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Unpublished Paper
Selves and Things. Dubravna Ugresic and Profiling Technologies
(2009)
  • Mireille Hildebrandt
Abstract

In her humourous and painfull descriptions of the lives of (former) Yugoslavians, Dubravna Ugresic keenly demonstrates the intimate connection between humans and things. Like Paul Auster in The invention of solitude, she traces the unexpected workings of our 'capricious' memory (MUS:77) and its attachment to things that take us back to other times or other places (watches, houses, photographs, bridges). Written from the perspective of an exile her the Museum of Unconditional Surrender exhibits the nomadic sense of belonging that is evoked by things that may seem trivial from an 'objective' perspective. The experience of the destruction of the most robust things that constitute the world, as described by Ugresic, adequately demonstrates how our sense of self emerges from our continuous interaction with the things that co-produce our world. And to what extent this sense of self is thus built on quicksands that are ready to take us in at any moment in time (war, earthquakes, tsunami's).

In this paper I will argue that Ugresic demonstrates that we are detectable in our dealings with the things that surround us, rather than in our deepest thoughts about ourselves, while at the same time the meaning of these things depends on our dealings with them. In the preface to the Museum of Unconditional Surrender, after describing the unusual display of the contents of the stomach of Roland the walrus in the Berlin Zoo, she writes:

'The chapters and fragments which follow should be read in a similar way. If the reader feels that there are no meaningful or firm connections between them, let him be patient: the connections will establish themselves of their own accord. And one more thing: the question as to whether this novel is autobiographical might at some hypothetical moment be of concern to the police, but not to the reader'.

The fragmented narratives that follow her preface nourish the reader with an abundance of seemingly disconnected little stories that in fact often resist the basic requirements of a story (no beginning, no end, no plot, no significant action). But somehow the reader that stomachs all this, learns to trace the human imbroglio's that emerge from these strange collections of momentary dealings in a devastated world. The reader begins to profile the persons that emerge from the heap of disjointed memories that she is presented with. And it may be the case that from this heap of ruptured enaction a stronger image is concocted of the humans that people this book, than any type of deliberate reflection could have produced.

Behavioural biometric profiling technologies, which build on the correlations between a host of trivial interactions between people and things, may likewise produce a type of knowledge that is more precise, more fuzzy and more intimate than any compilation of sensitive personal data could be. These dynamic profiles, inferred from the interactions with our environments, will impact our sense of self. They will supply service providers and government authorities with new insights into our anticipated behaviour and allow them to base their decisions on this anticipation. On the basis of this new type of knowledge they may either deprive us of or provide us with certain opportunities or risks. Perhaps art and literature can alert us to the way these technologies will create a new type of knowledge that may disturb the power balances between individual citizens and large organisations (whether private or public). We may need to rethink the principles that embody these checks and balances: such as privacy, fairness and due process.

Publication Date
2009
Citation Information
Mireille Hildebrandt. "Selves and Things. Dubravna Ugresic and Profiling Technologies" (2009)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/mireille_hildebrandt/15/