figuration of the human transmutes from scientific to ideological discourse / 2014/27003-2

Esta dissertação se caracteriza como uma problematização da qualidade de vida enquanto uma importante questão que atravessa de diversos modos nossa atualidade. Essa questão é trabalhada no texto em três momentos distintos e complementares, em cada qual se busca compor e decompor uma pergunta que atue como chave de acesso a um nível de complexidade específico e possibilite saltos de compreensão de um momento ao outro. No primeiro momento a qualidade de vida é apresentada como uma expressão de uso comum e generalizado, de modo que o texto se movimenta em um percurso descritivo dos distintos usos e significados dessa expressão. No segundo momento essa falação sobre qualidade de vida é tensionada para que se tornem visíveis alguns enunciados que circulam, se repetem e se transformam num campo aberto de disputas, em função do qual essa qualidade de vida é produzida como uma questão que importa. No terceiro momento essa produção da qualidade de vida como uma questão que importa e que precisa ser gerida é pensada a partir do conceito de dispositivo, e o texto caminha assim como um percurso analítico por entre as distintas linhas que compõem esse dispositivo de qualidade de vida até alcançar as linhas de subjetivação, como limite do dispositivo, como resistência e criação. Após esses três momentos, o texto salta para um interstício poético-filosófico composto por fragmentos de aforismos nietzscheanos que tocam o tema da grande saúde, na busca por uma perspectiva que explore linhas de fuga e de criação pelas quais seja possível pensar e experimentar outros lugares e outros modos para uma vida com qualidades. Ao fim do percurso o texto é apresentado em um pequeno ensaio, que pode ser lido tanto no fim quanto no início da dissertação, no qual é esboçado um contraste entre a qualidade de vida e uma vida com qualidades. / This dissertation is characterized as a problematization of the quality of life as an important issue that permeates in many ways our actuality. This issue is analyzed in the text in three different moments, in each the effort is to build up and down a question that works as an access key to specific complexity levels and that allows jumps in understanding from one moment to another. At the first moment the quality of life is presented as a widely used expression, and the text goes as a description of different uses and meanings of this expression. At the second moment this discourses about quality of life are tensioned to render visible some statements that circulates, are repeated and transformed within an open field of disputes, in relation to which this quality of life is produced as an issue that matters. At the third moment this production of quality of life as an issue that matters and that needs to be managed is thought through the concept of dispositif, and the text goes as an analytical route through the distinct lines that composes this dispositif until it reaches the lines of subjectification, as the limit of the dispositif, as resistance and creation. After this discussion in three moments, the text jumps to a poetic-philosophic interstice made of fragments of some nietzschean aphorisms that touches the theme of great health, in a search for some perspective that explores some possible lines of escape and creation by which it is possible to experiment another places and modes for a life with qualities. At the end of this track the text is presented through a little essay, that can be read both at the end or at the beginning of the text, in which it is sketched a contrast between the quality of life and a life with qualities.

A pesquisa apresenta a teoria marcuseana do poder como perspectiva crítica no debate contemporâneo acerca do conceito foucaultiano de biopolítica. À primeira vista, tal relação parece controversa, ao reconhecer que Foucault desenvolve seu conceito paralelamente à crítica contra Marcuse. Ora, o conceito foucaultiano de biopolítica descreve jogos de poder como administração dos corpos e também como um modo de cálculo da vida da população. Tal concepção contraria diretamente a hipótese marcuseana do poder repressivo, um modelo crítico que tem em vista uma camada verdadeira e subjacente de poder, recalcada nas formações sociais e subjetivas estabelecidas. Com esse quadro, como reunir os dois autores na crítica do poder, assumindo a biopolítica como premissa da teoria do poder? De fato, a aproximação seria impossível ao partir da aposta marcuseana em uma civilização nãorepressiva, presente em Eros e Civilização. Contudo, com a análise do avanço da racionalidade instrumental no pós-Guerra em O Homem Unidimensional, Marcuse avalia a possibilidade de um poder não-repressiva. Afinal, na nova ordem social não se apresenta mais um controle repressivo dos corpos, mas sim uma excitação da vida e dos corpos em movimento. Seria este um sinal de concordância entre os autores? E ainda, dada esta nova correspondência, é possível aproveitar a crítica foucaultiana à biopolítica para redimensionar não apenas as reflexões de Marcuse sobre o poder, como também as passagens contemporâneas entre a teoria crítica e a genealogia do poder? / This research presents Marcuses theory of power as an essential perspective for the contemporary debate on the Foucaultian concept of biopolitics. This would seem a rather controversial choice at a first glance, as, admittedly, the development of Foucaults concept occurred alongside that of his critique of Marcuse. Indeed, Foucaults conception of biopolitics describes games of power that include the administration of the bodies and the calculated management of the life of a given population a notion entirely adverse to Marcuses repressive hypothesis of power, a critical model that assumes a real, subjacent layer of power that is repressed in established social and subjective formations. Given these differences, as well as an adoption of biopolitics as a fundamental premise for a theory of power, how are the two authors to be brought together for a critique of power? Such an approximation would certainly be impossible in light of Marcuses arguments, in Eros and Civilization, for the possibility of a non-repressive civilization. Still, through the analysis of the advancement of instrumental rationality in the postwar period conducted in One- Dimensional Man, Marcuse will revise his former perspective on non-repressive power; after all, the new social order no longer features a repressive control of bodies, but rather an excitation of life, and of bodies to motion. Could that be understood as a sign of agreement between the authors? Furthermore, given this new correspondence, would it be possible to employ Foucaults critique to add dimensions not only to Marcuses reflections on power, but to contemporary mediations between critical theory and the genealogy of power?

My main argument in this dissertation is that popular nationalism in post-war South Korea, unlike the conventional claim to it among many South Korean critical intellectuals and unification policy-makers, cannot serve as an antidote to anti-North Koreanism. On the contrary, it is problematic that the cultural politics of national identification, prescribed as an authentic critical tool of challenging anti-North Koreanism, helps program hierarchical inter-Korea relationships by exposing the South Korean public to anomalous cultural-political characteristics of North Koreans. It also does so by creating popular discourses that have reinforced unification policy agendas that frame the development of North Korea in terms that would make it amenable to the needs of transnational capitalism and the legitimacy of liberal human rights discourse. This critical endeavor claims that the critique of anti-North Koreanism cannot be successful without problematizing the idea of discontinuity that stresses there is a rupture between cold war and post-cold war forms of anti-North Koreanism. This is because any un-scrutinized presumption of the historical transition can only confuse critical interpretations of the role of national identification while thereby reinforcing policy-driven resolutions for inter-Korea sociability. Thus, I locate the significance of my work in a democratic call for South Korean critical communication and cultural studies as well as the public to effectively deconstruct the contingent discursive collaboration of national identification and anti-North Koreanism that complies with transnational globalization.

The history of colonialism is generally associated with the authoritarian regimes of the sixteenth century that expanded their reign for the purpose of material aggrandizement. Problems arise, however, when colonial regimes espouse explicit concern for the welfare of the subject population. Through a reading of British colonial discourse on India, as represented by the Economist newspaper, John Stuart Mill, George Campbell, and John William Kaye, I argue that market capitalism was seen as the means by which ‘backward’ Indian subjects would be ‘improved.’ But this ‘civilizing mission’ exposed Indian society to unprecedented violence as the British sought to enforce its conformity to a system of proprietorship and commercial production. To explain the paradox inherent to liberal colonialism I will employ the concept of biopolitics as developed by Michel Foucault. Biopolitics explains how the prioritization of ‘life’ leads, not to peaceful existence, but to efforts to eliminate elements of human activity deemed inimical to the reproduction of the species. In colonial India this took the form of adjudicating subjects’ ability to adapt to, and create, the circumstances for industry to flourish, showing that at its core, British rule in India represented an assault on the indeterminacy of life itself.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on February 26, 2008) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.