Phatic Touch, or The Instance of the Gadget in the Unconscious
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5119682 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Scott Krzych (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 376-391 |
| Publication date | 2010-11-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Paragraph (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0264-8334 • E-ISSN: 1750-0176 |
| Publisher | Edinburgh University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.3366/para.2010.0205 |
| OpenAlex | W2058581730 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
This article draws on Lacanian theory in order to analyse the role of technology in the constitution of posthuman subjects. It does so by focussing firstly on those aspects of Lacan's teachings that engage with science and technology, particularly the concept of the 'alethosphere' developed in Seminar XVII, which refers to an environment of gadgets that plug directly into human desire. The article then goes on to apply this notion of the 'alethosphere' to a key technological, cultural and also political example: the interactive, touch-screen electoral maps made popular during the 2008 American election. Through a close analysis of one use of such maps during a CNN broadcast, the author demonstrates both the essential meaninglessness of this technology, and the support it nonetheless provides to the search for meaning, in the form of a unified American national subject emerging consensually from the spectacle of the process of democracy
Aesthetics · Computer security · Constitution · Covert · Democracy · Epistemology · Gadget · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Posthuman · Sociology · Spectacle · Unconscious mind · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Cybernetics and Technology in Society · Law · Philosophy · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics
| Citations per year | 0.08 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2013 - 2013 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |