Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

The Sublime Object Of Digitality: Psychoanalysis And Cyberspace, Grady Kennison

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Psychoanalysis, from Freud to Lacan and beyond, offers a unique toolkit for theorizing and understanding the visible and invisible effects of our collective digitization. In this project, I will work through central concepts of psychoanalytic theory – including Lacan’s three orders, the objet a, and more – while both rethinking our understanding of cyberspace via psychoanalysis and rethinking our understanding of psychoanalysis via cyberspace. Our subjectivity and our public discourse are today irrevocably intertwined with digital technology and cyberspace; psychoanalysis, as a theory centered on subjectivity and discourse, is an indispensable framework for reckoning with our plugged-in lives.