A Nervous Theory: The Troubling Gaze of Psychoanalysis in Media Studies

Saper, Craig

doi:10.2307/465375

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Cited by 5 publications

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“…Of course, not only did Lacan's thinking on this topic change over the course of his career (Evans, 1996), so too have interpretations of Lacan changed (Mellard, 2006;Saper, 1991). Because of that, it is impossible to explain succinctly the meaning and importance of the gaze.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disconnected/connected

2014

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Informed by nonparticipant observations of public cell phone use, we offer a Lacanian theorization of common social scenes involving mobile communication technologies. Identifying paradoxes of the mobile mediascape, such as connected versus disconnected and public versus private, we turn to Lacan's distinction between the look and the gaze to read and reconcile these tensions. Moving beyond understanding cell phones as fetish objects, we use Lacan's theory of the gaze as a means to understand the existential dilemma, a lack of being, which underwrites the pleasures of consumption. At the heart of the matter is how cell phones mobilize users' desires and anxieties as social subjects in a mediatized consumptionscape.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%