The Deeper Thinking Podcast

Your Past Is Performing Without You : Identity, Memory, and the Algorithmic Sel


Listen Later

Your Past Is Performing Without You

The Deeper Thinking Podcast

For those living through the strange persistence of their own archive.

What happens when the digital versions of ourselves continue to exist—and perform—long after we’ve emotionally, ethically, or ideologically moved on? In this episode, we confront the eerie automation of the past self: not preserved as memory, but reactivated as metric. With quiet references to the work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Bernard Stiegler, and Erving Goffman, we explore what it means for identity to become an output, a residue, a cached result no longer under our authorship.

This is not a lament for privacy, nor a call for deletion. It is an inquiry into presence: who is performing our identity when we are no longer there? And what does it mean when systems remember us with greater fidelity than we remember ourselves?

Reflections

Here are some provocations that surfaced during the episode:

  • The past no longer decays. It performs.
  • We aren’t haunted. We’re indexed.
  • The system doesn’t care what we meant. Only what worked.
  • The most visible versions of ourselves are often the least alive.
  • The archive doesn’t remember you. It reruns you.
  • To not refresh may be the most human act left.
  • Our silences are now as searchable as our words.
  • There is no final post. There is only the loop.
  • The past isn’t over. It’s scheduled.
  • What we forget might be the only thing that still belongs to us.
  • Why Listen?
    • Reframe identity as algorithmic performance
    • Explore the eerie ethics of automated memory
    • Engage with Foucault, Butler, Stiegler, and Goffman on visibility, performance, and the self
    • Listen On:
      • YouTube
      • Spotify
      • Apple Podcasts
      • Support This Work

        If this episode resonated with you and you'd like to support this slower form of thinking, you can do so here: Buy Me a Coffee. Thank you for listening and staying with the questions.

        Bibliography
        • Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage, 1977.
        • Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1990.
        • Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
        • Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday, 1959.
        • Bibliography Relevance
          • Foucault: On power, visibility, and the mechanisms of surveillance that persist beyond intent.
          • Butler: On the self as performed, iterated, and vulnerable to being fixed in visibility.
          • Stiegler: On memory technologies and the loss of individual temporal sovereignty.
          • Goffman: On the dramaturgy of identity and the disjunction between presentation and authenticity.
          • Your archive still smiles. But you didn’t refresh.

            #DigitalSelf #MemoryPerformance #Foucault #Butler #Stiegler #Goffman #AlgorithmicIdentity #PostHumanism #TheDeeperThinkingPodcast #EpistemicEthics #ArchivedSelf #MediaPhilosophy

            ...more
            View all episodesView all episodes
            Download on the App Store

            The Deeper Thinking PodcastBy The Deeper Thinking Podcast

            • 4.2
            • 4.2
            • 4.2
            • 4.2
            • 4.2

            4.2

            63 ratings


            More shows like The Deeper Thinking Podcast

            View all
            On Being with Krista Tippett by On Being Studios

            On Being with Krista Tippett

            10,389 Listeners

            Buddha at the Gas Pump by Rick Archer

            Buddha at the Gas Pump

            623 Listeners

            The One You Feed by Eric Zimmer

            The One You Feed

            2,500 Listeners

            Insight Hour with Joseph Goldstein by Be Here Now Network

            Insight Hour with Joseph Goldstein

            915 Listeners

            10% Happier with Dan Harris by 10% Happier

            10% Happier with Dan Harris

            12,513 Listeners

            THIRD EYE DROPS by Michael Phillip

            THIRD EYE DROPS

            1,242 Listeners

            Living Myth by Michael Meade

            Living Myth

            963 Listeners

            New Thinking Allowed Audio Podcast by New Thinking Allowed Audio Podcast

            New Thinking Allowed Audio Podcast

            256 Listeners

            Dreamland by Whitley Strieber

            Dreamland

            455 Listeners

            A Psychic's Story by Nichole Bigley: Spiritual Guide, Intuitive, Energy Healer, Psychic, Medium, Teacher, Reiki, Intuition, God, Angels, Spirit Guides, Universe, Soul, Life After Death, Supernatural, Spirituality, Higher + Highest Self, Consciousness, Awakening)

            A Psychic's Story

            1,300 Listeners

            Mind & Life by Mind & Life Institute

            Mind & Life

            267 Listeners

            The Paranormal UFO Consciousness Podcast by Grant Cameron

            The Paranormal UFO Consciousness Podcast

            98 Listeners

            Next Level Soul Podcast with Alex Ferrari by Alex Ferrari

            Next Level Soul Podcast with Alex Ferrari

            856 Listeners

            Cosmosis [Formerly The UFO Rabbit Hole] by Kelly Chase & Jay Christopher King

            Cosmosis [Formerly The UFO Rabbit Hole]

            1,004 Listeners

            The Telepathy Tapes by Ky Dickens

            The Telepathy Tapes

            7,431 Listeners