October 29, 2025 | 1 minute read
Databases as Discourse, or Electronic Interpellations
by Mark Poster
Text Exploration
In this text, the author argues that modern databases represent a form of argument; that the idea of a database, and the data contained in it, creates an inside/outside relationship of power that favors large corporations and government and treats those who generate the data as subservient.
A post-structuralist perspective about the relationship of language and subjects is made up of three claims: subject-ness is reinforced by language, this reinforcement as mediation is “interpellation”, and subject-ness remains unstable. The author references Foucault’s view of discourse and its relationship to power, and argues that a database acts just as language—it activates all three of these claims, and institutes a power relationship. The database is “a discourse of pure writing that directly amplifies the power of its owner/user” and because databases are used in nearly every computer system, they “traverse and cancel the public/private distinction”—they act as intermediaries that hold data and can connect it to other data without user consent.
Databases are used by corporations; they are also used by governments to support “governmentality,” a power structure of knowledge used to police society. This power could be countered with a “new emancipatory politics [that] would consist in giving everyone access to databases”; more information leads to more power. But the author argues instead that knowledge in a database is power (linguistic power), and individuals as subjects are produced by the presence and use of the databases themselves.
ChatGPT's take on interpellation
Strictly speaking, interpellation is not a Foucaultian term — it comes from Louis Althusser, a Marxist theorist influenced by Foucault but focused on ideology rather than discourse. However, the two are often linked because both address how subjects (people) come to “be” within systems of power and knowledge.
1. Althusser’s concept of interpellation. Althusser argues that ideology “hails” individuals and turns them into subjects. His famous example is a policeman shouting, “Hey, you!” — when you turn around, you recognize yourself as the one being addressed. That moment of recognition is interpellation: you become a subject of ideology by responding to its call. For Althusser, institutions like schools, churches, and media continually perform this hailing, producing people who fit into social and economic roles.
2. Foucault’s related but distinct view. Foucault does not use the term interpellation. Instead, he speaks of subjectivation — the process by which individuals are constituted as subjects through discourse and power. In Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, he describes how power doesn’t just repress people but produces them by defining what counts as normal, deviant, healthy, sick, sane, or criminal.