Claudia Landolfi (Bio)

Artificial Alterity, Affective Normativity, and the Micropolitics of Digital Subjectivation

Recent debates on artificial intelligence have focused primarily on questions of cognition, autonomy, and technological efficiency. Less attention has been paid to the affective processes through which AI participates in the production of subjectivity. This paper argues that contemporary AI should be understood not merely as a computational technology but as a micropolitical dispositif that reorganizes the circulation of affects, the experience of alterity, and the conditions of collective life. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of desiring-production, together with contemporary theories of affect and digital mediation, I propose the notion of artificial alterity to describe the peculiar mode of otherness embodied by AI systems. Unlike the radical alterity envisioned by phenomenological and ethical traditions, algorithmic alterity emerges from the continuous capture, processing, and redistribution of human expressions, emotions, and desires. Artificial intelligence thus occupies an ambiguous position: it appears as an external interlocutor while simultaneously functioning as a machinic assemblage generated from the traces of social life itself. The paper examines how generative and conversational AI systems increasingly mediate affective relations. Through recommendation architectures, predictive interfaces, and interactive language models, digital environments shape not only information flows but also emotional investments, expectations, and forms of recognition. In this sense, AI operates as a new affective infrastructure capable of modulating desire and orienting processes of subjectivation. The issue is therefore not whether machines can think or feel, but how algorithmic systems participate in the production of subjects, imaginaries, and modes of social belonging. Particular attention is devoted to the relationship between affect and governance. The contemporary platform ecosystem increasingly transforms emotions, attention, and relational capacities into measurable and manageable resources. This process gives rise to an economy of digital affect in which the boundaries between communication, consumption, and subject formation become progressively blurred. AI does not simply represent a technological innovation; it functions as a symbolic and affective force that contributes to the reconfiguration of power relations at both individual and collective levels. By connecting philosophy of technology, affect theory, and micropolitical analysis, the paper contributes to current discussions on AI beyond the opposition between human and machine. It suggests that the decisive question concerns the forms of subjectivity that emerge within algorithmically mediated environments and the possibilities for preserving difference, creativity, and ethical responsibility within increasingly automated regimes of affective governance.