The peripheral machine: Algorithmic sovereignty and the fractured geographies of sense

Abstract

This article examines artificial intelligence as a “peripheral machine,” a dispositif that simultaneously extracts, reworks, and re-injects cultural and cognitive practices into global circuits of meaning. By analyzing emblematic cases such as Albania’s algorithmic avatar Diella, biased medical datasets, and automatic translation systems privileging dominant languages, the paper highlights how AI infrastructures reproduce asymmetric relations between centers and peripheries. Building on theories of epistemic extractivism, algorithmic sovereignty, and fractured geographies of sense, the analysis shows that AI does not merely optimize processes but reorganizes the very conditions of signification, reshaping who can speak, what counts as knowledge, and which lives are protected or excluded. Against universalist narratives of technological neutrality, the article advocates for a situated ethics of AI and the recognition of algoagents as co-constructive actors in the production of imaginaries, subjectivities, and collective futures. It calls for plural imaginaries and counter-spaces where communities and technologies can negotiate new forms of justice and emancipation.