Critical datification: practice and production of knowledge against the current of algorithmic governmentality. Two examples in the Mexican case

Abstract

Algorithmic governmentality can be understood as a form of rationality that starts from the use, production and management of social experience converted into data. In this work it is proposed that this form of rationality has serious implications in the way in which subjects experience that reality since, on the one hand, they limit the scope of the possible by converting subjective decisions into programmable probabilities while, also, they start and they reproduce biases and social inequalities. In response to this dominant use of data, the subjects have given rise to a new practice that corresponds to the critical use of data, tools and instruments typical of digitality. What we will call here critical datification is a response from practice but also a theoretical-methodological proposal to contend with the dominant discourses. Two cases are offered, that of the citizen response organized after the earthquake of September 19, 2017 in Mexico, in which the management of data created by activists was fundamental to respond to the emergency, and that of the academic work carried out in the interdisciplinary laboratory Signa_Lab in Mexico, to address, make visible and offer analysis of social problems such as the disappearance crisis in the state of Jalisco, in the same country.