[Air-L] Reminder: CfP Digital Media, Psychoanalysis and the Subject

[Jacob Johanssen]

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: 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) 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, (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). 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).