From "Empowerment" To "Enabling" : Changing Horizons In The Subjectivity Of Digital Labour

With the deepening process of capitalist industrialization in the 19 th century,capitalist relations of production absorbed a larger range of labor into the field of large-scale industrial production.More and more workers realized that their independent skills and creativity were losing value,and were standardized into abstract productivity-workers’ bodies and minds were forced to yield to mechanized large-scale production,that is the uninterrupted process of commodity production.When the platform network becomes a production tool,all the actionable materials that can be networked are invested in spatial production,and the concrete labor force becomes increasingly an abstract digital labor force,and with the popularization of media terminals,there has been a widespread labor situation.Unlike traditional factory production models,digital technology greatly obscures the essence of free labor,producing the value needs of labor through the construction of simulacra,thereby prompting people to overlook the true existence of subjectivity.This article takes the subjectivity of digital labor as the starting point to explore why this subjectivity is empowered and how to achieve the action logic of self empowerment.It elucidates a dialectical perspective from intersexuality to ontology and then back to intersexuality.This paper first summarizes the control factors and the possibilities of giving play to the subjectivity of digital labor by combing the relevant literature on digital labor at home and abroad,then explains the development context and theoretical journey of digital labor,explains the transformation and change of the perspective of labor discussion since Marx,and explores the action basis of the subjectivity of digital labor from the post-modern and post structuralism related literature.The issue of empowering the subjectivity of digital labor is the core of discussions in the field of communication political economy,and its subjectivity is also seen as a mirror image of the empowerment of others.Specifically,the subjectivity of digital labor is constructed by the logic of capital,technology,and emotions.Among them,capital uses a "user oriented" marketing approach to mask deep control motives and achieve the reconstruction of social relations through a global production approach;Technology and emotions have become tools for constructing capital,and technological functions such as openness and closure,connection and anti connection of fields have become bait for attracting digital labor.The trend of emotional de labor and group value advocates make the manipulation of capital power clear at a glance.At this point,the subjectivity of digital labor is not owned by the entity,but rather becomes a product of the construction of others(capital power relations).Returning to the ontological level of digital labor,exploring subjectivity needs to be centered around "enabling".For this reason,we can start from two aspects: heteronomy level and self-discipline level:heteronomy level emphasizes that the environmental field constructed by current technology presents a "tuber" feature,and mobility,uncertainty,uncontrollability and other issues are becoming necessary considerations for network action.Social conventions and their platform governance can reduce the degree of capital exploitation of digital labor subjectivity and avoid ethical issues related to the network society;The self-discipline level emphasizes the self construction of the noumenon and the anti mainstream characteristics of the re tribal group.This anti structured path is precisely compatible with the technological tuber,in order to seek the liberation of the subjectivity of digital labor.Continuing the research context of this article can further question the empowerment of subjectivity: on the one hand,reflecting on the potential Sodom like degradation in the network field caused by excessive empowerment,and on the other hand,questioning the path issues after empowerment.In fact,it is not necessary for digital labor to eliminate the central control of digital Leviathan or some kind of logos,and the current Internet field is more appropriate to Habermas’ re feudal situation.Therefore,it is necessary to combine ontology and intersubjectivity in the research field,and agree to care about the subjectivity of digital labor as an enabling and enabling co construction product.This article believes that the uncontrollability of technology and subjects is ultimately an important dimension for achieving ontological value,and the issue of defining the subjectivity of digital labor needs to be recursively explored in a dialogue between "numbers" and "labor".What is more worth recognizing is that the validity of realizing subjectivity enabling is very limited.Even though we are discussing postmodernism,we will inevitably fall into various utopias of postmodernism.Therefore,this article hopes to provide a theoretical perspective and empirical coordinates for exploring the subjectivity of communication political economy by sorting out the research context of digital labor subjectivity.