Dr Lucy Osler: Objectification and the Gaze of Technology

Wednesday 9 November 2022, 4.00PM to 5.30pm

Speaker(s): Dr Lucy Osler, University of Cardiff

Matthew on Osler: "Lucy Osler's research develops a phenomenological and 4E (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended) approach towards philosophical issues concerning embodiment, emotion, intersubjectivity, sociality, and psychopathology. Amongst other things, she has done groundbreaking work on how online social environments shape and regulate emotional and interpersonal experience."

Abstract: We commonly hear discussions about how digital technology promotes objectification: e.g., dating apps promote our sexual objectification of one another (Anderson et al. 2018; Palermos, in draft), Instagram filters promote self-objectification (e.g. Fardouly et al. 2018), and Zoom scaffolds objectifying self-awareness (e.g., Collins 2020; Aagaard 2022). Without wanting to question these critiques, what I think is overlooked is how we can experience technology's own gaze as prompting experiences of objectification. In this talk, through Sartre's and Dolezal's work on shame and the gaze of the other, I explore how self-tracking apps can be experienced as turning an objectifying gaze upon our bodies.

Location: This will be an online Zoom event only. Members have been sent the Zoom link.

Admission: Departmental colloquium members and postgraduate students