In this presentation we consider how the functions offered by digital technologies today reconstitute the parent-child relationship. We relate the seemingly dystopian aspects of the technology depicted the episode of the television series Black Mirror, ‘Arkangel’, to widely available technologies and apps designed for parents, and take these as indicative of key aspects of the instrumentalised, scientised parenting culture today. We resist a reading of the episode in critical, dystopian terms, however, by drawing attention, first, to aspects of what we see in the episode that are illustrative of what we do when we raise children and, second, of how such technology reconstitutes agency and responsibility in respect of the pedagogical specificity of the figure of the parent.

Dr Naomi Hodgson is Reader in Education at Edge Hill University, UK, and Visiting Professor at KU Leuven, Belgium. Her research focuses on upbringing, culture, governance, and subjectivity, drawing particularly on Foucault and Cavell. Her publications include Philosophical Presentations of Raising Children: the grammar of upbringing (with Prof. Stefan Ramaekers, 2019), Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy (with Profs Joris Vlieghe and Piotr Zamojski, 2018), and Philosophy and Theory in Educational Research: writing in the margin (2016). She is currently writing a monograph on power. She is co-convenor of the BERA Philosophy of Education SIG and Assistant Editor of the journal Ethics & Education.