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Algorithms of the Empire: Data Colonialism and the New Psychoanalytical Hegemony of Silicon Valley
Subject area: Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities · Area of research: English Studies
Abstract
The research paper probes the emergence of "Data Colonialism" as the contemporary demonstration of imperial domination. Moving from historical territorial occupation, modern colonization is digital, coordinated by Silicon Valley and global tech clusters. Utilizing Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias’s framework of data colonialism alongside Frantz Fanon’s psychoanalytical theories, this study scrutinizes how algorithms appropriate human experience as raw material. The paper argues that Big Tech has successfully instituted an "eternal hegemony" by restructuring surveillance and data extraction not as a curse of exploitation but as a phenomenal "boon" of connectivity and convenience. Through the psychological engineering of users, digital dependency has normalized a new form of cognitive domination. This paper examines Silicon Valley’s technological order through the intertwined lenses of data colonialism and psychoanalysis. Drawing on Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias’s theory of data colonialism, Shoshana Zuboff’s surveillance capitalism and psychoanalytic perspectives on platform desire, it argues that contemporary algorithms do not solely extract data; they reshape desire, fantasy and the formation of the subject. Data colonialism exemplifies historical colonial logics of appropriation into the domain of everyday life while platforms function as a new “algorithmic Other” that shapes desire, visibility and psychic life. The result is a form of hegemony that regulates less through apparent coercion than through the continuous capture and modulation of desire itself. The paper concludes by outlining the political and psychic stakes of resistance.
Keywords
data colonialism; Silicon Valley; psychoanalytical hegemony; Big Tech; algorithmic bias; digital dependency; Frantz Fanon; surveillance capitalism; Global South; cognitive domination
References
[1] Couldry N, Mejias UA (2019). The costs of connection: How data is colonizing human life and appropriating it for capitalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
[2] Couldry N, Mejias UA (2024). Data grab: The new colonialism of Big Tech and how to fight back. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[3] Fanon F (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press.
[4] Johanssen J (2021). Data perversion: A psychoanalytic perspective on datafication. Journal of Digital Social Research.
[5] Zuboff S (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. New York: PublicAffairs.
How to cite this paper
@article{1724281,
author = {Monalisha},
title = {Algorithms of the Empire: Data Colonialism and the New Psychoanalytical Hegemony of Silicon Valley},
journal = {Iconic Research And Engineering Journals},
year = {2026},
volume = {10},
number = {4},
pages = {4103-4106},
issn = {2456-8880},
url = {https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1724281.pdf},
abstract = {The research paper probes the emergence of "Data Colonialism" as the contemporary demonstration of imperial domination. Moving from historical territorial occupation, modern colonization is digital, coordinated by Silicon Valley and global tech clusters. Utilizing Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias’s framework of data colonialism alongside Frantz Fanon’s psychoanalytical theories, this study scrutinizes how algorithms appropriate human experience as raw material. The paper argues that Big Tech has successfully instituted an "eternal hegemony" by restructuring surveillance and data extraction not as a curse of exploitation but as a phenomenal "boon" of connectivity and convenience. Through the psychological engineering of users, digital dependency has normalized a new form of cognitive domination.
This paper examines Silicon Valley’s technological order through the intertwined lenses of data colonialism and psychoanalysis. Drawing on Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias’s theory of data colonialism, Shoshana Zuboff’s surveillance capitalism and psychoanalytic perspectives on platform desire, it argues that contemporary algorithms do not solely extract data; they reshape desire, fantasy and the formation of the subject. Data colonialism exemplifies historical colonial logics of appropriation into the domain of everyday life while platforms function as a new “algorithmic Other” that shapes desire, visibility and psychic life. The result is a form of hegemony that regulates less through apparent coercion than through the continuous capture and modulation of desire itself. The paper concludes by outlining the political and psychic stakes of resistance.},
keywords = {data colonialism; Silicon Valley; psychoanalytical hegemony; Big Tech; algorithmic bias; digital dependency; Frantz Fanon; surveillance capitalism; Global South; cognitive domination},
month = {October},
}