Tilman Treier
has been a Research Assistant in the Department of Human Geography at Goethe University Frankfurt since September 2018. After studying Political Science at the University of Mannheim, they obtained an M.A. in Human Geography with a focus on Economic Geography at Goethe University Frankfurt.
Their research interest concerns biotechnologies/-economies with a particular focus on governmental regulation of human behavior. In this context new forms of subjectivity and their mediation through digital technologies are of particular interest. Thus, their research is located at the interface between Economic Geography, Science and Technology Studies and Media Studies. On a theoretical and methodological level, their approach derives from the works of Michel Foucault as well as the interpretation of Marx by Critical Theory, in particular Moishe Postone.
Research
Love and Sex on the Edge of Tomorrow: Economization and Subjectivity on Dating Apps (Tilman Treier M.A.; Prof. Peter Lindner; DFG proposal in preparation)
Discourses around love and sex are increasingly characterized by an economic vocabulary. Building on psychological reflections on human mating behavior in terms of ‘sexual economics‘, this understanding of intimate interpersonal relationships has spread not only to anti-feminist fringe groups in the so called “manosphere” but also to pop-cultural discourses. At the same time new technologies that mediate in novel ways how we get to know each other, how we date, with whom we have sex, and who and how we love are becoming widely accepted. Unlike their forerunners, location-aware dating apps create a virtual space that is often labelled the “sexual marketplace” of today’s generation. This research project scrutinizes the complex interrelations between these two cultural transformations. Against the assumption that a sexual marketplace exists by itself, the starting point of this investigation is how individuals’ practices mediated by digital technologies such as dating apps are becoming economized/marketized, with particular attention to the ways in which dating apps mediate our relationships with ourselves and others through processes of abstraction, gamification and valuation.