Caring for the Machine Self

"We start with atomic parts, but these atomic parts have transitions, passages, 'tendencies,' which circulate from one to another. These tendencies give rise to habits. Isn't this the answer to the question 'what are we?' We are habits, nothing but habits-the habit of saying 'I.' Perhaps, there is no more striking answer to the problem of the Self" (Gilles Deleuze). The above passage from Gilles Deleuze encapsulates the major ideas of my dissertation. He begins the problem of a "self" not with identity or body, but with its compositional nature. However, he also does not focus on these "atomic parts" as merely reductive identities constituting a self, but rather their relationships with one another. He wants to know first and foremost about the communicative aspects that work below the scale of the self. It is thus crucial that he selected the words, tendencies, and habits, both aspects of behavior that could be construed as non-conscious because they occur primarily at the level of affection, or a body's capacity to produce and be productive of change. My project is primarily concerned with how we affect and are affected by machines. Like the above passage, I am interested in the compositional parts that make up both human and machine identities, as well as how those parts connect the two across the divide of being a living human being vs. being a machine devoid of the qualities of life and humanity. The dissertation will discuss this human/machine binary as resting on a fundamental problematic of communication-namely an ability or inability to self-express or communicate an identity that puts a body on one side or the other of the binary.