Jacob Johanssen
Biographic Data
| ID | 3478945 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jacob Johanssen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jacob |
| FAMILY NAME | Johanssen |
| SIGNATURE | JOHANSSEN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Westminster |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8682-1648 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 35 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Digital mediation and working through in times of disavowal and splitting introduction to the special issue of psychoanalysis, culture & society
The manosphere between the global and the local
The so-called manosphere, a cluster of misogynist and anti-feminist online communities, has grown significantly in recent years. Often regarded as a primary English-speaking hub situated in the anglophone West, it has influenced online misogyny on a global scale where ideas, dynamics, and discourses are copied, adapted, or translated into different languages. Going beyond dichotomous lines between the Western/non-Western manosphere, we call for a…
Rethinking Symbolic Violence on Social Media
The aim of this article is to discuss the notion of symbolic violence and to foreground a psychoanalytic conceptualisation of the term. Having been popularised by Pierre Bourdieu and other thinkers, the term is routinely used to describe forms of violence that stop short of the physical. It remains under-theorised. Following a brief literature review, it is argued that psychoanalysis has much to add when it comes to conceptualising symbolic viole…
Performances of Eating Disorders on TikTok—A Case of Hysterical Modes of Externalization
An increasing number of videos on the social media platform TikTok show individuals who allegedly have or are recovering from an eating disorder. The videos depict particular performances and aestheticisations of eating disorders which are analyzed in detail in this article through an interdisciplinary perspective of psychoanalysis as well as media and communication studies. This analytical perspective focusses upon the dialectic of content and a…
Dorothee Beck/ Adriano José Habed/ Annette Henninger (Hrsg.)
The Subject of AI
This article explores psychoanalytic perspectives, particularly Lacanian theory, on artificial intelligence, with a focus on chatbots, such as, ChatGPT. While ChatGPT is often viewed as mimicking human traits, such conceptions overlook the unique aspects of human subjectivity that AI lacks. Instead, psychoanalytic theory can reveal the social structures underlying AI and human interaction. We argue that ChatGPT should be seen as inherently relati…
What eating disorders are really like’ - Dynamics of lived experience and repetitive aesthetics on TikTok
This article presents a detailed qualitative content analysis of eating disorder and recovery videos on TikTok which show young women who proclaim to raise awareness or depict the recovery process. We pay particular attention to aspects of form and content and TikTok's affordances in relation to them. We argue that allegedly showing what an eating disorder and recovery are ‘really like’ is in tension with an aestheticisation of the female body an…
From femcels to ‘femcelcore’
This article analyses the shifting media visibilities of femcels: women who self-identify as being involuntary celibate. It first considers the ‘original’ femcel community which emerged on Reddit in 2018, and which was based on often-despairing, even nihilistic, text-based discussion. It then considers the more recent shift to ‘femcelcore’: a social media aesthetic or ‘vibe’, communicated through short, apparently ironic videos on TikTok. We cont…
Psychoanalysis and the Small Screen
“For the moment, I am not F*cking,” I am Tweeting
This article develops the argument that digital platforms are significantly infused with originary (and unconscious) residues of the sexual. Drawing on Laplancheian conceptualizations of sexuality, I argue that the digital has always been sexual(ised) in itself – a process that precedes and exceeds the erotic or pornographic. For Laplanche, sexuality is constitutive of the human subject as such. Infantile sexuality is shaped and transformed in an…
Reconsidering trauma and symbolic wounds in times of online misogyny and platforms
This article provides an exploratory discussion of the misogynist online incel community and its discourses around mental health. Incels’ discussion of mental health conditions, trauma and victimhood is outlined in relation to Allen Meek’s development of the concept of the symbolic wound. It is argued that incels’ alleged trauma constitutes the construction of a symbolic wound as a marker of group identity as well as a means of shocking and poten…
Amit Pinchevski, Transmitted wounds
The manifestos of mass shooters and the absent father
Incels and fantasies of destroying/desiring the other
The sexual revolution, the manosphere and (post)feminism
The backlash against the sexual revolution on YouTube
Male fascist bodies – then and now
Conclusion
Men Going Their Own Way – MGTOW
NoFap
Introduction
Artificial Intuition in Tech Journalism on AI
Artificial intuition (AI acting intuitively) is one trend in artificial intelligence. This article analyzes how it is discussed by technology journalism on the internet. The journalistic narratives that were analyzed claim that intuition can make AI more efficient, autonomous, and human. Some commentators also write that intuitive AI could execute tasks better than humans themselves ever could (e.g., in digital games); therefore, it could ultimat…
Social Media and Coronavirus
Data Perversion
This article adopts a psychoanalytic perspective and argues that users are in a perverse relationship with contemporary platforms. Following a review of recent critical scholarship on datafication, which places too much emphasis on platforms and situates users as helpless, the psychoanalytic concept of perversion is introduced. Perversion describes a relationship that is characterised by dominance, exploitation and dehumanization as well as care,…
Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere
This book presents the first in-depth study of online misogyny and the manosphere from a psychoanalytic perspective. The author argues that the men of the manosphere present contradictory thoughts, desires and fantasies about women which include but also go beyond misogyny. They are in a state of dis/inhibition: torn between (un)conscious forces and fantasies which erupt and are defended against. Dis/inhibition shows itself in self-victimization …
Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere
This book presents the first in-depth study of online misogyny and the manosphere from a psychoanalytic perspective. The author argues that the men of the manosphere present contradictory thoughts, desires and fantasies about women which include but also go beyond misogyny. They are in a state of dis/inhibition: torn between (un)conscious forces and fantasies which erupt and are defended against. Dis/inhibition shows itself in self-victimization …
From femcels to ‘femcelcore’
This article analyses the shifting media visibilities of femcels: women who self-identify as being involuntary celibate. It first considers the ‘original’ femcel community which emerged on Reddit in 2018, and which was based on often-despairing, even nihilistic, text-based discussion. It then considers the more recent shift to ‘femcelcore’: a social media aesthetic or ‘vibe’, communicated through short, apparently ironic videos on TikTok. We cont…
I Am Burning, I Am Burning”
This article draws on studies that explore forms of contemporary journalism which focus on the role played by the expression of emotions and feelings. We present results from a qualitative study which examined how British tabloid newspapers covered acid attacks on women between 2010 and 2016. Drawing on the notion of affect, we explore the extent to which journalists try to turn painful embodied states into rational discourse. The data analysed s…
Amit Pinchevski, Transmitted wounds
Data Perversion
This article adopts a psychoanalytic perspective and argues that users are in a perverse relationship with contemporary platforms. Following a review of recent critical scholarship on datafication, which places too much emphasis on platforms and situates users as helpless, the psychoanalytic concept of perversion is introduced. Perversion describes a relationship that is characterised by dominance, exploitation and dehumanization as well as care,…
Not belonging to one’s self
This article makes a contribution to a growing number of works that discuss affect and social media. I use Freudian affect theory to analyse user posts on the public Site Governance Facebook page. Freud’s work may help us to explore the affectivity within the user narratives and I suggest that they are expressions of alienation, dispossession and powerlessness that relate to the users’ relations with Facebook as well as to their internal and wide…
Cyborg Subjects
Alienation and Digital Labour—A Depth-Hermeneutic Inquiry into Online Commodification and the Unconscious
At the core of this paper is a psychosocial inquiry into the Marxist concept of alienation and its applications to the field of digital labour. Following a brief review of different theoretical works on alienation, it looks into its recent conceptualisations and applications to the study of online social networking sites. Finally, the authors offer suggestions on how to extend and render more complex these recent approaches through in-depth analy…
The Subject in the Crowd
This article presents a critical discussion of Jodi Dean’s (2016) book “Crowds and Party”. I pay particular attention to her discussion of crowds that is influenced by psychoanalysis. Dean has put forward an important argument for the affectivity within crowds that may be transformed into a Communist Party that is characterised by a similar affective infrastructure. I suggest that Dean’s discussion of affect is slightly vague at times and may be …
Media research and psychoanalysis
This short commentary outlines psychoanalysis as a theory and method and its potential value to media research. Following Dahlgren , it is suggested that psychoanalysis may enrich the field because it may offer a complex theory of the human subject, as well as methodological means of doing justice to the richness, ambivalence and contradictions of human experience in relation to media. The psychoanalytic technique of free association and how it h…
Not belonging to one’s self
This article makes a contribution to a growing number of works that discuss affect and social media. I use Freudian affect theory to analyse user posts on the public Site Governance Facebook page. Freud’s work may help us to explore the affectivity within the user narratives and I suggest that they are expressions of alienation, dispossession and powerlessness that relate to the users’ relations with Facebook as well as to their internal and wide…
I Am Burning, I Am Burning”
This article draws on studies that explore forms of contemporary journalism which focus on the role played by the expression of emotions and feelings. We present results from a qualitative study which examined how British tabloid newspapers covered acid attacks on women between 2010 and 2016. Drawing on the notion of affect, we explore the extent to which journalists try to turn painful embodied states into rational discourse. The data analysed s…
Towards a Psychoanalytic Concept of Affective-Digital Labour
This article draws on the argument that users on corporate social media conduct labour through the sharing of user-generated content. Critical political economists argue that such acts contribute to value creation on social media and are therefore to be seen as labour. Following a brief introduction of this paradigm, I relate it to the notion of affective labour which has been popularised by the Marxist thinkers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. T…
Gaming–playing on social media
Political economists have argued that user activity on corporate social media is regarded as labour that appears playful and fun but is exploited and sold to advertisers for profit maximization. This article begins with the working assumption that such user labour on social media constitutes a form of playing. It is theorized through a psychoanalytic perspective on the term as developed by D. W. Winnicott and André Green. The notion of gaming–pla…
The manifestos of mass shooters and the absent father
Incels and fantasies of destroying/desiring the other
The sexual revolution, the manosphere and (post)feminism
The backlash against the sexual revolution on YouTube
Male fascist bodies – then and now
Conclusion
Men Going Their Own Way – MGTOW
NoFap
Introduction
Artificial Intuition in Tech Journalism on AI
Artificial intuition (AI acting intuitively) is one trend in artificial intelligence. This article analyzes how it is discussed by technology journalism on the internet. The journalistic narratives that were analyzed claim that intuition can make AI more efficient, autonomous, and human. Some commentators also write that intuitive AI could execute tasks better than humans themselves ever could (e.g., in digital games); therefore, it could ultimat…
Social Media and Coronavirus
Data Perversion
This article adopts a psychoanalytic perspective and argues that users are in a perverse relationship with contemporary platforms. Following a review of recent critical scholarship on datafication, which places too much emphasis on platforms and situates users as helpless, the psychoanalytic concept of perversion is introduced. Perversion describes a relationship that is characterised by dominance, exploitation and dehumanization as well as care,…
Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere
This book presents the first in-depth study of online misogyny and the manosphere from a psychoanalytic perspective. The author argues that the men of the manosphere present contradictory thoughts, desires and fantasies about women which include but also go beyond misogyny. They are in a state of dis/inhibition: torn between (un)conscious forces and fantasies which erupt and are defended against. Dis/inhibition shows itself in self-victimization …
Introduction
Fantasy, Online Misogyny and the Manosphere
This book presents the first in-depth study of online misogyny and the manosphere from a psychoanalytic perspective. The author argues that the men of the manosphere present contradictory thoughts, desires and fantasies about women which include but also go beyond misogyny. They are in a state of dis/inhibition: torn between (un)conscious forces and fantasies which erupt and are defended against. Dis/inhibition shows itself in self-victimization …
Amit Pinchevski, Transmitted wounds
“For the moment, I am not F*cking,” I am Tweeting
This article develops the argument that digital platforms are significantly infused with originary (and unconscious) residues of the sexual. Drawing on Laplancheian conceptualizations of sexuality, I argue that the digital has always been sexual(ised) in itself – a process that precedes and exceeds the erotic or pornographic. For Laplanche, sexuality is constitutive of the human subject as such. Infantile sexuality is shaped and transformed in an…
Psychology (23 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Psychoanalysis (15 works) · Gender, Feminism, and Media (12 works) · Political science (11 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Art (9 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works)