How can we speak of algorithms as political?

The intuitive answer disposes us to presume that algorithms are not political. They are mathematical functions that operate to accomplish specific tasks. In this regard, algorithms operate independently of a specific belief system or of any one system’s ideological ambitions. They may be used for political ends, in the manner in which census data may be used for voter redistricting, but in and of themselves algorithms don’t do anything political.

This dissertation offers a history of habit in political thought. Its purpose is to show that political theorists have consistently used the concept of habit to elucidate a theory of social transformation grounded in the experience of routine. By charting a critical history of habit, wherein it gives a shared experience to otherwise-individual sentiments, I show how habit has come to constitute an important basis for emancipatory politics. In a more critical vein, I argue that postwar Anglophone political theory’s attention to “action” has meant that it fails to attend to this domain of collectivity, resulting in an avoidance of the problem of political agency in a world of tradition, custom, and repetition. Hence, my question: how can political theory move past the account of heroic action to account for more mundane forms of group attachment and social transformation? The chapters of this dissertation examine the work of a set of thinkers who understood the contest over the meaning and significance of habit to be a contest over the terms of social transformation. What’s missing in our understanding of these thinkers (and their critics) is the regard they held for repetition as a resource for collective attachment and political change: they not only provide arguments for how to act morally but understand the everyday activities of habit as the central dimension of moral and political life. In reconsidering some key figures in the political theory canon, I demonstrate that routine, in its various guises, matters as much to democratic participation and collective action as more familiar and dramatically heroic forms of political action. By recasting habit as a material basis of democratic participation, this research enables us to understand that moments of activism are far less important to social transformation than the patient work of political organization.