The self’s minimal integrity is the boundedness that constitutes a self as a self. Often that boundedness is experienced in defending a minimal space of physical control around the body, but it can also be invaded without physical incursion—for example, by acts of power that intimidate, shame, harass, and monitor the self. By “the space of the self” we mean the materially grounded domain of possibility that the self has as its horizon of action and imagination. The space of the self can be understood as the open space in which any given individual experiences, reflects, and prepares to settle on her course of action. Hegel describes this space as both external and internal, like a circle that never-endingly turns in on itself. This, he says, is what makes “the free will . . . truly infinite, for it is not just a possibility, a predisposition; its external existence is its inwardness, its own self.” It is this continual interplay between internal and external, self and other, that enables the deeply social understanding of the self that, as a philosopher, Hegel advocated. From this understanding of the self, we salvage some ideas in this chapter as tools for challenging data colonialism.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 474