Overview

How data and artificial intelligence create a new, abstract digital subject Ideal Subjects examines how samples of our lives and daily behaviors have come to reside in the world of data and artificial intelligence-and what this means for who we are and what we may become. Detailing how AI-facilitated algorithmic prediction and data modeling make ""ideal subjects"" of us, Olga Goriunova explores the complex ways we relate to these digital abstractions. As more and more of our experience is funneled through computational records and models, datafied aspects of our lives are segmented and reconfigured to operate as new entities. Rather than viewing these abstract assemblages as extensions of our selves, Goriunova encourages us to consider these products of computational processes as an entirely new kind of subject, one that is both more and less than a human. Through close readings of contemporary digital practices and data analytics, Goriunova exposes the profound ethical, aesthetic, and political implications of producing and managing these new digital subjects. Highlighting the distinctive impact of computation on contemporary subject formation while placing the present within a history of shifting conceptions of the subject, she gives us much-needed tools for understanding how our intimate selves are rendered by the abstract entities of big data. Ideal Subjects presents an uncanny and deeply fascinating portrait of modern subjectivity in the technological age. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

Full Product Details

Author:   Olga Goriunova
Publisher:   University of Minnesota Press
Imprint:   University of Minnesota Press
Dimensions:   Width: 14.00cm , Height: 1.20cm , Length: 21.60cm
Weight:   0.284kg
ISBN:  

9781517916527

ISBN 10:   1517916526
Pages:   232
Publication Date:   23 December 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Contents Introduction: The Uses and Kinds of Subjects Digital Subjects Operate at a Distance ~ Subject, Person, Self, and Subjectivity ~ Legal Fictive Person and Fictional Persona ~ Different Kinds and Uses of Abstraction ~ Ideal as Mathematical Projection, Inhabiting Abstractions Through Desire ~ The Body as a Reality Setting for Subjects ~ Some Shortcuts Through the Chapters 1. Subject at a Distance and the Politics of Knowing What Kinds of Digital Subjects Are There? ~ Probability Distributions and Predicted Subjects as Patterns ~ Indexical Capacities of Data ~ An Index, Icon, or Diagram ~ Indexicality Comes from Elsewhere ~ Distance in the Digital Subject ~ The Modern Subject at a Distance from Oneself ~ Transcendental Subjects and Ideal Objects of Calculus ~ Asking About the Potential of Abstract Subjects ~ Subjects' Useful Uselessness: Lots of Abstractions ~ Conundrums 2. Ideals: Subjects Desire Abstractions Correlating Patterns and Profiling the Ideal Subject ~ Ideal as Abstraction: How to Desire a Top Percentile ~ Becoming Oneself: Desire to Be Known by Computation ~ Recognizability: Artificial Intelligence as Subjective and Objective Truth-Teller ~ Bayesian Prediction in the Quest for Truths ~ The Hegelian Mutual Realization of Subject and World ~ Gripping Subjects 3. Struggles for Realities Singular Identity, Ground Truthing, Making the ""Really True"" ~ Nature Versus Biometrics: Data-Stitching and Aligning ~ Shaping Artificial Intelligence to Orchestrate a ""Real World"" ~ The Shifting Sands of New Realities Acknowledgments Notes Index

Reviews

""Exciting and important, Ideal Subjects has been needed for a decade, if not longer. Olga Goriunova approaches the theory of the subject in the context of modernity and technology, answering a series of questions that has been both central to yet obfuscated by recent scholarship."" - Justin Joque, University of Michigan ""Olga Goriunova moves deftly between sociocultural analysis and theoretical inquiry to reveal how AI does not simply extract data from human experiences but produces 'ideal subjects'—abstractions of ideals, desires, and data patterns that change subject-making. This book is compelling reading for anyone seeking to understand how we become ourselves (and something other than ourselves) in the age of algorithmic prediction."" - M. Beatrice Fazi, University of Sussex

""Exciting and important, Ideal Subjects has been needed for a decade, if not longer. Olga Goriunova approaches the theory of the subject in the context of modernity and technology, answering a series of questions that has been both central to yet obfuscated by recent scholarship.""--Justin Joque, University of Michigan

Author Information

Olga Goriunova is professor of media arts at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is author of Art Platforms and Cultural Production on the Internet and coauthor of Bleak Joys: Aesthetics of Ecology and Impossibility (Minnesota, 2019).

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