What is a data body, and why does this matter? Virtually everything we do can be collected as a data point. The volume of data collected about humans every single day is already 70 times what is held in the Library of Congress. Each of us has an external data body, and it is performing across AI, virtual life forms, robotics, social media and dataveillance databases, and ancestry DNA websites. Internally, we are made up of DNA, a genetic code so complex that if you stretched the coils out, they would reach twice the diameter of our Solar System. How are our data bodies performing across time and space, who owns them, and what are they performing when we’re not paying attention, or even aware of their existence? Do our data bodies replicate us, misrepresent us, implicate us, and know us better than we know ourselves? This course explores the surprising and innovative ways that artists, body hackers, and scholars approach these questions through performance theory, body theory, and cyborg theory. This course is centered on critical readings and artworks by Indigenous, Afro-diasporic, Latinx, Asian, and other global theorists and artists.Philosophy and Critical Theory (PHCRT) courses focus on developing critical reading and thinking skills, with an emphasis on learning to frame and explore meaningful questions. Students consider multiple perspectives and claims in the process of formulating independent, well-founded opinions.

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