[ecrea] CfP Digital Media, Psychoanalysis and the Subject

CfP: Digital Media, Psychoanalysis and the Subject
Deadline: March 25

Editors: Jacob Johanssen (University of Westminster, UK) and Steffen
Krüger (University of Oslo, Norway).

Abstract:
Revisiting psychoanalytic theory and practice as a potential for media
and communication studies, this CfP for a special issue of CM:
Communication and Media Journal, to be published in December 2016, seeks
to enable a dialogue between communication/media studies and
psychoanalysis in order to critically explore the processes and dynamics
of contemporary culture.

Guiding questions are:
- What are the psychoanalytic concepts and methodological processes that
have a bearing on our research into media and/or communication?
- What are the implications of psychoanalysis, its theoretical tools and
practice, for media and communication studies - specifically for the
conceptions of subjectivity in the field?
- What are the implications of media and communication studies for
psychoanalytic concepts/ practice?

Call for Papers:
For the past two decades, critical research into media and communication
has sought ways to understand the significant shift brought about by
digitalisation and a proliferation of networked media. With this shift,
questions of individuality, the single media user as entity and her/his
relations to society have taken on renewed salience. Not only is
consuming media content (films, TV series, websites etc.) becoming open
to increasingly individual choices (streaming services across different
mediums, for example), but the individual as such has become part of the
content being produced. People find themselves instigated to express and
share who they are and relate themselves to others via multiple,
networked media channels on diverse platforms. These platforms are
characterised by the double objective of enabling feelings of community
whilst also profiting from the ensuing communication. Relying on
targeted data extraction as business models, the relations they
facilitate tend toward the commodification of the individual and,
intentional or not, open up possibilities for corporate and governmental
surveillance.

The notions and concepts with which researchers have sought to emphasise
and highlight relevant aspects of this shifting situation, such as
'convergence', 'connectivity', 'participation', ‘produsage',
‘interactivity’ and ‘user-generated content’ etc. have long 
since become
common parlance. They are challenged and defended, changed and
rearranged. To these concepts attach themselves a variety of approaches,
theories, models and assumptions that focus on a diverse range of
angles, including gender, ethnicity, class, subculture or group
memberships from micro, meso, to macro perspectives. With these come
diverse philosophies and worldviews that often concern questions of
activity, passivity and agency with regard to media use.

Yet, whereas many of these approaches can be seen as responses to the
renewed centrality of the individual media user, the conceptions of
subjectivity underlying these works frequently remain implicit and in
need of reflection. What is established by such 'implicit notions' of
subjectivity (Dahlgren, 2013: 72) is an idea of media users leaning
strongly towards rationality, cognition, categorisation and
assimilation. While, as mentioned above, consumer choices become ever
finer grained to meet individual demand, the challenge that the
resulting notion of individuality poses to our conceptions of the
subject have hardly been taken up by media and communication studies so
far (see Willson, 2010).

Thus, in order to counter the tendency of foregoing the relevance of
subjective experience, Peter Dahlgren has recently advocated
‘reactivating concerns about the subject’ (2013: 73) in media studies
research, stating that researchers in the field need to consider also
‘communicative modes beyond the rational’ (ibid: 82). Heeding this call,
psychoanalysis may be the discipline best equipped to point to ways out
of the rationalistic impasse. As Brown and Lunt (2002) suggest, ‘there
is something about psychoanalysis that is corrosive to the whole model
of the subject built up by the social identity tradition’ (2002: 8) –
i.e. the very tradition onto which implicit models of the subject in
media and communication studies frequently default.

This call for papers wants to initiate a critical appreciation of this
‘corrosiveness’ of psychoanalytic theory as a productive potential for
media and communication studies. With its diverse traditions – Freudian,
Kleinian, Lacanian, Winnicottian, relational, etc. – foregrounding the
conflicted, ambivalent, defended, divided, multifaceted, layered and
processual aspects of human beings in their relations with others,
psychoanalysis shifts our attention to contradiction, incoherence,
ambiguity and resistance in media texts as well as in the responses to
them. In view of the new media situation it seems also well worth to
readdress the critiques of psychoanalysis brought forth by Michel
Foucault (1966) as well as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (2009).

While psychoanalysis is primarily a clinical field, the application of
theoretical and methodological concepts outside the consulting room has
shown that they can be immensely fruitful and productive as long as they
steer clear from broad-sweeping generalisations and pathologizations.
Scholars within media and communication studies (e.g. Kris 1941, Kris
and Leites 1947; Radway 1984; Walkerdine 1984, 2007; Ang 1985;
Silverstone 1994; Turkle 1995, 2011; Hills 2002; Richards 2007; Kavka
2009; Dean 2010; Elliott 2013; Krzych 2010, 2013; Yates and Bainbridge
2012, 2014; Carpentier 2014a, b; Balick 2014; Krüger and Johanssen 2014,
Johanssen forthcoming; Krüger forthcoming) have drawn on psychoanalytic
schools in different manners and to varying degrees. Connecting with and
reflecting upon this tradition, we invite articles that focus on the
implications that psychoanalytic concepts and methodologies have on
studies in media and communication, and/or, vice versa, the implications
that media and communication studies have on our understanding of
psychoanalytic concepts and practice. While our main focus is on digital
media, we also want to encourage media and communication researchers in
other fields to consider the implications of and for psychoanalysis.

Contributions are thus invited to address the following questions:

- What are the psychoanalytic concepts and methodological processes that
have a bearing on our research into media communication?
- What are the implications of psychoanalysis, its theoretical tools and
practice, for media and communication studies - specifically for the
conceptions of subjectivity in the field?
- What are the implications of media and communication studies for
psychoanalytic concepts/ practice?

These broader questions can translate into more specific ones, e.g.:

- What has psychoanalysis to offer to the interpretation of research data?
- What is the legacy and/or future of psychoanalytic thinking in media
and communication research?
- Which psychoanalytic concepts are useful for thinking about the
limiting as well as empowering opportunities that present themselves
within contemporary digital culture?
- How is this culture useful for thinking about psychoanalysis?
- What and how can we understand the subject in relation to concrete
patterns of media content production and consumption?
- How does the subject cope with and make sense of the ubiquity of media
communication? With what psychosocial effects?

Possible fields of study are:

- Psychoanalysis and media surveillance
- Psychoanalysis and data ownership
- Psychoanalysis and media audiences
- Psychoanalysis and social media (self presentation, narcissism,
flaming, trolling, etc.)
- Psychoanalysis and media institutions
- Psychoanalysis and journalistic practices
- Psychoanalysis, media and ideology

The editors specifically invite authors to initiate conversations
between psychoanalytic concepts and media scholarship. Theoretical or
empirical works are equally welcome.

We invite full papers (6000-8000 words including references) as well as
shorter commentaries (up to 3000 words) on the topic. Please submit
abstracts (300 words) by 25 March 2016 to:
<mailto:(digit.psa /at/ gmail.com)>(digit.psa /at/ gmail.com).

Timeline:
25 March: Deadline for abstract submissions. Authors will be notified
within two weeks.
27 June: Deadline for full paper submissions.
16 September: Deadline for submission of revised papers.
31 October: Deadline for final author revisions.

About the Editors:
Jacob Johanssen ((j.johanssen /at/ westminster.ac.uk)
<mailto:(j.johanssen /at/ westminster.ac.uk)>
) is Senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster. His PhD research
involves interviews with viewers of the programme ‘Embarrassing Bodies’
and explores their investments, affective responses and wider viewing
practices by drawing on media studies and psychoanalysis both
theoretically and methodologically. His research interests include
psychoanalysis and the media, affect theory, psychosocial studies,
critical theory, as well as digital culture.

Steffen Krüger, PhD,
(<mailto:(steffen.krueger /at/ media.uio.no)>(steffen.krueger /at/ media.uio.no)) is
postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Department of Media and
Communication, University of Oslo (Norway). He is contributing editor of
the journal American Imago – Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences. In
his current research into digital culture, he analyses forms of
interaction in digital media from a psychosocial, and specifically,
depth-hermeneutic perspective.

About CM:
CM: Communication and Media Journal is based in Serbia, at the
University of Belgrade
(<http://aseestant.ceon.rs/index.php/comman/issue/current>http://aseestant.ceon.rs/index.php/comman/issue/current). 

CM is an open access, double blind peer reviewed academic journal. Over
the past years, several special issues, aimed at an international
academic audience, have been published (such as Interrogating audiences:
Theoretical horizons of participation, edited by Carpentier and
Dahlgren, 2011).


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