Dysphoria as the Potency of Contradictions: A Bet by Paul B. Preciado

Abstract

This study aims to foster a critical reading of some aspects of digital culture in the Global South – understood here as more than a geopolitical category – but as a postcolonial condition of specific perspectives, practices, and counter-hegemonic strategies in the global context. In particular, it focuses on the uses and political implications of digital automation that govern many online platforms and interactive devices. More precisely, I propose a theoretical review of some implications of the notion of "dysphoria" that Paul B. Preciado develops in his latest book, situating it as an onto-fictional potency of the constitutive contradictions of digital life in the Global South. I begin by contextualizing the Foucauldian tools Preciado largely relies on and then position the notion of "dysphoria" within the post-pandemic landscape of digital and algorithmic automation. Finally, I outline some existing paths for recognizing the dysphoria of the world as an ongoing effect of digital technologies shaping contemporary life.