captive America

“These institutions diminish the identities of the individuals within them, restructure their social roles and identities, and make them unfit for the outside world through a series of rituals enacted through admission, treatment, and social interactions with staff” (Hatch 2019: 8)

Hatch offers a critical investigation into the use of psychotropic drugs to pacify and control inmates, particularly those of minority communities. Black and Brown bodies, minds, individuals are devalued, deemed as less than, and are categorized as ‘Other’ in the United States. Psychotropic drugs are weaponized against the American ‘Other’, controlling the ways certain individuals get to exist in society. Silenced, numbed, and manipulated for a greater, American, capitalistic agenda.

Your anger ! , fear ! , sadness ! , pain ! – is unproductive. Take responsibility for your thoughts, and fix yourself.

“She wanted me to let go of my anger. What?! But anger is the only tool I have to survive” (Mejia 2019: 251)

(recentering) agency

“This vision was a small revelation. I realized that most thoughts are impersonal happenings, like self-assembling machines. Unless we train ourselves, the thoughts passing through our mind have little involvement with our will. It is strange to realize that even our own thoughts pass by like scenery out the window of a bus, a bus we took by accident while trying to get somewhere else. Most of the time, thinking is an autonomous process, something that happens outside of our control” (Pinchbeck 2002: 140)

Thoughts can and do define our sense of self, our individuality, our character. If we have no control over our thoughts, do we have control over who we become? Who has control? Technology, like drug technologies, can reconfigure our brain and body chemistry in ways that can transform our perception and experience of society. An individual’s agency over their experience of society is undoubtedly influenced by technology. Understanding how technology can shape our thoughts, and our behaviors, can offer us a new sense of power over the ways in which we choose to interact with society.

Shaping identity, forming one’s thoughts through datafication.

Discriminatory practices are further designed in datafication, also exposing how technology can disrupt and impact one’s agency.