Invisible sovereignty. The state, infrastructure and subjectification in the discourse on digital self-determination

This paper traces a peculiar and, on closer inspection, paradoxical discursive formation that has been described in recent years by the term “digital sovereignty”. Given its historical-semantic origins (absolute claim to power), the paper examines the extent to which the concept is suited to describe relational, distributed, and pluralistic governance processes in digitalised higher education. Against the background of private-sector dependencies on the one hand and state centralisation efforts on the other, the fault lines for any notion of a sovereign subject become apparent. Digital sovereignty, the paper argues, can serve as a critical instance of infrastructural power constellations – but not as a normative model of subjectivity.