Digital self-evaluation and the cybernetic regime: A sketch for a materialist apparatus analysis

Building on an exemplary analysis of self-tracking applications, this paper develops a materialist approach to the methodology of apparatus analysis. It builds on the Foucauldian concept of the apparatus, which it then subdivides into a micro apparatus, as a concrete digital technology, and a macro apparatus, as the superordinate regime to which the micro apparatus contributes. To bridge these two concepts, the term “urgent need” is used to ask to which broader social problems a given apparatus reacts. Contrary to the approaches of “new mate-rialism”, this paper insists on an analytical divide between discourse and matter on the one hand and action structure on the other hand, in order to consider politico-economic power relations. Using this methodology, the relationship between the techno-practice of self-tracking and a broader cybernetic regime is illustrated.