SUBJECT-AVATAR IN INFORMATED ENUNCIATIVE SPACES: BETWEEN TECHNICAL STANDARDIZATIONS AND PRACTICES OF RESISTANCE

Abstract

In this paper, we conducted a comparative analysis of the Tor and Google Chrome browsers. Based on the theoretical and methodological framework of Materialist Discourse Analysis, and especially through the notions of subject-avatar and computerized enunciative spaces, we observed that, in Tor, there is an agency that results in a provisional, fluid, and fragmented subject-avatar, associated with a process of technical individualization that is temporary and opposes the extractivist logic of data colonialism. In the case of Chrome, however, we identified a process of individualization that mirrors and reproduces this extractivist logic as a colonialist practice.