Special Section Introduction

Introduction to special section on the digital subject Scott Krzych Colorado College, 14 East Cache La Poudre, Colorado Springs, CO 80902, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract This introduction to a special section entitled “The Digital Subject” considers the impact of digital technology on psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity, culture and society. In a survey of previous relevant work by our contributors, as well as by other influential scholars in the field of technology studies, I discuss the excessive tendencies of digital technology and media and consider the possible avenues for critique available to psychoanalytic theory. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society (2013) 18, 56–62. doi:10.1057/pcs.2012.53 Keywords: new media; digital subject; anxiety; philosophy of technology

One of the key buzzwords surrounding new media is “connectivity.” When one has a digital gadget in one’s hands and a wireless Internet connection nearby, the entire world awaits, ready to be hailed. Influential accounts in media studies laud the increased capacity for participation in the virtual public sphere (Jenkins, 2006; Levy, 2001), while others fear the devaluation of privacy and contemplative thought (Lanier, 2010; Carr, 2011; Turkle, 2011). Studies outside of psychoanalysis on the relation between technology and the mind have generated renewed interest in the unconscious, or something like it, even if scholars do not intentionally invoke a Freudian register (Malabou, 2008; Hayles, 2012, pp. 94-103). Recent research in neuroscience lends new credibility to psychoanalytic theory, Nicholas Carr writes, since our daily experiences impact the physical makeup of our brains, so that repetitive activity strengthens or reinforces synaptic connections (2011, p. 27). Moreover, the kind of interaction offered by the Internet – repetition, cognitive exploration, immediate answers to questions – creates a near-perfect feedback loop that impacts our synapses with even greater effectiveness than physical activity. More work is necessary, however, to

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understand how the very practice of digital connection changes the ground upon which we judge the relative success and failure of technology’s impact on society. In other words, apart from the debatable signs of cultural change, whether for the better or the worse, there remains ample opportunity for psychoanalytic intervention to consider how and why we engage in such activity in the first place. Among Freud’s many lasting insights is his idea that a seemingly inescapable feature of subjectivity is that we often do not know or fully understand why we do what we do. Separate from debating the relative benefits and pitfalls of digital technology, then, we might embrace an even more difficult challenge – an examination of the digital connection between individual and world, an inquiry that assumes that the mediation between a subject and her economic, familial, political and other social environments is never an interaction between stable or fully-realized participants, but that the very process of connection contributes to the ontological constitution of the things and people connected. Just as psychoanalysis refuses to define the subject separate from certain privileged contexts – family dynamics, language, desired objects, etc., depending on the particular variety of psychoanalytic theory – the contributors to this special section engage digital technology not as a supplement to contemporary experience but as the very fabric of contemporary subjective life. The articles in this special section approach digital subjectivity in a variety of ways and make no attempt to offer an overarching theory of the relation between psychoanalysis and recent technologies. As a group, though, the consistent line of thought among the authors is a consideration of the unexpected outcomes and unintended consequences when new media collide with more established forms of social and psychical life. Todd McGowan considers bio-power in the context of cyberspace; Anthony Elliott examines the mobile technologies that refashion work and global mobility; Andre´ Nusselder theorizes changes to political representation via social networking; and Hugh Manon reads digital cinema against the grain of film theory and competing notions of “the gaze.” These approaches, I suggest, demonstrate the kind of interdisciplinary strategy necessary if we are to take seriously the ways in which the digital continues to invest itself in almost every feature of contemporary life. The real success of the digital, more often than not, results from the seamless manner in which we incorporate it into our daily routines – the tablet computer that fits easily into our backpack, the “app” that collects all of our different calendars into a single location, or the computer-generated cinematic special effect that goes unnoticed. In response, this collection of brief essays attempts to reestablish the seams – the still-existing, if increasingly infinitesimal, points of tension and impasse in the digital landscape. Even while technological evolution offers us everything we could ever conceivably desire, a psychoanalytic perspective prepares us well for the inevitable gaps between subject and world. It is precisely at the point of such inevitable impasse, when the seemingly r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763

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all-encompassing aspects of digital technology intersect with the individual instance of subjective beings, that the articles in this special section attempt to interrogate the parameters of digital subjectivity. As one of our contributors has written in another context, “It is not without reason that some critics describe reality in the digital era as resembling the psychic reality that psychoanalysis analyzes: they both consist of the compositing of different elements or fragments” (Nusselder, 2009, p. 21). The gaps that emerge between connected fragments, and the moments of disconnection between subjects and their technologies, open up possibilities for theoretical intervention. The underlying logic of digital technology is its universal application. Whereas earlier technical inventions may have produced significant changes in such disparate areas as communication, transportation, or education, the digital injects itself into all facets of contemporary life. The tendency of digital technology to over-connect – to provide us with too many options and at too great a speed – at times leaves anxiety in its wake, as users struggle to make sense of the excess. Our contributors ask us to engage and consider the points where this digital excess meets with the singular limits of subjectivity.

Over-connection The social networking behemoth, Facebook, offers more than a connective means for friends and family across the world; it refashions the very terms of interpersonal relationships. On its ever-changing interface, the daily lives of our contacts serve as a vast reservoir for personal entertainment. The drama, action or comedy that we might normally seek from cinema, television or other forms of mass entertainment now emerges just as easily, and with seemingly greater authenticity, from people we know in our “real life.” Yet the digital can be double-edged. That distant family member whose political views challenge your best attempts at civility at annual holiday gatherings now appears daily in your “newsfeed,” spewing hateful rhetoric and posting links, without a hint of selfconsciousness, to long-discredited conspiracy websites. Or, a seemingly simple but no less exasperating scenario: the acquaintance who lists, in the greatest detail, every ingredient of every meal consumed throughout the day. The confessional excesses found on Facebook and similar sites like Twitter and Tumblr indicate more than a general breakdown between the public and the private. As modes of constant connection, social networks fall under a logic of perpetuation in which their very existence relies on the constant proliferation of user-generated content, matched with a troubling scenario in which there are no clear rules or boundaries, nothing to establish what is off-limits. The excesses of social networking exemplify in extreme what some critics have described as a general move toward boundless self-expression in postmodernity. As Todd McGowan writes, “in the midst of a full-fledged consumer 58

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culture, we are surrounded everywhere by the demand that we maximize our enjoyment” (2004, p. 11). This “command to enjoy” introduces a radical shift away from more traditional forms of civilized compromise, where “civil” indicates a shared sense of sacrifice: in order for society to function, not everyone may have exactly what they want or have it when they want it. By contrast, something like the Nike corporation’s long-standing motto – “Just do it!” – encapsulates the double-bind of a newer, but no less false, freedom: when the only rule is a general command to enjoy, without a clear sense of purpose or end-point, then this so-called freedom of expression is actually a more pervasive form of oppression than in earlier “societies of prohibition” (McGowan, 2004), or what Gilles Deleuze described as the transition from the more obvious forms of social discipline to the subtle, all-pervasive, and hence more effective (for those in power) societies of control (1992). When we act “like ourselves” because we are told to do so, and when our seemingly private forms of expression provide public corporations with ever-expanding fields of minable data, cyberspace works in the service of what Jodi Dean (2002) terms “communicative capitalism.” The Internet thereby maximizes capitalism’s tendency to treat “time as an entity that can be broken up into discrete parts in order that it might be bought, sold, and used” (McGowan, 2011, p. 21). Apart from the economic imperatives behind the proliferation of cyberspace and digital technology, the affective impact on individual users remains a significant point of concern for any theory of digital subjectivity. For Sherry Turkle, “anxiety is part of the new connectivity” (2011, p. 242). The high-school students interviewed in Turkle’s study, for instance, express exasperation in response to the increased pressures to remain connected at all times, which produces what Turkle calls the “anxiety of always” (2011, p. 256). The ring or buzz indicating an incoming phone call or text message, which once pleasurably connoted a positive point of contact with the Other, is quickly transformed into an overwhelming sense of interpellation – a demand for response that cannot go unheeded. The overwhelming presence of digital connectivity – the lack of lack, in Lacanian parlance (see Salecl, 2004) – leaves less room for subjects to exert control over the level and scope of their involvement in the virtual world. Two contributors to this special section deal directly with the affective outcomes for subjects in response to the boundless nature of digital media. Todd McGowan offers a critical interrogation of cyberspace, and shows concern for the unconscious byproducts of what he describes as metonymic “horizontal relations” in which users jump from one hyperlink to another. Without a clear picture of the web as a whole, and with no apparent point of closure or end, a subject may feel a false sense of pure freedom. As McGowan writes elsewhere, the ease with which we now access information may actually discount the pleasure previously associated with a difficult, time-consuming hunt for the object of desire (2011, p. 27). In the fantasmatic realm of cyberspace, r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763

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moreover, a subject may become lured into a false sense of security, believing that nothing is in fact impossible, leaving that same subject more susceptible to ideological manipulation. Hugh Manon, who is likewise interested in the excessive modes of digital representation, continues his ongoing psychoanalytic theorization of the relation between analog and digital imagery. As Manon has argued elsewhere, the special-effects artists responsible for the imaginative worlds created via computer-generated imagery (CGI), particularly in blockbuster Hollywood films, often overlook the pleasure that audiences take in limitation and failure (2007). Manon asks, rhetorically, “Why for instance, when a giant CGI monkey appears in the foreground, must it always be in focus?” (2007, p. 21). In another article, “Notes on Glitch,” Manon (with Daniel Temkin) finds in the contemporary glitch art movement an aesthetic practice set on producing the very gaps in digital imagery that the medium itself typically elides. Glitch artists modify the digital code of existing images and produce breaks and other points of visual failure, but without destroying the image in its entirety – thereby “making the non-linear nature of the digital image, which is ordinarily repressed, strikingly apparent” (2011, p.7). Manon’s present essay on Paranormal Activity likewise takes up the digital’s impact on notions of identification and representation, but in the specific context of cinema studies and film theory. As do the other authors, Manon treats the digital image as a generically excessive, anxiety-ridden medium. Thus, the real antagonist of the film is not the demon but rather the digital video camera that captures its images without any sense of propriety or limitation. Whereas digital technology, as McGowan likewise argues, invests us with a senseless drive to see all and know all, the movie’s demon offers a traditional gesture to counter the excessive reach of the digital – an analog gaze that would limit the field of vision, leave space for ambiguity, and thereby maintain the object of desire in all of its fetishized glory. Anthony Elliott offers a cautiously optimistic view of digital technology. If the expansive scope and ambiguous rules of digital media can produce anxiety for subjects unsure of how to order their worlds in line with such expansive technologies, digital subjects may also find respite from social pressures in the very same technical objects that we normally identify as the culprits. Building on his concept of “emotional containment” (Elliott and Urry, 2010), Elliott treats mobile technologies as potential allies in the service of globalized lifestyles, wherein digital gadgets allow subjects to parcel out their more troubling emotions. For instance, email may pose a challenge for individuals who feel constantly accosted by overly full inboxes; at the same time, the very same inbox, given its immateriality, may be disregarded for periods of time and left in its virtual isolation until the individual is better prepared to deal with its contents. Importantly, Elliott’s work emphasizes the materiality of the digital, particularly the system of wirelessly connected devices that exert profound influence on our lived spaces. The private space of the automobile or the public 60

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spaces of trains and airplanes are transformed in response to the digitally equipped individuals who use them. Depending on the connective devices available, the same space may serve as a temporary workspace, a personal theater, or a private concert venue. The unconscious impact of digital media on public discourse and social practice is an ongoing research agenda for our contributor Andre´ Nusselder. In his book-length study Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology (2009), Nusselder describes the virtual spaces of contemporary media as more than sites that stage collective and individual fantasies; the technical structures themselves serve as the very condition of fantasy (also see Krzych, 2010). Focusing on the “computer interface [as] a fantasmatic window,” Nusselder (2009, p. 7) locates the possibility for expanding Jacques Lacan’s reach beyond the frame of structural linguistics to which he his normally tied. Nusselder builds upon these earlier ideas for this special section in an analysis of Twitter as a direct mediator for political representation. The structural limitation of an individual tweet – only 144 characters – may be as much at fault as anything else for political polarization and lack of civility in public discourse. Complementing McGowan’s separate critique of cyberspace, Nusselder’s essay finds that the immediacy and seeming lack of distance instantiated on Twitter between public officials and private citizens may create a false sense of universal participation, even while the major power structures constitutive of society remain unchanged. This section of short essays on the digital subject demonstrates a variety of approaches and critiques available to psychoanalytic theory in the digital age. More importantly, the essays validate the absolute necessity of psychoanalysis in response to technologies that impact our interaction with others, our notion of self, and our knowledge of the world.

About the Author Scott Krzych is Assistant Professor of Film and New Media Studies at Colorado College. He is currently completing a manuscript on contemporary conservative media, which offers a Lacanian interpretation of hysterical discourse as found in such examples as Citizens United documentaries, Fox News, The Glenn Beck Program, and The Drudge Report. His work has appeared in Paragraph, The Velvet Light Trap and World Picture.

References Carr, N. (2011) The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. r 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1088-0763

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Krzych Dean, J. (2002) Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Deleuze, G. (1992) Postscript on the societies of control. October 59(Winter): 3–7. Elliott, A.M. and Urry, J. (2010) Mobile Lives. Oxford, UK: Routledge. Hayles, N.K. (2012) How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Krzych, S. (2010) Phatic touch, or, the instance of the gadget in the unconscious. Paragraph 33(3): 376–391. Lanier, J. (2010) You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. New York: Knopf. Levy, P. (2001) Cyberculture. Translated by Robert Bononno. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Malabou, C. (2008) What Should We Do with Our Brain? New York: Fordham University Press. Manon, H. (2007) Qui perd gagne: Failure and cinematic seduction. International Journal ˇ izˇek Studies 1.3 [Online] http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/view/56/126. of Z Manon, H. and Temkin, H. (2011) Notes on glitch. World Picture 6, http://www.world picturejournal.com/ WP_6/Manon.htmlworldpicturejournal.com. McGowan, T. (2004) The End of Dissatisfaction? Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment. Albany: State University of New York Press. McGowan, T. (2011) Out of Time: Desire in Atemporal Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Nusselder, A. (2009) Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Salecl, R. (2004) On Anxiety. London: Routledge. Turkle, S. (2011) Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books.

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