Hacking Ourselves: From Life to Death

Why we picked it

In this talk, I will first offer significant cases of health self-surveillance pursued through technology and, second, I will propose a possible reading of their profound reasons by arguing that, as paradoxical as it may seem, they are a kind of desperate way out of typically neoliberal imperatives of *self-optimisation* and, thus, individual success. More precisely, I will argue that there is a significant sense in which health self-surveillance pursued through technology, from the case of the quantified self to the case of self-biohacking, can free us from the burden of autonomy that, especially in neoliberal societies, means the unbearable burden of being the best. Indeed, if we can increasingly replace our autonomy with our (technological) automation, we can also increasingly replace our responsibility for our failure with technology’s responsibility for our failure. **About the Speaker:** [Simona Chiodo](https://www.dastu.polimi.it/en/staff/simona.chiodo) is Professor of Philoso