Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

If we recognise Jacques Lacan’s three registers of the Imaginary, Symbolic and Real as structures which govern textual production, then Social Media texts and platforms do more than simply represent these registers; they circulate them and enforce their articulation by demonstrating how to operate as textual producers and consumers within them. With this in mind, how might have Social Media affected the relationship of the subject to the world accessed through these media forms? How, especially, does the subject negotiate the complicated terrain of power and knowledge represented, first, by an acquiescence to, and then an overcoming of, the Subject-Supposed-to-Know? How might this revision of a crucial moment (for Lacan) in the development of the subject play out and be visible in such contemporary crises as Post-Truth, QAnon and Brexit? This paper seeks to explore the structuring effect of Lacan’s Three Registers on subjective formation and examine the manner with which Social Media offer a digital revision of these structures, making available new ways of becoming subjects that differ from previous (analogue) subjects in their relationship to categories of knowledge and the manner with which this knowledge might be used to generate an encounter with the world.