Silvia Capodivacca

ABSTRACT: In the ever-evolving landscape of the digital age, the theories posited by Michel Foucault four decades ago provide an insightful lens through which to view our contemporary technological society. This article underscores the shift from modern reference disciplines, such as biology, political economy, and linguistics, to the emergent domains of cognitive and computer sciences. By exploring the personalization of online user experiences via data collection and behavioral microtargeting, the study highlights the nuances of modern surveillance. This new era of monitoring bears a resemblance to Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power, marked by its subtle yet omnipresent control. In a world where digital oversight by governments and corporations is increasingly prominent, the relevance of Foucault’s ideas becomes significant for deciphering and traversing the intricate landscapes of power and surveillance in the digital age.

Several scientific publications have recently shown a certain revival of concept of Tragic, in conjunction with a number of philosophical inquiries surveying the in absentia dialogue between Nietzschean speculation and Freudian discoveries. The hermeneutic itinerary we propose crosses both lines of research with the explicit purpose of outlining an original concept of Tragic. First of all we determine a specific connotation of the notion, conceived as an essential trait of the coming to being of the being, rather than as a fundamental word of Aesthetic lexicon: the key-word we devised is “morphogenetic split”, that is a laceration which discloses new being structures within the deep rift it opens. After this introductory chapter the inquiry parts in two macro-areas. The first section aims to test the previously determined definition of Tragic and ends up tracking down a triad of creations, each of whose is revealed as arisen amid a split. Here are the three: man, as an individual compelled to the sublimation of his instincts; psyche, as a catch basin for frustrated desires; the image of the world itself, compared to the image reflected in a deforming mirror. In the chapter “Passage” the Nietzschean Will to Power is seen as the element that allows the shift from a state of barren opposition to morphogenesis. The second section faces an issue risen from the previous. Even though each progression appears to come out from a laceration, the notion of death – meant as the unsurpassable bound of any creative horizon imaginable – seems to be able to throw the philosophical pair Becoming-Tragic into crisis. The latter term is indeed reduced to a transitory error, i.e. a momentary detour from the natural course of the existent. Nietzsche’s Eternal Return swings the latter conjecture, allowing Tragic to show itself as a destructive and at the same time creative power. In “Epicrisis” we collect the critical results of the inquiry and try to refer them to the most traditional definition of Tragic, which is the one stated in Aristotle’s Poetics. Beyond the peculiar course of our inquiry, we think that providing a platform of textual recognition is an essential support for those who intend to approach the authors and topics we discuss. We present the wide “Bibliographic Appendix” in this belief