Written Work

Here you can download my dissertation and see my thesis below as a diagram.

Lacan's "discourse of the capitalist" is a twist on the four discourses he posited over the course of his seminars. These four discourses model logical positions that belie the symbolization between two or more subjects. The discourse of the capitalist marked a substantial shift; Lacan asserted that the disjunctions marking earlier discourses had been removed, creating discoures that "eat their own tails" and that "move too fast". The discourse of the capitalist and the rotations to which it gives rise are all marked by a cultural conviction that speech and its subjects are not lacking, but instead ail because they have not yet found the right technology or solution to quell their symptoms or to symbolize on their behalf.

The discourse of network production is one such rotation. It results when the location of agency is intelligent communication technology (S2 in Lacanese, or knowledge per se). At the same time as this agency pursues truth ('a', or the cause and object of subjects' desire) it addresses these enigmatic reminders of the loss that constitutes subjects to other subjects ($, the divided subjects of speech and the unconscious). This results in a hyper-expanded web of signifiers (S1's) that subjects emit consciously and unconsciously in online social networks. This formulation adds the dimension of the social unconscious to Psychology's formulation of Internet Addiction as a set of behavioral symptoms. It therefore directs our attention to our symbolic infrastructure - a new 'given' with which we all must now contend.