The Mobile Archive of the Self: On the Interplay Between Aesthetic and Metric Modes of Communication

Abstract

This feature article develops the concept of the mobile archive of the self to account for the communicative codification of self by way of metrics and aesthetics in the use of smartphone apps. We propose that research on digital self-representations would benefit from a more systematic and conceptually grounded integration of the metric and aesthetic modes of communication in what we term “mobile selfhood”—that is, current practices for tracking and documenting the self with the smartphone. Positing that the two modes of communication are increasingly inseparable, we use selfies as a case in point to offer an integrating analysis that focuses on processes of historicizing, commercializing, and politicizing the self via smartphone applications. The resulting mobile archive of the self is at once bound to the hardware and software we use to perform and historicize it, and reconfigured, merged, and reassembled as user profiles enter into data flows that run steadily from our personal devices to commercial and political actors.