The aim of this course is to examine the individual (subject) of the modern, postmodern, and digital eras within a fictional and critical framework, exploring their philosophical, sociological, and psychopolitical dimensions. The course aims to provide an in-depth, doctoral-level analysis of the transformative effects of mass media and digital media infrastructures on the construction of individual identity, mechanisms of desire, alienation, narcissism, and the performance society. The goal is for students to integrate the processes of subjectification and objectification in the modern era with media theories to develop original interdisciplinary academic paradigms, and to design independent doctoral research projects using advanced methodologies.

The course traces the individual’s journey, beginning with the Enlightenment-era conception of the modern individual and proceeding through the panoptic society, the disciplinary society, liquid modernity, the culture of narcissism, the network society, and the “performance society” and “psychopolitics” conceptualized by Byung-Chul Han. The course examines how media and communication technologies restructure the individual’s relationships with time, space, the body, and the other, addressing these issues under the headings of digital surveillance, data exploitation, and algorithmic identity management. The course positions the modern individual not merely as a passive member of the masses or a mere user, but as an ontological subject at the center of contemporary practices of domination and freedom.