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What lurks beneath: The erotic charge of the Laplanchean unconscious and the digital object

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Abstract

This paper takes a feminist approach to rethinking the significance of user-device interaction, attachments and dependency. It suggests that Jean Laplanche’s resignification of ‘seduction’, the function of the ‘enigmatic message’ and reconfiguration of sexuality as a ‘charge and tension’ are particularly useful for theorising the relationship that smartphones, as digital objects, have to unconscious sexuality and psychic life. The paper suggests that the draw of user-device interactions is connected to the rhythms of unconscious sexuality and that this opens up a space for thinking beyond subject-object dichotomies and ultimately offers hope for a shift in the cultural imaginary.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX, UK

    Sharon Tugwell

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  1. Sharon Tugwell
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Correspondence to Sharon Tugwell.

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Tugwell, S. What lurks beneath: The erotic charge of the Laplanchean unconscious and the digital object. Psychoanal Cult Soc 26, 165–180 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41282-021-00216-6

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