Automatic Decision and Sovereignty

In Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argue that modernity promises the triumph of the “sovereign subject” (Adorno Han 2015), but also what hypotheses have been proposed to explain the surprising convergence between political theories of sovereignty – particularly those of Hobbes and Schmitt – and decision automation (Supiot 2015; Guilhot 2020). Then, I will explore the possibility of a “critical theory of sovereignty” (Loick, 2019) in the digital context, arguing that digital technology can be understood as a decision-making machine. This, of course, requires acknowledging the centrality of “decision”, as a concept, in current debates on digital technology (Gasser & Mayer-Schönberger, 2024). It also necessitates questioning the very concept of sovereignty, noting that – especially from Hobbes to Schmitt – it has gradually detached itself from the political body to become associated with a lone individual, one who seeks a machine to relieve him of this burden.