Introduction

Digital feminisms and the split subject: Short-circuits through Lacan's four discourses

“…Yet, paraphrasing Lacan, Susan Barnard reminds us that, as "knowledge and jouissance are inextricably" linked even in "ideal communication (e.g., a 'complete' text or an 'entire' oeuvre), interpretation confronts the limits constituted by the particularity of the subject's jouissance -the way in which a given subject 'gets off' on (in this case) a text" (2002: 3). Lacan's understanding of the ways in which particular subject positions enjoy or "gets off" on different types of texts -though seemingly an "obvious point that readers come to any text with very different interests, motivations, and strategies of reading" (Barnard, 2002: 3) -is particularly useful in contemplating digital feminist discourses because feminist discourses produce both a field of discursive knowledge that one may be drawn to on the basis of a certain enjoyment and, when this knowledge is identified with, a speaking position related to a particular mode of enjoyment. The modes of enjoyment implicated in this speaking position offer an insight, I suggest, into the conflicts produced in digital feminist discourses.…”