- A213, Collegiate Hall, Collegiate Crescent, Sheffield, S10 2BP
- 07999658012
Jack Black
Sheffield Hallam University, Sport, Faculty Member
- British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Imperial History, Commonwealth History, British Identity, National Identity, Nationalism, and 29 moreBritish Empire, New Zealand (British Empire), Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Media, Sociology, Media Sociology, Sociology of Knowledge, Historical Sociology, Sociology of Identity, Norbert Elias, Post-Colonialism, Masculinities, Sociology of Risk, Sociology Of Deviance, Deviance, Sport, British History, England, 2012 London Olympics, Scottish Studies, Figurational Sociology, Sport Media, Cultural Studies, Social Theory, Identity politics, Identity (Culture), Post-Truth, and Slavoj Žižekedit
- Jack Black is Associate Professor of Culture, Media and Sport Jack's research examines the interrelationships betwee... moreJack Black is Associate Professor of Culture, Media and Sport
Jack's research examines the interrelationships between sociology, media and cultural studies, and psychoanalysis – publishing on topics relating to nationalism/national identity, gender, celebrity, journalism and terrorism; theoretically informed analyses of power and cultural representation; and ecological approaches to nature, culture and leisure/sport.edit - Prof. Joseph Maguireedit
Sport and Psychoanalysis: What Sport Reveals about Our Unconscious Desires, Fantasies, and Fears explores the intersection of sport and psychoanalysis, emphasizing the often-overlooked psycho-social dimensions underpinning the experience... more
Sport and Psychoanalysis: What Sport Reveals about Our Unconscious Desires, Fantasies, and Fears explores the intersection of sport and psychoanalysis, emphasizing the often-overlooked psycho-social dimensions underpinning the experience of sport. By challenging the idea that sport offers an “escape” from reality—a realm separate to the politics of everyday life—each chapter critically considers the unconscious desires, fantasies, and fears that underpin the sporting spectacle for both participants and spectators. Indeed, beyond simply applying psychoanalysis to sport, this book proposes how sport can be used to pose questions to psychoanalysis, thus using sport as a medium to elucidate key psychoanalytic ideas and concepts. This volume addresses a diverse range of theorists, including Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Norman O. Brown, and Frantz Fanon, and applies them across a variety of topics and sports, including NFL coaching, Manny Pacquiao, play, football, basketball, baseball, poker, and the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, therefore providing a unique understanding of the cultural, social, and psychic significance of sports. A timely and relevant collection, this book will appeal to scholars and practitioners interested in understanding sport from both the cultural and clinical application of psychoanalytic theory as well as academics and practitioners in sport studies, psychology, sociology, education, and cultural studies.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Psychoanalysis, Sport Psychology, Race and Racism, Identity (Culture), and 15 moreSports Management, Philosophy of Sport, Fandom, Children's Play, Sport, Sports, Sports Coaching, Race and sport, Psychoanalysis and culture, Sport fandom, Sport Studies, Sport Science, Physical Education and Sport, Playing Sports, and Sociology of Sport and Leisure
The Psychosis of Race offers a unique and detailed account of the psychoanalytic significance of race, and the ongoing impact of racism in contemporary society. Moving beyond the well-trodden assertion that race is a social construction,... more
The Psychosis of Race offers a unique and detailed account of the psychoanalytic significance of race, and the ongoing impact of racism in contemporary society.
Moving beyond the well-trodden assertion that race is a social construction, and working against demands that simply call for more representational equality, The Psychosis of Race explores how the delusions, anxieties, and paranoia that frame our race relations can afford new insights into how we see, think, and understand race's pervasive appeal. With examples drawn from politics and popular culture—such as Candyman, Get Out, and the music of Kendrick Lamar—critical attention is given to introducing, as well as explicating on, several key concepts from Lacanian psychoanalysis and the study of psychosis, including foreclosure, the phallus, Nameof-the-Father, sinthome, and the objet petit a. By elaborating a cultural mode to psychosis and its understanding, an original and critical exposition of the effects of racialization, as well as our ability to discern the very limits of our capacity to think through, or even beyond, the idea of race, is provided.
The Psychosis of Race speaks to an emerging area in the study of psychoanalysis and race, and will appeal to scholars and academics across the fields of psychology, sociology, cultural studies, media studies, and the arts and humanities.
Moving beyond the well-trodden assertion that race is a social construction, and working against demands that simply call for more representational equality, The Psychosis of Race explores how the delusions, anxieties, and paranoia that frame our race relations can afford new insights into how we see, think, and understand race's pervasive appeal. With examples drawn from politics and popular culture—such as Candyman, Get Out, and the music of Kendrick Lamar—critical attention is given to introducing, as well as explicating on, several key concepts from Lacanian psychoanalysis and the study of psychosis, including foreclosure, the phallus, Nameof-the-Father, sinthome, and the objet petit a. By elaborating a cultural mode to psychosis and its understanding, an original and critical exposition of the effects of racialization, as well as our ability to discern the very limits of our capacity to think through, or even beyond, the idea of race, is provided.
The Psychosis of Race speaks to an emerging area in the study of psychoanalysis and race, and will appeal to scholars and academics across the fields of psychology, sociology, cultural studies, media studies, and the arts and humanities.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Psychoanalysis, Media and Cultural Studies, Psychosis, Critical Race Studies, and 15 moreRace and Racism, Critical Race Theory, Lacan, Race and Ethnicity, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Lacanian theory, Racism, Philosophy Of Race, Slavoj Zizek, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Anti-Racism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Lacanian Analysis, and Kendrick Lamar
This book considers the ability of individuals and communities to maintain healthy relationships with their surroundings—before, during and after catastrophic events—through physical activity and sporting practices. Broad and ambitious... more
This book considers the ability of individuals and communities to maintain healthy relationships with their surroundings—before, during and after catastrophic events—through physical activity and sporting practices.
Broad and ambitious in scope, this book uses sport and physical activity as a lens through which to examine our catastrophic societies and spaces. Acknowledging that catastrophes are complex, overlapping phenomena in need of sophisticated, interdisciplinary solutions, this book explores the social, economic, ecological and moral injustices that determine the personal and emotional impact of catastrophe. Drawing from international case studies, this book uniquely explores the different landscapes and contexts of catastrophe as well as the affective qualities of sporting practices. This includes topics such as DIY skateparks in Jamaica; former child soldiers in Africa; the funding of sport, recreation and cultural activities by extractive industries in northern Canada; mountain biking in the UK; and urban exploration in New Zealand. Featuring the work of ex-professional athletes, artists, anthropologists, sociologists, political ecologists, community development workers and philosophers, this book offers new perspectives on capitalism, nature, sociality, morality and identity.
This is essential reading for academics and practitioners in sociology, disaster studies, sport-for-development and political ecology.
Broad and ambitious in scope, this book uses sport and physical activity as a lens through which to examine our catastrophic societies and spaces. Acknowledging that catastrophes are complex, overlapping phenomena in need of sophisticated, interdisciplinary solutions, this book explores the social, economic, ecological and moral injustices that determine the personal and emotional impact of catastrophe. Drawing from international case studies, this book uniquely explores the different landscapes and contexts of catastrophe as well as the affective qualities of sporting practices. This includes topics such as DIY skateparks in Jamaica; former child soldiers in Africa; the funding of sport, recreation and cultural activities by extractive industries in northern Canada; mountain biking in the UK; and urban exploration in New Zealand. Featuring the work of ex-professional athletes, artists, anthropologists, sociologists, political ecologists, community development workers and philosophers, this book offers new perspectives on capitalism, nature, sociality, morality and identity.
This is essential reading for academics and practitioners in sociology, disaster studies, sport-for-development and political ecology.
Research Interests: Sociology, Environmental Sociology, Sociology of Sport, Political Ecology, Sports Management, and 15 morePhysical Activity, Ecology, Sports Ethics, Philosophy of Sport, Sport for Development, Nature, Environmentalism, Natural Disasters, Catastrophes, Physical Education and Sport, Catastrophe Theory, Sociology of Sports, Sport for Development and Peace, Sociology of Sport and Leisure, and Environment
In what ways is comedy subversive? This vital new book critically considers the importance of comedy in challenging and redefining our relations to race and racism through the lens of political correctness. By viewing comedy as both a... more
In what ways is comedy subversive? This vital new book critically considers the importance of comedy in challenging and redefining our relations to race and racism through the lens of political correctness.
By viewing comedy as both a constitutive feature of social interaction and as a necessary requirement in the appraisal of what is often deemed to be ‘politically correct’, this book provides an innovative and multidisciplinary approach to the study of comedy and popular culture. In doing so, it engages with the social and cultural tensions inherent to our understandings of political correctness, arguing that comedy can subversively redefine our approach to ‘PC Debates’, contestations surrounding free speech and the popular portrayal of political correctness in the media and society. Aided by the work of both Slavoj Žižek and Alenka Zupančič, this unique analysis adopts a psychoanalytic/philosophical framework to explore issues of race, racism and political correctness in the widely acclaimed BBC ‘mockumentary’, The Office (UK), as well as a variety of television comedies.
Drawing from psychoanalysis, social psychology and philosophy, this book will be highly relevant for postgraduate students and academic researchers studying comedy, race/racism, multiculturalism, political correctness and television/film.
By viewing comedy as both a constitutive feature of social interaction and as a necessary requirement in the appraisal of what is often deemed to be ‘politically correct’, this book provides an innovative and multidisciplinary approach to the study of comedy and popular culture. In doing so, it engages with the social and cultural tensions inherent to our understandings of political correctness, arguing that comedy can subversively redefine our approach to ‘PC Debates’, contestations surrounding free speech and the popular portrayal of political correctness in the media and society. Aided by the work of both Slavoj Žižek and Alenka Zupančič, this unique analysis adopts a psychoanalytic/philosophical framework to explore issues of race, racism and political correctness in the widely acclaimed BBC ‘mockumentary’, The Office (UK), as well as a variety of television comedies.
Drawing from psychoanalysis, social psychology and philosophy, this book will be highly relevant for postgraduate students and academic researchers studying comedy, race/racism, multiculturalism, political correctness and television/film.
Research Interests: Television Studies, Comedy, Critical Race Studies, Race and Racism, Critical Race Theory, and 15 moreRace and Ethnicity, Slavoj Žižek, Subversion, Slavoj Zizek, Political Language and Political Correctness, Zizek, Philosophy of Humour, Satire & Irony, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Humour Studies, Race, Film and Television Comedy, Alenka Zupancic, Political Correctness, and Cinema and Television
Is it possible to remain a sports fan when prominent sports teams and events are utilized to “sportswash” human rights abuses and other controversies? Indeed, while there is an abundance of analyses critiquing different instances of... more
Is it possible to remain a sports fan when prominent sports teams and events are utilized to “sportswash” human rights abuses and other controversies? Indeed, while there is an abundance of analyses critiquing different instances of sportswashing, the exploration of the role of sportswashing and its connection to the “sports fan” presents an essential and necessary area of investigation and theoretical inquiry. To unpick this dilemma, this article proposes the concept of “fetishistic disavowal” to help theorize the impact of sportswashing, as well as its relation to the sports fan and critical sports academic. This argues that, as spectators and fans of sport—and, moreover, as critical academics—we often acknowledge and accept that sport is used to perpetuate and even maintain a variety of social, economic, and political inequalities. Yet, while we are aware of such knowledge, we nonetheless remain fully capable of disavowing this very knowledge as an accepted part of sport. Given this, it is argued that the fetishization of sport can provide a suitable conduit for the fetishistic disavowal that sportswashing requires, with the concept offering a unique way of approaching sport’s inherent contradictions, while also theorizing how subjects relate to these contradictions as part of their involvement in and with sport. Where sportswashing directly implicates the fan in its implementation—relying upon a level of fetishistic disavowal between the fan and their club and proffering a disavowed acknowledgement of the effects of sportswashing and its interpellation through sport—this article outlines how applications of fetishistic disavowal provide a unique theoretical lens through which analyses of sport, and its ethical significance, can be critiqued.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Sociology of Sport, Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, Freud and Lacan, and 15 moreFandom, Sports Fans, Sport politics, Soft Power, Fetishism, Sport, Sports, Soft Power and International Relations, Fetishistic Disavowal, Sports and politics, Sport and Politics, Political Impact in Sports, Sociology of Sports, Freudian Psychoanalysis, and Freud
The term sportswashing has been discussed and analysed within academic circles, as well as the mainstream media. However, the majority of existing research has focused on one-off event-based sportswashing strategies (such as autocratic... more
The term sportswashing has been discussed and analysed within academic circles, as well as the mainstream media. However, the majority of existing research has focused on one-off event-based sportswashing strategies (such as autocratic states hosting major international sports events) rather than longer term investment-based strategies (such as state actors purchasing sports clubs and teams). Furthermore, little has been written about the impact of this latter strategy on the existing fanbase of the purchased team and on their relationship with sportswashing and the discourses surrounding it. This paper addresses this lacuna through analysis of a popular Manchester City online fan forum, which illustrates the manner in which this community of dedicated City fans have legitimated the actions of the club’s ownership regime, the Abu Dhabi United Group – a private equity group operated by Abu Dhabi royalty and UAE politicians. The discursive strategies of the City fans are discussed, in addition to the wider significance of these strategies on the issue of sportswashing and its coverage by the media.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Football (soccer), Sports Management, Fandom, Online Fandom, and 15 moreSports Fans, Manchester, Football, Sport, Sports, Sports Sociology, Sociology of Football, Online Forums, Football and Fans, Sociology of Sports, Sports Corruption, Fandom Studies, Socio Cultural Studies In Sport, Sociology of Sport and Leisure, and Hate speech online
Sport poses a number of important and no less significant questions, which, on the face of it, may not necessarily seem very important or significant to begin with – a peculiarity that we believe to be integral to sport itself. This... more
Sport poses a number of important and no less significant questions, which, on the face of it, may not necessarily seem very important or significant to begin with – a peculiarity that we believe to be integral to sport itself. This article introduces, explores and outlines the psychoanalytic significance of this peculiarity. It explores how the emotions stirred by sport are intertwined with a realm of fiction and fantasy. Despite its lack of practical utility, sport carries an undeniable gravity, encapsulating the aspirations of communities, nations and continents. As a result, psychoanalysis can be used to critically reflect on the purpose and meaning of sport: that is, why do we need sport, and why, for large sections of the world’s population, do we rely on it? Ultimately, while psychoanalysis maintains a unique relation to a variety of unexpected fields of study – including art, culture and neuroscience – we seek to add to this expanding list of inquiry by including sport in this critical domain. By utilising sport as a platform to elucidate psychoanalytic concepts, it is recognised that sport can also prompt questions for psychoanalysis. In so doing, theoretical discussions on the social, cultural and political dimensions of sport through psychoanalytic theory are introduced and applied.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Psychoanalysis, Sport Psychology, Lacan, Sports Management, and 15 moreJacques Lacan, Lacanian theory, Philosophy of Sport, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Lacanian psychoanalysis, Sport, Sports, Sports Coaching, Sport Management, Sport Science, Physical Education and Sport, Jaques Lacan, Socio Cultural Studies In Sport, Sociology of Sport and Leisure, and Sports Science
Narratives concerning “Cultural Marxism” – portrayed as a threat to Western society and its values – have been gaining ground largely thanks to their ability to circulate rapidly through online platforms. In recent years, sport has also... more
Narratives concerning “Cultural Marxism” – portrayed as a threat to Western society and its values – have been gaining ground largely thanks to their ability to circulate rapidly through online platforms. In recent years, sport has also become a vehicle for spreading such conspiracy theories – with far-reaching consequences for society.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Conspiracy Theories, Twitter, Sport politics, Conspiracy Culture, and 15 moreSport, Sports, Far Right, Conspiracy Theory, Far-Right Politics, far-right politics Europe, Extreme and Far Right, Conspiracy, Sociology of Sports, Far Right Movements, Sociology of Sport and Leisure, Anti-White, Alt-Right, Alt-Right Politics, and Hate speech online
This essay explores the interrelationship between tragedy and comedy, with specific focus given to the potential that comedy can provide in transforming the most tragic of situations. In building this claim, the very dynamics and... more
This essay explores the interrelationship between tragedy and comedy, with specific focus given to the potential that comedy can provide in transforming the most tragic of situations. In building this claim, the very dynamics and distinctions that divide the tragic from the comic are considered in view of the self-negation that the comic posits. That is, while tragedy requires a certain acceptance of the finite, from which destiny and circumstance come to certify the hero’s tragic predicament, in comedy, what succeeds is that which functions through an act of self-negation. This, it is argued, offers a subversive redefining of tragedy, one that proves constitutive of a comic fatalism that does not mourn one’s tragic predicament or fated end, but, instead, fully identifies with our comic predicament. Going beyond the pitfalls of political nicety and moral condemnation, which seek easy gratification or cynical distance, the conclusion examines the conceptual artist, Vanessa Place, and her performance of rape jokes.
Research Interests: Greek Tragedy, Greek Comedy, Comedy, Hegel, Jacques Lacan, and 15 moreSlavoj Žižek, Slavoj Zizek, G.W.F. Hegel, Zizek, Tragedy (Philosophy), Rape Culture, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Lacanian psychoanalysis, Jokes, Tragedy, Fatalism, Alenka Zupancic, Zizek studies, Jokes, humor and communication, and Sexist and Racist Jokes
Sport serves as a revealing backdrop for the manifestation of hate speech and discrimination. Culture clashes and global socio-economic power struggles often ignite within the sporting arena and continue to smoulder long afterward. As a... more
Sport serves as a revealing backdrop for the manifestation of hate speech and discrimination. Culture clashes and global socio-economic power struggles often ignite within the sporting arena and continue to smoulder long afterward. As a result, incidences of hate speech in sport have spread across digital platforms, with social media and online forums being used to circulate hateful, offensive, or discriminatory content. Policymakers, sport governing bodies, and grassroots anti-hate organizations now find themselves struggling to keep up with a rapidly changing online-landscape. The importance of addressing and combating online hate speech in sport is now an essential problem in maintaining integrity, diversity, and respect within the sporting community. Recognizing the urgency of addressing this matter, the Tackling Online Hate in Football (TOHIF) team conducted a scoping review to provide an extensive overview of scholarship on this topic. The review served to provide a comprehensive compilation of previously employed research methodologies, case studies, and conclusions, identifying the breadth and depth of existing research, while also recognising key themes, gaps in knowledge, and areas for further research. In so doing, the review not only provided a concise overview of existing research in the field but also sheds light on areas and approaches in dire need of further examination.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Media Studies, New Media, Media and Cultural Studies, Journalism, and 15 moreFootball (soccer), Digital Media, Hate Speech, Social Media, Soccer, Media, Football, Sport, Sports, Online Media, Football Culture, Sociology of Football, Scoping review, Sociology of Sport and Leisure, and Hate speech online
Exploring the relationship between humans and AI chatbots, as well as the ethical concerns surrounding their use, this paper argues that our relations with chatbots are not solely based on their function as a source of knowledge, but,... more
Exploring the relationship between humans and AI chatbots, as well as the ethical concerns surrounding their use, this paper argues that our relations with chatbots are not solely based on their function as a source of knowledge, but, rather, on the desire for the subject not to know. It is argued that, outside of the very fears and anxieties that underscore our adoption of AI, the desire not to know reveals the potential to embrace the very loss AI avers. Consequently, rather than proposing a knowledge that seeks to disavow loss, we can instead recognize the potential in loss itself: an opportunity to assert and define the gap inherent to both the subject and AI we create.
Research Interests: Psychoanalysis, Algorithms, Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Digital Media, and 15 moreLacan, Jacques Lacan, Lacanian theory, Critical Media Studies, Desire, Dialectic, New Media Studies, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Lacanian psychoanalysis, Media and Communications, Dialectics, Chatbot, Communication and media Studies, Lacanian Analysis, and ChatGPT
Exploring online criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ protest during ‘Euro 2020’, this article examines how alt- and far-right conspiracies were both constructed and communicated via the social media platform, Twitter. By providing a novel... more
Exploring online criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ protest during ‘Euro 2020’, this article examines how alt- and far-right conspiracies were both constructed and communicated via the social media platform, Twitter. By providing a novel exploration of alt-right conspiracies during an international football tournament, a qualitative thematic analysis of 1,388 original tweets relating to Euro 2020 was undertaken. The findings reveal how, in criticisms levelled at both ‘wokeism’ and the Black Lives Matter movement, antiwhite criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ protest were embroiled in alt-right conspiracies that exposed an assumed Cultural Marxist, ‘woke agenda’ in the tournament’s organization and mainstream media coverage. In conclusion, it is argued that conspiratorial discourses, associated with the alt-right, provided a framework through which the protest could be understood. This emphasises how the significance of conspiracy functions to promote the wider dissemination of alt-right ideology across popular cultural contexts, such as sport.
Research Interests: Media and Cultural Studies, Football (soccer), Digital Media, Race and Racism, Conspiracy Theories, and 15 moreSocial Media, Racism, Twitter, Conspiracy Theories and Transparency, Conspiracy Culture, Football, Sports, Hate Studies, Sociology of Football, Belief in Conspiracy Theory, Cultural Marxism, Anti-White, Black Lives Matter, Hate speech online, and Woke
Alex Garland’s recent miniseries, Devs (20th Television, 2020), takes on many similar themes which have been explored in his previous directorial outputs, including Ex Machina (A24; Universal Pictures, 2015) and Annihilation (Paramount... more
Alex Garland’s recent miniseries, Devs (20th Television, 2020), takes on many similar themes which have been explored in his previous directorial outputs, including Ex Machina (A24; Universal Pictures, 2015) and Annihilation (Paramount Pictures; Netflix, 2018). A science fiction thriller, Devs follows the computer engineer, Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno), whose boyfriend mysteriously commits suicide after his first day working for the ‘Devs’ project. The project is run by the quantum computing company, Amaya. Amaya’s CEO is Forest (Nick Offerman), a tech entrepreneur, whose wealth has allowed him to develop the unique quantum mechanics facility. Notable members of staff are subsequently promoted to join Devs, where, in the first episode, Lily’s boyfriend, Sergei (Karl Glusman) is invited to join. Upon joining the program, we realise that Sergei has attempted to steal the Devs code, revealing himself as a suspected Russian industrial spy. Unbeknownst to Lily, Sergei is murdered by Forest and his head of security at the end of episode one for attempting to steal the code. ... Read more - https://cstonline.net/devs-and-the-parallax-ending-by-jack-black/
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Television Studies, Cultural Theory, and 15 moreSlavoj Žižek, Science Fiction, Slavoj Zizek, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Film and Media Studies, TV studies, Science Fiction Studies, Media and Communication Studies, Media and Communications, TV Series, Laibach, Parallax View, Media and Culture, Alex Garland, and Subversive affirmation
Sport continues to be one of the primary means through which notions of Englishness and Britishness are constructed, contested and resisted. The legacy of the role of sport in the colonial project of the British Empire, combined with more... more
Sport continues to be one of the primary means through which notions of Englishness and Britishness are constructed, contested and resisted. The legacy of the role of sport in the colonial project of the British Empire, combined with more recent connections between sport and far right fascist/nationalist politics has made the association between Britishness, Englishness and ethnic identity(ies) particularly intriguing. In this paper, these intersections are explored through British media coverage of the Canadian-born, British tennis player, Greg Rusedski. This coverage is examined through the lens of ‘performativity’, as articulated by Judith Butler. Through a critical application of Butler’s ideas, the ways in which the media seek to recognise and normalise certain identities, while problematising and excluding others, can be more fully appreciated. Thus, it was within newspaper framings of Rusedski that hegemonic notions of White Englishness could be performed, maintained and embedded.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Race and Ethnicity, Nationalism, Performativity, National Identity, and 15 moreTennis, Judith Butler, Ethnicity, Britishness, Englishness, British Identity, English national identity, Sport and Nationalism, Media analysis, Ethnicity and National Identity, Sports and national identity, Analysing newspapers: An approach from critical discourse analysis, English Identity, Performativity Judith Butler, and Greg Rusedski
In this concluding post on Sam Esmail’s Mr. Robot, a critical evaluation of the series’ final scenes as well as its wider cultural, political and ideological importance will be provided. In accordance with previous posts, this analysis... more
In this concluding post on Sam Esmail’s Mr. Robot, a critical evaluation of the series’ final scenes as well as its wider cultural, political and ideological importance will be provided. In accordance with previous posts, this analysis will draw from the work of Todd McGowan in order to provide a final precis on the significance of the gaze as used in the series. Towards the end of this discussion, attention will be given to expanding upon the series’ conclusions in light of similar narrative formats, such as, Todd Phillips’s, Joker (2019). ... Read more – https://cstonline.net/mr-robot-part- three-the-voyeurs-who-think-they-arent-a-part-of-this-mr-robot-and-the-subject-by- jack-black/
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Slavoj Žižek, Subjectivity (Identity Politics), and 15 moreDesire, Slavoj Zizek, Zizek, Subjectivity Studies, Žižek, Subjectivity, Death Drive, Film and Television, Media: Film and Television, Film and television studies, Todd McGowan, Slavoj Zizek Film Theory, Film & Television, Department of Film and Television Studies, and Mr. Robot
In what follows, I wish to draw away from broader criticisms of Mr. Robot’s narrative consequences, and focus on a particular scene from Series 4, Episode 10, ‘410 Gone’. Importantly, the following analysis will serve to elucidate upon a... more
In what follows, I wish to draw away from broader criticisms of Mr. Robot’s narrative consequences, and focus on a particular scene from Series 4, Episode 10, ‘410 Gone’. Importantly, the following analysis will serve to elucidate upon a number of important significances related to the series and its conclusion (this will be discussed next week). Before reading the below, however, it is worth watching the scene in question: … Read more – https://cstonline.net/mr-robot-part-two-run-away-with-me-content-form-and-romantic-failure-an-ideological-critique-scene-analysis-by-jack-black/
Research Interests: Media and Cultural Studies, Television Studies, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Slavoj Zizek, and 15 morePhilosophy of Love, Zizek, Television, Žižek, Media and Culture Studies, Mass media, culture and society, Romance, Film and Television, Zizek studies, Cinema and Television, Media and Culture, Form and Content, Todd McGowan, Slavoj Zizek Film Theory, and Mr. Robot
This article draws upon the work of Timothy Morton and Slavoj Žižek in order to critically examine how mountain bike trail builders orientated themselves within nature relations. Beginning with a discussion of the key ontological... more
This article draws upon the work of Timothy Morton and Slavoj Žižek in order to critically examine how mountain bike trail builders orientated themselves within nature relations. Beginning with a discussion of the key ontological differences between Morton’s object-oriented ontology and Žižek’s blend of Hegelian- Lacanianism, we explore how Morton’s dark ecology and Žižek’s account of the radical contingency of nature, can offer parallel paths to achieving an ecological awareness that neither idealises nor mythologises nature, but instead, acknowledges its strange (Morton) and contingent (Žižek) form. Empirically, we support this theoretical approach in interviews with twenty mountain bike trail builders. These interviews depicted an approach to trail building that was ambivalently formed in/with the contingency of nature. In doing so, the trail builders acted with a sense of temporal awareness that accepted the radical openness of nature, presenting a ‘symbolic framework’ that was amiable to nature’s ambivalent, strange and contingent form. In conclusion, we argue that we should not lose sight of the ambivalences and strange surprises that emanate from our collective and unpredictable attempts to symbolize nature and that such knowledge can coincide with Morton’s ‘dark ecology’ – an ecological awareness that remains radically open to our ecological existence.
Research Interests: Aesthetics Of Nature, Slavoj Žižek, Slavoj Zizek, Dark Ecology, Nature Culture, and 15 moreSociology of Cycling, Object Oriented Ontology, Zizek, Philosophy of Nature, Nature, Žižek, New Materialism, Timothy Morton, Nature-Based Sport, Cycling, Mountain Biking, New Materialisms, Zizek studies, Graham Harman, Ian Bogost, Timothy Morton, and Object-oriented
It was noted in the previous post, that the underlying plotline structuring Sam Esmail’s Mr. Robot bears a notable resemblance to David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999). Certainly, the comparison has been duly noted and even openly... more
It was noted in the previous post, that the underlying plotline structuring Sam Esmail’s Mr. Robot bears a notable resemblance to David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999). Certainly, the comparison has been duly noted and even openly acknowledged by Esmail, with the film serving as inspiration for the series (Sullivan, 2015). In the case of seasons 1 and 2, this inspiration fuels Elliot and fsociety’s attempts to erase the commercial debt that has been accumulated by E Corp. Lines from the characters are riddled with references to the increasing divide between rich and poor, and to the declining significance of democracy in the face of a social and political climate steered by liberal capitalism’s unending and unequal pursuit of wealth. As noted, these ills are embodied in the conglomerate E Corp, or, as Elliot refers to it, ‘Evil Corp’. E Corp can be thought of as a reflection of Apple, with its technology, digital payment services and loan/credit portfolios always encroaching on the lives of the series’ characters. Accordingly, while The Narrator in Fight Club seeks to bring down capitalism, by exploding the headquarters of its leading companies, Elliot seeks to reset the balance by hacking E Corp’s computer database and eradicating the consumer debt it holds. … Read more – https://cstonline.net/mr-robot-part-one-our-democracy-has-been-hacked-critiquing-mr-robot-by-jack-black/
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Film Theory, and 15 moreTelevision Studies, Film Analysis, Slavoj Žižek, Slavoj Zizek, Cult television, Zizek, Television, Žižek, Joker, Mark Fisher, Zizek studies, Cinema and Television, Fight Club (the film), Todd McGowan, and Slavoj Zizek Film Theory
Premiering in May 2015, Sam Esmail’s Mr. Robot (USA Network), tells the story of a cybersecurity engineer/computer hacker, who is recruited by a cyber-anarchist movement called ‘fsociety’. The movement’s mission: to eradicate all consumer... more
Premiering in May 2015, Sam Esmail’s Mr. Robot (USA Network), tells the story of a cybersecurity engineer/computer hacker, who is recruited by a cyber-anarchist movement called ‘fsociety’. The movement’s mission: to eradicate all consumer debt through destroying the data records held by the fictional conglomerate, ‘E Corp’... Visit - https://cstonline.net/from-fight-club-to-gaze-making-sense-of-sam-esmails-mr-robot-an-introduction-by-jack-black/
Research Interests: Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Film Theory, Television Studies, and 15 moreSlavoj Žižek, Slavoj Zizek, Film and Media Studies, TV studies, TV Series, Mark Fisher, Media and Culture, Fight Club, Fight Club (the film), Todd McGowan, Slavoj Zizek Film Theory, Gaze Theory, Media and Film Studies, Mr. Robot, and Sam Esmail
The HBO drama, Watchmen, is part of an ever-growing canon of comic books adapted for TV. Taking place 34 years after its print publication, the TV series refocuses the comic’s deconstruction of Cold War anxieties by exploring ongoing... more
The HBO drama, Watchmen, is part of an ever-growing canon of comic books adapted for TV. Taking place 34 years after its print publication, the TV series refocuses the comic’s deconstruction of Cold War anxieties by exploring ongoing racial tensions in Tulsa, Oklahoma... - visit: https://cstonline.net/watchmens-parallax-view-handling-past-traumas-and-present-tensions-by-jack-black/
Research Interests: Cultural History, Television Studies, Critical Race Studies, Race and Racism, Critical Race Theory, and 15 moreRace and Ethnicity, Trauma Studies, Slavoj Žižek, Slavoj Zizek, Zizek, History of Race and Ethnicity, Television, Trauma, Žižek, Watchmen, Parallax View, Zizek studies, Cinema and Television, Slavoj Zizek Film Theory, and The Watchmen
Dirt is evoked to signify many important facets of mountain bike culture including its emergence, history and everyday forms of practice and affect. These significations are also drawn upon to frame the sport's (sub)cultural and... more
Dirt is evoked to signify many important facets of mountain bike culture including its emergence, history and everyday forms of practice and affect. These significations are also drawn upon to frame the sport's (sub)cultural and counter-ideological affiliations. In this article we examine how both the practice of mountain biking and, specifically, mountain bike trail building, raises questions over the object and latent function of dirt, hinting at the way that abjection can, under certain circumstances, be a source of intrigue and pleasure. In doing so, we suggest a re-symbolization of our relationship with dirt via a consideration of the terrestrial.
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Through research that was conducted with mountain bike trail builders, this article explores the processes by which socio-natures or ‘emergent ecologies’ are formed through the assemblage of trail building, mountain bike riding and... more
Through research that was conducted with mountain bike trail builders, this article explores the processes by which socio-natures or ‘emergent ecologies’ are formed through the assemblage of trail building, mountain bike riding and matter. In moving conversations about ‘Nature’ beyond essentialist readings and dualistic thinking, we consider how ecological sensibilities are reflected in the complex, lived realities of the trail building community. Specifically, we draw on Morton’s (2017) notion of the ‘symbiotic real’ to examine how participants connect with a range of objects and non-humans, revealing a ‘spectral’ existence in which they take pleasure in building material features that are only partially of their creation. Such ‘tuning’ to the symbiotic real was manifest in the ongoing battle that the trail builders maintained with water. This battle not only emphasized the fragility of their trail construction but also the temporal significance of the environments that these creations were rendered in/with. In conclusion, we argue that these findings present an ecological awareness that views nature as neither static, inert or fixed, but instead, as a temporal ‘nowness’, formed from the ambiguity of being in and with nature. Ecologically, this provides a unique form of orientation that re-establishes the ambiguity between humans and nature, without privileging the former. It is set against this ecological (un)awareness that we believe a re-orientation can be made to our understandings of leisure, the Anthropocene and the nature-culture dyad.
Research Interests: Recreation & Leisure Studies, Ecology, Leisure Studies, Nature Culture, Object Oriented Ontology, and 15 morePhilosophy of Nature, Nature, Anthropocene studies, Graham Harman, New Materialism, Assemblage, Timothy Morton, Anthropocene, Mountain Biking, New Materialisms, Culture and the Anthropocene, Sociology of Sport and Leisure, Spectre, trail building, and Symbiotic Real
Through examining the BBC television series, Black and British: A Forgotten History, written and presented by the historian David Olusoga, and in extending Paul Gilroy’s assertion that the everyday, banality of living with difference is... more
Through examining the BBC television series, Black and British: A Forgotten History, written and presented by the historian David Olusoga, and in extending Paul Gilroy’s assertion that the everyday, banality of living with difference is now an ordinary part of British life, this article considers how Olusoga’s historicization of the black British experience reflects a convivial rendering of UK multiculture. In particular, when used alongside Žižek’s notion of parallax, it is argued that understandings of convivial culture can be supported by a historical importance that deliberately ‘shocks’ and, subsequently dislodges, popular interpretations of the UK’s ‘white past’. Notably, it is parallax which puts antagonism, strangeness and ambivalence at the heart of contemporary depictions of convivial Britain, with the UK’s cultural differences located in the ‘gaps’ and tensions which characterize both its past and present. These differences should not be feared but, as a characteristic part of our convivial culture, should be supplemented with historical analyses that highlight but, also, undermine, the significance of cultural differences in the present. Consequently, it is suggested that if the spontaneity of conviviality is to encourage openness, then, understandings of multiculturalism need to go beyond reification in order to challenge our understandings of the past. Here, examples of ‘alterity’ are neither ‘new’ nor ‘contemporary’ but, instead, constitute a fundamental part of the nation’s history: of the ‘gap’ made visible in transiting past and present.
Research Interests: Cultural History, Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, and 15 moreTelevision Studies, British History, Black/African Diaspora, Documentary (Film Studies), Slavoj Žižek, British Empire, Black History, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Slavoj Zizek, Cultural Studies (Communication), Cultural Diversity, Documentary Film, Conviviality, Paul Gilroy, and Parallax
From 2009 to 2015, U.S. director, Quentin Tarantino, released three films that were notable for their focus on particular historical events, periods and individuals (Inglorious Basterds 2009; Django Unchained 2012; The Hateful Eight... more
From 2009 to 2015, U.S. director, Quentin Tarantino, released three films that were notable for their focus on particular historical events, periods and individuals (Inglorious Basterds 2009; Django Unchained 2012; The Hateful Eight 2015). Together, these films offered a specifically “Tarantinian” rendering of history: rewriting, manipulating and, for some, unethically deploying history for aesthetic effect. With regard to Django Unchained, this article examines how Tarantino’s historical revisionism provides a valuable point of inquiry into the ways in which “history” is depicted on-screen and, more importantly, how depictions of “the past” can prove useful for highlighting underlying contradictions, ambivalences and ambiguities in the “present”. Drawing upon Slavoj Žižek’s Lacanian approach to film analysis, it is argued that through a combination of fantasy, subversion and counterfactual possibility – most notable in the film’s final stand-off between its leading black characters – Tarantino is able to render the Real of U.S. slavery as an ahistorical antagonism. This antagonism highlights the ongoing trauma of these events in the present as well as the use of fantasy to explore their traumatic subject matter. Such historical fictions are not fixed to the past but, via an encounter with the Real, can be used to appraise the present.
Research Interests: History, Black Studies Or African American Studies, Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Film Studies, and 15 moreFilm Theory, Race and Racism, Film Analysis, Slavery, Race and Ethnicity, Ideology, History of Slavery, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Theory of History, Cinema, Film and Media Studies, Mass media, Quentin Tarantino, and Communication and media Studies
This article considers whether the 2016 EU referendum can be perceived as an English nationalist movement. Specifically, attention is given to examining how memories of the former British Empire were nostalgically enveloped in anxieties... more
This article considers whether the 2016 EU referendum can be perceived as an English nationalist movement. Specifically, attention is given to examining how memories of the former British Empire were nostalgically enveloped in anxieties regarding England’s location within the devolved UK state. The comments and work of Enoch Powell and George Orwell are used to help explore the link between nostalgia and anxiety in accounts of English nationalism. Despite their opposing political orientations, when considered together, it is argued that both men provide a unique cross-political perspective on Englishness, empire and nostalgia. By way of exploring these themes in relation to the EU referendum, Aughey’s assertion that English nationalism can be perceived as both a ‘mood’ and ‘movement’ is used to highlight how a sense of English anxiety regarding its lack of national sovereignty (mood), as well as a desire to reclaim this sovereignty by renegotiating trade relations with the ‘Anglo-sphere’ (movement), were conjoined in the popular referendum slogan, ‘take back control’. In conclusion, it is argued that the contextualization of the referendum can be predicated upon an orientation to empire that steers away from glorifying pro-imperial images of England/Britain, towards a more positive and progressive appropriation of the EU referendum as a statement of national change and belonging.
Research Interests: Nationalism, English, George Orwell, European Union, National Identity, and 15 moreBritish Imperialism, Nations and nationalism, England, Imperialism, EU referendums, English national identity, Ethnicity and National Identity, Enoch Powell, National Sovereignty, English nationalism, Discursive Construction of National Identity, George Orwell Imperialism In Brtian, Brexit, Nationalism and identity construction, and newspaper article on brexit
Drawing on reflections from a collaborative autoethnography, this article argues that ultramarathon running is defied by a 'dark' ecological sensibility (Morton 2007, 2010, 2016), characterised by moments of pain, disgust, and the... more
Drawing on reflections from a collaborative autoethnography, this article argues that ultramarathon running is defied by a 'dark' ecological sensibility (Morton 2007, 2010, 2016), characterised by moments of pain, disgust, and the macabre. In contrast to existing accounts, we problematise the notion that runners 'use' nature for escape and/or competition, while questioning the aesthetic-causal relationships often evinced within these accounts. With specific reference to the discursive, embodied, spatial and temporal aspects of the sport, we explore the way in which participants begin to appreciate the immense power of nature, while being humbled by the fragile and unstable foundations of human experience. Accordingly this article contributes novel insights into the human-nature complex that seek to move beyond Romantic analyses towards a more sophisticated understanding of the relationships between (nature) sport, people and place.
Research Interests: Environmental Studies, Autoethnography, Ecology, Dark Ecology, Nature Culture, and 13 moreRunning, Philosophy of Nature, Nature, Endurance running, Timothy Morton, Autoethnography Research Methods, Ethnography and Autoethnography, Long Distance Running, Graham Harman, Ian Bogost, Timothy Morton, Ultramarathon, Autoethnography As a Methodology, High-intensity Running, and Marathon Running
This article examines how Žižek’s analysis of “subjective” violence can be used to explore the ways in which media coverage of a terrorist attack is contoured and shaped by less noticeable forms of “objective” (symbolic and systemic)... more
This article examines how Žižek’s analysis of “subjective” violence can be used to explore the ways in which media coverage of a terrorist attack is contoured and shaped by less noticeable forms of “objective” (symbolic and systemic) violence. Drawing upon newspaper coverage of the 2017 London Bridge attack, it is noted how examples of “subjective” violence were grounded in the externalization of a clearly identifiable “other”, which symbolically framed the terrorists and the attack as tied to and representative of the UK Muslim community. Examples of “systematic” violence were most notable in the ideological edifice that underpinned this framing but also in the ways in which newspaper reports served to draw upon British values in the aftermath of the attack. This directed attention away from the contradictions within the UK, towards narratives that sought to “fix” these contradictions through eradicating the problem of “the other” and/or by violently protecting the British values “they” seek to undermine. As a consequence, newspaper coverage worked to uphold the illusion that “peace” could be achieved by eradicating terrorism through further forms of objective violence, including, internment without trial; the “ripping up” of human rights; and, closer surveillance of Muslim communities. Indeed, it was this unacknowledged violence that worked to maintain British values in the press’ coverage.
Research Interests: Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Terrorism, Violence, Political Violence and Terrorism, and 17 moreSlavoj Žižek, Muslims in Europe, Slavoj Zizek, Islam, Zizek, Newspapers and online journalism, Critical Terrorism Studies, Muslims, Media and Communication Studies, Newspaper, Media and Communications, London Bridge, Media analysis, Communication and media Studies, Media and Communicaton, Media and Communication, and British Values
Drawing upon the work of Norbert Elias and the process [figurational] sociology perspective, this article examines how state formation processes are related to, and, affected by, expanding and declining chains of international... more
Drawing upon the work of Norbert Elias and the process [figurational] sociology perspective, this article examines how state formation processes are related to, and, affected by, expanding and declining chains of international interdependence. In contrast to civic and ethnic conceptions, this approach focuses on the emergence of the nation/nation-state as grounded in broader processes of historical and social development. In doing so, state formation processes within the United Kingdom are related to the expansion and decline of the British Empire. That is, by focusing on the functional dynamics that are embedded in collective groups, one is able to consider how the UK’s ‘state’ and ‘imperial’ figurations were interdependently related to changes in both the UK and the former British Empire. Consequently, by locating contemporary UK relations in the historical context of former imperial relationships, nationalism studies can go ‘beyond’ the nation/nation-state in order to include broader processes of imperial expansion and decline. Here, the relationship between empire and nationalism can offer a valuable insight into contemporary political movements, especially within former imperial groups.
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This article critically reflects upon media coverage of the 2012 London Olympic Games and the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games, scrutinising the emergent discursive constructions of ‘Britishness’ and ‘Scottishness’ through an examination... more
This article critically reflects upon media coverage of the 2012 London Olympic Games and the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games, scrutinising the emergent discursive constructions of ‘Britishness’ and ‘Scottishness’ through an examination of both London-based (English) and Scotland-based publications. Drawing upon Dayan and Katz’s (1992) portrayal of ‘media events’, the article explores how both events presented competing sites of symbolic struggle during a period of constitutional and political turmoil. Consideration is given to the existence of a ‘hegemonic Britishness’ in print media narratives of these events, as evident in the emergent connotations associated with ‘British nationalism’ and ‘Scottish separatism’.
Research Interests: Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Nationalism, English, British Empire, and 23 moreMedia, England, Mass media, Scottish Nationalism, Newspapers, 2012 London Olympics, Britishness, Media Events, Framing, Scotland, Newspapers and online journalism, British Identity, Nationalism and National Identity, Scottish Identity, Commonwealth Games, English national identity, Media analysis, English nationalism, National identity in the British Isles, Sports Mega Events, British national identity, British Nationalism, and Post-Empire British Identity
With regard to the notion of ‘reflexivity’, an important part of Beck’s cosmopolitan outlook, this article examines how, and, in what ways, collective memories of empire were reflexively used in Australian, Canadian and New Zealand... more
With regard to the notion of ‘reflexivity’, an important part of Beck’s cosmopolitan outlook, this article examines how, and, in what ways, collective memories of empire were reflexively used in Australian, Canadian and New Zealand national newspaper coverage of the 2012 Diamond Jubilee and London Olympic Games. In contrast to Beck, it is argued that examples of national reflexivity were related to the history of the nation-state, with collective memories of the former British Empire used to debate, critique and appraise ‘the nation’. These memories were discursively used to ‘orientate’ each nation’s postcolonial emergence, suggesting that examples of national reflexivity, within the press’ coverage, remained closely tied to the ‘historical fetishes’ enveloped in each nations’ imperial past(s). This implies that the ‘national outlook’ does not objectively overlook, uncritically absorb or reflexively acknowledge differences with ‘the other’, but instead, negotiates a historically grounded and selective appraisal of the past that reveals a contingent and, at times, ambivalent, interplay with ‘the global’.
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In 2015, the England Women’s national football team finished third at the Women’s World Cup in Canada. Alongside the establishment of the Women’s Super League in 2011, the success of the women’s team posed a striking contrast to the... more
In 2015, the England Women’s national football team finished third at the Women’s World Cup in Canada. Alongside the establishment of the Women’s Super League in 2011, the success of the women’s team posed a striking contrast to the recent failures of the England men’s team and in doing so presented a timely opportunity to examine the negotiation of hegemonic discourses on gender, sport and football. Drawing upon an ‘established-outsider’ approach, this article examines how, in newspaper coverage of the England women’s team, gendered constructions revealed processes of alteration, assimilation and resistance. Rather than suggesting that ‘established’ discourses assume a normative connection between masculinity and football, the findings reveal how gendered ‘boundaries’ were both challenged and protected in newspaper coverage. Despite their success, the discursive positioning of the women’s team as ‘outsiders’, served to (re)establish men’s football as superior, culturally salient and ‘better’ than the women’s team/game. Accordingly, we contend that attempts to build and, in many instances, rediscover the history of women’s football, can be used to challenge established cultural representations that draw exclusively from the history of the men’s game. In such instances, the 2015 Women’s World Cup provides a historical moment from which the women’s game can be relocated in a context of popular culture.
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This paper examines global English language newspaper coverage of the death of David Bowie. Drawing upon the concept of reification, it is argued that the notion of celebrity is discursively (re)produced and configured through a ‘public... more
This paper examines global English language newspaper coverage of the death of David Bowie. Drawing upon the concept of reification, it is argued that the notion of celebrity is discursively (re)produced and configured through a ‘public face’ that is defined, maintained and shaped via media reports and public responses that aim to know and reflect upon celebrity. The findings highlight how Bowie’s reification was supported by discourses that represented him as an observable, reified form. Here, Bowie’s ‘reality’, that is, his authentic/veridical self, was obscured behind a façade of mediation, interpretation and representation, that debated and decided his ‘authenticity’ as a cultural icon. Such debates, however, were engagements with a reified image, enveloped in continual (re)interpretation. As a result, Bowie’s reification was grounded in a polysemous process that allowed numerous versions of ‘himself’ to be aesthetically reimagined, reinvented and repeated.
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Drawing upon Littler and Naidoo’s (2004; 2005) ‘white past, multicultural present’ alignment, this article examines English newspaper coverage of two ‘British’ events held in 2012 (the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympic Games). In... more
Drawing upon Littler and Naidoo’s (2004; 2005) ‘white past, multicultural present’ alignment, this article examines English newspaper coverage of two ‘British’ events held in 2012 (the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympic Games). In light of recent work on English nationalism, national identity and multiculturalism, this article argues that representations of Britain oscillated between lamentations for an English/British past – marred by decline – and a present that, while being portrayed as both confident and progressive, was beset by latent anxieties. In doing so, ‘past’ reflections of England/Britain were presented as a ‘safe’ and legitimate source of belonging that had subsequently been lost and undermined amidst the diversity of the ‘present’. As a result, feelings of discontent, anxiety and nostalgia were dialectically constructed alongside ‘traditional’ understandings of England/Britain. Indeed, this draws attention to the ways in which particular ‘versions’ of the past are engaged with and the impact that this can have on discussions related to multiculturalism and the multiethnic history of England/Britain.
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This paper examines British newspaper representations of the ‘Team GB’ athlete Mohamed ‘Mo’ Farah during the 2012 London Olympic Games. In particular, attention is given to examining how representations of Farah were related to discourses... more
This paper examines British newspaper representations of the ‘Team GB’ athlete Mohamed ‘Mo’ Farah during the 2012 London Olympic Games. In particular, attention is given to examining how representations of Farah were related to discourses on British multiculturalism. A brief discussion of recent rejections of multiculturalism is provided, with specific reference given to political and public calls for immigrants to assimilate with ‘British values’. By turning away from a dichotomous understanding of assimilation, this article suggests that processes of assimilation reflect a complicated coalescence of national inclusion and exclusion. That is, rather than simply highlighting how the national press serve to reproduce simple ‘us’ and ‘them’ binaries, this article draws upon Elias and Scotson’s (1994) established-outsider perspective in order to examine how the discursive construction of the ‘nation’ rests upon a dynamic process of identifying and managing ‘outsider’ individuals. As a result, while ‘outsider’ groups are frequently subjected to negative media portrayals, it is argued that Farah’s significance was underscored by discourses that sought to highlight his assimilated Britishness and through his promotion as a symbol of Britain’s achieved multiculturalism.
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With its unquestionable massive global monetary and cultural appeal, contemporary sport provides an unlimited but underutilized resource for the theoretical exploration of how our subjective sense of incompleteness, which fuels our... more
With its unquestionable massive global monetary and cultural appeal, contemporary sport provides an unlimited but underutilized resource for the theoretical exploration of how our subjective sense of incompleteness, which fuels our desires, is grounded within a social matrix that is undoubtedly contingent. Fulfilment and loss are inextricably phrased in the desire of the Other, fantasies of the Other’s enjoyment, and the obstructing or facilitating role the Other takes in the conscious pursuit of satisfaction. Thus, this special issue serves to use sport as a medium to explicate psychoanalytic ideas in order to dialectically think sport and psychoanalysis together. It is our contention that rather than simply applying psychoanalysis to sport, sport may ask questions of psychoanalysis as well. It is in this potential of thinking psychoanalysis and sport together that we interpret the relation between the various forms of sport and schools of psychoanalysis.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Psychoanalysis, Sport Psychology, Psychoanalytic Studies, Sport And Exercise Psychology, and 15 morePsychoanalysis and Politics, Psychoanalytic Theory, Psychoanalytic Sociology, Sport, Sports, Physical Education, Sports Sciences,sports Psychology, Sociology of sports coaching, Sports Sociology, Sports Psychology, Psychology of Sports, Sports History and Culture, Sociology of Sports, Social Psychology of Sport, Socio Cultural Studies In Sport, and Sociology of Sport and Leisure
In the last decade there has been an upsurge in the popularity of electric mountain bikes. However, opinion is divided regarding the implications of this emerging technology. Critics warn of the dangers they pose to landscapes, habitats,... more
In the last decade there has been an upsurge in the popularity of electric mountain bikes. However, opinion is divided regarding the implications of this emerging technology. Critics warn of the dangers they pose to landscapes, habitats, and ecological diversity, whilst advocates highlight their potential in increasing the accessibility of the outdoors for riders who would otherwise be socially and/or physically excluded. Drawing on interview data with 30 electric mountain bike users in England, this paper represents one of the first attempts to explore empirically the experiential, ecological and socio-cultural implications of this activity. Utilising Stiegler’s account of the pharmakon, in which technology is positioned as both remedy and poison, we suggest that the e-mountain bike’s role in the promotion of social and environmental responsibility is both complex and contradictory. Specifically, findings indicate that while this assistive technology can play a key role in facilitating deeper connections between riders as well as an ethic of care towards others, it can, at the same time, generate more individualised and automated experiences of recreational mobility in outdoor environments.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Technology, Qualitative methodology, Environmental Studies, Recreation & Leisure Studies, and 15 moreQualitative Research, Leisure Studies, Sociology of Cycling, Leisure, Environmental Sustainability, Sports Sociology, Cycling, Bicycles, Mountain Biking, Berhard Steigler, Pharmakon, Sociology of Sports, Sociology of Sport and Leisure, E-bikes, and Bernard Steigler
According to the 2020 docudrama, The Social Dilemma, our very addiction to “social media” has, today, become encapsulated in the tensions between its facilitation as a mode of interpersonal communication and as an insidious conduit for... more
According to the 2020 docudrama, The Social Dilemma, our very addiction to “social media” has, today, become encapsulated in the tensions between its facilitation as a mode of interpersonal communication and as an insidious conduit for machine learning, surveillance capitalism and manipulation. Amidst a variety of interviewees – many of whom are former employees of social media companies – the documentary finishes on a unanimous conclusion: something must change. By using the docudrama as a pertinent example of our “social media malaise,” and while remaining aware of the problems and unethical practices encompassing international digital/social media companies, this paper will argue that we continually refrain from the very question(ing) that would call these companies to account: what does the algorithm desire? In approaching this question, this article will draw from Lacan’s ‘hysterical’ position in accordance with Robert Pfaller’s notion of interpassivity. Together, these concepts will be used to provide a psychoanalytic account of how our subjectivization in social media renders an unconscious endorsement that both frames our awareness of the dilemmas encompassing social media, while also positing an inherent limitation that may offer a possible path out of its impeding affects. This subjective ambivalence – delegated yet reluctantly disavowed – offers an opportunity to realign discussions on the lost object of desire (objet a) and its reproduction in social media algorithms. In so doing, the case will be made that an account of interpassivity can help lay bare the hysterical significance underscoring our digital subjectivization.
Research Interests: Algorithms, Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Digital Media, Lacan, and 15 moreHysteria, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Social Media, Lacanian theory, Slavoj Zizek, Philosophy of Love, Zizek, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Mass Communication and New Media, New Media and Digital Culture, Interpassivity, Social Media, Robert Pfaller, Mass Communication and Media Studies, and Interpassivity
There is much hope, according to Slavoj Žižek, in fictional characters, such as, Hannibal Lecter. Here, the heinous crimes of a serial killer, fuelled by the predilection for consuming his victims, reveals a public fascination that ‘bears... more
There is much hope, according to Slavoj Žižek, in fictional characters, such as, Hannibal Lecter. Here, the heinous crimes of a serial killer, fuelled by the predilection for consuming his victims, reveals a public fascination that ‘bears witness to a deep longing for a Lacanian psychoanalyst’; or, as Žižek adds, “a desperate, ultimately failed attempt of the popular imagination to represent to itself the idea of a Lacanian analyst” (1993, 48). Indeed, for Lacan (2004), the act of analysis, and the efforts of the Lacanian analyst, is where the very kernel of the analysand’s being—the objet petit a—is laid bare. In so doing, the subject’s ontological consistency, that which makes the subject a subject, is, much like Lecter, the very “‘stuff’ that the analyst … ‘swallows’” (Žižek 1993, 48). Certainly, while Žižek’s interpretation of Lecter reveals a public fascination for the process of analysis, today we can ask whether such forms of analysis produce the very radicality they seek to achieve? With the widely recited demise in symbolic efficiency, can fictional characters and popular media forms succeed in portraying the radicality that Lacan attributes to the analyst?
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Psychoanalysis, Media and Cultural Studies, Lacan, Hegel, and 15 moreJacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Media, Slavoj Zizek, Zizek, Subjectivity Studies, Television, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Lacanian psychoanalysis, Media and Communications, Film and Television, TV Series, Film and television studies, Lacanian Analysis, and Peaky Blinders
Covid-19 presents itself as a strange catastrophe. It has neither destroyed the planet nor has it erased humanity… but it has, in many ways, served to upend and alter what was previously considered ‘normal.’ As a result, what is perhaps... more
Covid-19 presents itself as a strange catastrophe. It has neither destroyed the planet nor has it erased humanity… but it has, in many ways, served to upend and alter what was previously considered ‘normal.’ As a result, what is perhaps the most notable characteristic of the Covid catastrophe is the very way it endures. Beyond any notion of catastrophic shock, the Covid catastrophe continues, indeed, it lingers in daily news cycles, changes to working environments and restrictions on travel. It is an enduring presence, from which any determination of its ‘end’ is either nullified by an unending stream of Covid reports, or worse, ignored altogether. On this basis alone, is it even possible to discern an ‘end’ to Covid?
Research Interests: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, Time Studies, Hegel, Slavoj Žižek, and 15 moreImpossible, Slavoj Zizek, G.W.F. Hegel, Zizek, Temporality (Time Studies), Hegel (Philosophy) (Philosophy), Temporality, Alenka Zupancic, Retroaction, Impossibility, Retroactivity, Covid-19, Coronavirus COVID-19, Pandemic Coronavirus COVID19, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
The relationship between sport and psychoanalysis offers a unique, yet underexplored, account of the intrapsychic and interpersonal dimensions that underpin our sporting lives. Win or lose, the sporting event exposes a form of repetition... more
The relationship between sport and psychoanalysis offers a unique, yet underexplored, account of the intrapsychic and interpersonal dimensions that underpin our sporting lives. Win or lose, the sporting event exposes a form of repetition that proves unconsciously satisfying (‘there’s always next year’). Be it in professional or amateur performances or in the time spent watching live sporting events, sport can yield both devotion and admonition from fans and detractors alike. Amidst an arbitrary array of sporting rules and regulations, it is within the bounds of sport’s consigned limitations that a variety of irrational fantasies meet the utter insignificance of the sporting achievement and its protracted endeavour. In fact, such contentions work to undermine the rather simplistic assertion that sport offers nothing more than a mere escape from routine, mundane reality. Instead, it is in the psychoanalytic study of sport that the contradictions inherent to the subject can be avowed; or, to put it another way, what we disavow in our sport spectatorship or participation affords us an opportunity to see how our unconscious minds are structured. By critically exploring the meaning behind this sporting (in)significance, this special issue of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society will draw together key insights from psychoanalysis (including its various schools, approaches, and theories) in order to examine the cultural, social and psychic significance of sport—both for the subject and society.
Whether performer or spectator, sport remind us that the nature of our embodied agency is one that is defined by limits. It is in the reaching, disappointing or surpassing of a goal that we experience joy and failure. Whether one is a community center basketball player, weekend coach for a youth hockey team, season ticket holder for the Los Angeles Lakers, fantasy sport enthusiast or critical of the corrupting influence of the athletic world, sport always contains a transgressive fantasy, allowing us to push at the boundaries of ‘fair play’, ‘sportsmanship’ and ‘equality in competition’, while, at the same time, balking at the remote possibility of these ideals ever being realised outside of sport itself. Accordingly, despite the possibility of sporting success, every victory remains fleeting: we lose more than we ever win. Whether it be the prospects of the forthcoming fixture or the possibility of the knockout punch, success is haunted by its failure and an unconscious desire to tolerate, overcome, and repeat loss. It is in our sporting fantasies for a past (nostalgia) or future (utopia) of plenitude that we are confronted with what we don’t have. It from this foundational place of the lacking subject that psychoanalysis begins theorizing from and where every sportive endeavour begins.
Just as various sporting activities allow for the unique structuring of victorious fantasies and their frustration, each major school of psychoanalytic thought also provides its distinctive accent in accounting for the origin, character, and fate of our wishes. As spectator and participant, the arena of sport showcases Freudian Oedipal plots to aggress toward an omnipotent rival, Kleinian paranoia of the other’s attack and envy of its surplus, Kohutian aims toward merger with the idealized other, and the Lacanian jouissance of what remains inherently, but tantalizingly unresolved. At the same time, sport can challenge Bionian conceptions of group life assumptions, expand Winnicottian notions of play and creativity, and query relational emphases on recognition and mutuality.
With its unquestionable massive global monetary and cultural appeal, contemporary sport provides an unlimited but underutilized resource for the theoretical exploration of how our subjective sense of incompleteness, which fuels our desires, is grounded within a social matrix that is undoubtedly contingent. Fulfilment and loss are inextricably phrased in the desire of the Other, fantasies of the Other’s enjoyment and the obstructing or facilitating role the Other takes in the conscious pursuit of satisfaction.
Thus, we invite papers that use sport as a medium to explicate psychoanalytic ideas, and ideally go beyond this to dialectically think sport and psychoanalysis together. It is our contention that rather than simply applying psychoanalysis to sport, sport may ask questions of psychoanalysis as well. It is in this potential of thinking psychoanalysis and sport together that we hope to actualize the mission of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society in this volume and show the richness of a theoretical examination of the social, cultural, and political.
In light of the above, this special issue seeks to provide scope to interpret the relation between the various forms of sport and schools of psychoanalysis. A brief sampling of the topics that could be pursued individually or interconnectedly are:
• Sportive enjoyment and interpassivity
• The appeal of creativity and destruction in sport
• Developmental trajectories of sporting activities and fanship
• Body narcissism and phallocentrism
• Care and concern in sport
• The idealization and demonization of the athlete
• Fanship as desire or drive
• Teamwork, nationalism, and other experiences in sporting groups
• Sport as a site of exclusion (misogyny, racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.) par excellence
• Imagination and play in sport
• Sport as site of emancipatory protest
• The professional athlete in relation to the ideal ego and ego ideal
• Sport, repetition and the objet petit a
• Capitalism, colonialism and exploitation of the athlete of color
• Is there an ethical way to be a fan of sport?
Situated at the intersection between psychoanalysis and the social world, submissions are expected to fulfil the mission statement of the journal in mobilising the psychoanalytic toolkit to bring about positive social change, through analysis and/or proposals of models for future practice (https://www.palgrave.com/gp/journal/41282/authors/aims-scope).
Please submit an ABSTRACT of 300-500 words and a BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE of up to 100 words to the special issue editors by 11th JULY 2022 ([email protected] and [email protected]).
Authors will be notified of the outcome of their proposal in AUGUST 2022. First full drafts will be due in FEBRUARY 2023.
Whether performer or spectator, sport remind us that the nature of our embodied agency is one that is defined by limits. It is in the reaching, disappointing or surpassing of a goal that we experience joy and failure. Whether one is a community center basketball player, weekend coach for a youth hockey team, season ticket holder for the Los Angeles Lakers, fantasy sport enthusiast or critical of the corrupting influence of the athletic world, sport always contains a transgressive fantasy, allowing us to push at the boundaries of ‘fair play’, ‘sportsmanship’ and ‘equality in competition’, while, at the same time, balking at the remote possibility of these ideals ever being realised outside of sport itself. Accordingly, despite the possibility of sporting success, every victory remains fleeting: we lose more than we ever win. Whether it be the prospects of the forthcoming fixture or the possibility of the knockout punch, success is haunted by its failure and an unconscious desire to tolerate, overcome, and repeat loss. It is in our sporting fantasies for a past (nostalgia) or future (utopia) of plenitude that we are confronted with what we don’t have. It from this foundational place of the lacking subject that psychoanalysis begins theorizing from and where every sportive endeavour begins.
Just as various sporting activities allow for the unique structuring of victorious fantasies and their frustration, each major school of psychoanalytic thought also provides its distinctive accent in accounting for the origin, character, and fate of our wishes. As spectator and participant, the arena of sport showcases Freudian Oedipal plots to aggress toward an omnipotent rival, Kleinian paranoia of the other’s attack and envy of its surplus, Kohutian aims toward merger with the idealized other, and the Lacanian jouissance of what remains inherently, but tantalizingly unresolved. At the same time, sport can challenge Bionian conceptions of group life assumptions, expand Winnicottian notions of play and creativity, and query relational emphases on recognition and mutuality.
With its unquestionable massive global monetary and cultural appeal, contemporary sport provides an unlimited but underutilized resource for the theoretical exploration of how our subjective sense of incompleteness, which fuels our desires, is grounded within a social matrix that is undoubtedly contingent. Fulfilment and loss are inextricably phrased in the desire of the Other, fantasies of the Other’s enjoyment and the obstructing or facilitating role the Other takes in the conscious pursuit of satisfaction.
Thus, we invite papers that use sport as a medium to explicate psychoanalytic ideas, and ideally go beyond this to dialectically think sport and psychoanalysis together. It is our contention that rather than simply applying psychoanalysis to sport, sport may ask questions of psychoanalysis as well. It is in this potential of thinking psychoanalysis and sport together that we hope to actualize the mission of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society in this volume and show the richness of a theoretical examination of the social, cultural, and political.
In light of the above, this special issue seeks to provide scope to interpret the relation between the various forms of sport and schools of psychoanalysis. A brief sampling of the topics that could be pursued individually or interconnectedly are:
• Sportive enjoyment and interpassivity
• The appeal of creativity and destruction in sport
• Developmental trajectories of sporting activities and fanship
• Body narcissism and phallocentrism
• Care and concern in sport
• The idealization and demonization of the athlete
• Fanship as desire or drive
• Teamwork, nationalism, and other experiences in sporting groups
• Sport as a site of exclusion (misogyny, racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.) par excellence
• Imagination and play in sport
• Sport as site of emancipatory protest
• The professional athlete in relation to the ideal ego and ego ideal
• Sport, repetition and the objet petit a
• Capitalism, colonialism and exploitation of the athlete of color
• Is there an ethical way to be a fan of sport?
Situated at the intersection between psychoanalysis and the social world, submissions are expected to fulfil the mission statement of the journal in mobilising the psychoanalytic toolkit to bring about positive social change, through analysis and/or proposals of models for future practice (https://www.palgrave.com/gp/journal/41282/authors/aims-scope).
Please submit an ABSTRACT of 300-500 words and a BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE of up to 100 words to the special issue editors by 11th JULY 2022 ([email protected] and [email protected]).
Authors will be notified of the outcome of their proposal in AUGUST 2022. First full drafts will be due in FEBRUARY 2023.
Research Interests:
In exploring the intra-active, relational and material connections between humans and non-humans, proponents of posthumanism advocate a questioning of the ‘human’ beyond its traditional anthropocentric conceptualization. By referring... more
In exploring the intra-active, relational and material connections between humans and non-humans, proponents of posthumanism advocate a questioning of the ‘human’ beyond its traditional anthropocentric conceptualization. By referring specifically to controversial developments in mHealth applications, this paper critically diverges from posthuman accounts of human/non-human assemblages. Indeed, we argue that, rather than ‘dissolving’ the human subject, the power of assemblages lie in their capacity to highlight the antagonisms and contradictions that inherently affirm the importance of the subject. In outlining this claim, we propose a turn from the posthuman to the inhuman as a way of understanding the contemporary landscape of (digital) health.
Research Interests: Philosophy of Technology, Posthumanism, Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Lacanian theory, and 15 moreSlavoj Zizek, People and Technology, Humanism, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Lacanian psychoanalysis, Mhealth, Subjectivity, Psychoanalysis and culture, Posthumanities, Inhumanism, Psychoanalysis (Freud and Lacan), Lacanian Analysis, mHealth and eHealth, Posthumans, and Inhuman
From Basil Fawlty, The Little Tramp and Frank Spencer; to Jim Carey, Andy Kaufman and Rowan Atkinson... comedy characters and comic actors have proved useful lenses for exploring—and exposing—humor’s cultural and political significance.... more
From Basil Fawlty, The Little Tramp and Frank Spencer; to Jim Carey, Andy Kaufman and Rowan Atkinson... comedy characters and comic actors have proved useful lenses for exploring—and exposing—humor’s cultural and political significance. Both performing as well as chastising cultural values, ideas and beliefs, the comic character gives a unique insight into latent forms of social exclusion that, in many instances, can only ever be approached through the comic form. It is in examining this comic form that this paper will consider how the ‘comedy character’ presents a unique, subversive significance. Drawing from Lacanian conceptions of the subject and television ‘sitcom’ examples, the emancipatory potential of the comedy character will be used to criticize the predominance of irony and satire in comic displays. Indeed, while funny, it will be argued that such comic examples underscore a deprivative cynicism within comedy and humor. Countering this, it will be argued that a Lacanian conception of the subject can profer a comic efficacy that not only reveals how our social orders are inherently inconsistent and open to subversive redefinition, but that these very inconsistencies are also echoed in the subject, and, in particular, the ‘true comedy character’.
Research Interests: Media Studies, Comedy, Lacan, Hegel, Jacques Lacan, and 15 moreSlavoj Žižek, Lacanian theory, Subversion, Slavoj Zizek, Satire & Irony, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Tragedy, Philosophy of the Subject, Film and Television Comedy, Irony, Comedy Studies, Alenka Zupancic, Universality, Cynicism, and Concrete Universality
The term ‘reflexivity’ continues to maintain an interpretive hegemony in discussions on modernity and the Self. As a form of praxis, applications of reflexivity frequently rely upon an acknowledged awareness of one’s self-conscious... more
The term ‘reflexivity’ continues to maintain an interpretive hegemony in discussions on modernity and the Self. As a form of praxis, applications of reflexivity frequently rely upon an acknowledged awareness of one’s self-conscious attitudes, dispositions, behaviors and motives. This paper will take aim at such contentions, exploring the extent to which examples of racism rely upon a level of reflexivity, best encapsulated in Žižek’s ‘reflexive racism’. Specifically, it is highlighted how examples of non- racism/anti-racism assert the formal promotion of a monadic subject, solely adept at ‘uncovering’ and ‘relinquishing’ their racism (disavowal); and, an equally unhelpful social constructionism, which depoliticizes racism by relocating and relativizing it to a particular socio-historical context (deferment). In outlining this response, specific attention is given to Lacan’s subject of enunciation and subject of the enunciated, from which it is concluded that it is in the obfuscation of one’s ‘position of enunciation’ that examples of reflexive racism reside.
Research Interests: Psychoanalysis, Comedy, Race and Racism, Philosophy of Psychoanalysis, Critical Race Theory, and 15 moreReflexivity, Lacan, Race and Ethnicity, Slavoj Žižek, Lacanian theory, Racism, Reflexivity (Sociology), Slavoj Zizek, Zizek, Ethnicity, Anxiety, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Subjectivity, Philosophy of the Subject, and Film and Television Comedy
In view of scholarly work that has explored the socio-psycho significance of national performativity, the body and the “other”, this article critically analyses newspaper representations of the Canadian-born, British tennis player, Greg... more
In view of scholarly work that has explored the socio-psycho significance of national performativity, the body and the “other”, this article critically analyses newspaper representations of the Canadian-born, British tennis player, Greg Rusedski. Drawing from Lacanian interpretations of the body, it is illustrated how Rusedski’s media framing centered on a particular feature of his body – his “smile”. In doing so, we detail how Rusedski’s “post-imperial” Otherness – conceived as a form of “extimacy” (extimité) – complicated any clear delineation between “us” and “them”, positing, instead, a dialectical understanding of the splits, voids and contradictions that underscore the national “us”.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Lacan, Nationalism, Slavoj Žižek, Lacanian theory, and 15 moreNational Identity, Whiteness Studies, Slavoj Zizek, British Imperialism, Zizek, White Privilege, Politics of the Body, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Otherness, English national identity, Ethnicity and National Identity, English nationalism, Nationalism and identity construction, Greg Rusedski, and Extimate
In Marvel Studios’, WandaVision, we are transported to a familiar television location: suburbia – in fact, we’re almost given a history of suburbia on-screen. In episode one, we watch Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) live... more
In Marvel Studios’, WandaVision, we are transported to a familiar television location: suburbia – in fact, we’re almost given a history of suburbia on-screen. In episode one, we watch Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) live out a post-war serenity: a 1950’s North American suburban town called ‘Westview’, where, early events see the couple manage nosy neighbours, frustrating bosses and a troublesome ‘talent show’ performance. However, as soon becomes clear, all is not what it seems. Indeed, as we travel through a history of sitcom – each episode fast-forwards ten years, with episode two occurring in the 1960s; episode three/four, the 1970s; episode five, the 1980s; and, episode six, the 1990s/2000s – it becomes clear that the everyday concerns of a young suburban family goes far beyond the episodic trials and tribulations that usually impact our television sitcom families. Something’s up – and it looks like Wanda has ‘taken over’ an actual US town, controlling its residents through a form of mind control that keeps them trapped within the sitcom narratives that she seemingly writes and directs. Wanda is the director to her own sitcom, and it’s clear that she is doing this to escape from a number of past traumas (the death of her brother, ‘Pietro’, and Vision). It is in managing this trauma that I believe the show’s suburban location proves notable.
Research Interests: Media and Cultural Studies, Television Studies, Comic Book Studies, Utopian Studies, Lacan, and 15 moreTrauma Studies, Comics, Slavoj Žižek, Lacanian theory, Slavoj Zizek, Zizek, Utopianism, Trauma, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Utopia, Utopia and Science Fiction, Utopia/dystopia, Cinema and Television, Middle Class Surburbia, and WandaVision
What the COVID-19 pandemic serves to reveal is the inherent limitations and contradictions of a symbolic order that must now be perceived via an “impossible subjectivity”: what this essay will refer to as the “in-human.” (Zizek, 2020).... more
What the COVID-19 pandemic serves to reveal is the inherent limitations and contradictions of a symbolic order that must now be perceived via an “impossible subjectivity”: what this essay will refer to as the “in-human.” (Zizek, 2020). Indeed, this in-human perspective transpires not through our fetishization of the virus, as some form of justification for humanity’s impact on the world, but from a position of impossibility that renders “the whole situation into which we are included.” (Monbiot, 2020; Zizek, 2020). It is on this basis that the virus confers a confrontation with the Real: an antagonism steered by the isolation of an “impossible phenomenon,” grounded in a certain level of “disengagement” that obliges us to “perceive reality as it were viewed from outside.” (Zizek, 2020). Importantly, this “view from outside” does not—and now, cannot—avoid our engagement with the impossible, but must instead be rendered via a form of approachment that conceives of the “virus” as an in-human phenomenon that is our universal condition. The following sections will serve to clarify this in-human approach.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Cultural Sociology, Lacan, Politics, and 15 moreCulture, Slavoj Žižek, Slavoj Zizek, The uncanny, Coronaviruses, Universalism, Universality, Inhumanism, Freudian Psychoanalysis, Inhuman, Covid-19, Coronavirus COVID-19, Pandemic Coronavirus COVID19, COVID-19 Epidemic, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
How can one make sense of our current political, ecological and technological dilemmas through the lens of Grant Sputore’s I Am Mother (2019)? Well-received, the film has been commended for its account of the increasing role and impact of... more
How can one make sense of our current political, ecological and technological dilemmas through the lens of Grant Sputore’s I Am Mother (2019)? Well-received, the film has been commended for its account of the increasing role and impact of artificial intelligence and its relation to our ongoing ecological dilemmas and potential catastrophe. While these issues are played-out through the on-screen relationship between robotic mother and human daughter, the film can also be used to help shed light on our current ideological predicaments. With a narrative that steers towards our preference for cynical detachment, apathy and resignation, this review draws upon Lacan’s notion of the big Other, and its relation to the subject, in order to provide further discussion on the film’s ambiguous ending and the deeper sense of impotence that it accurately portrays with regards to our current political malaise.
Research Interests: Artificial Intelligence, Climate Change, Film Studies, Film Theory, Political Ecology, and 15 moreFilm Analysis, Lacan, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Lacanian theory, Ecology, Slavoj Zizek, Environmentalism, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Alienation, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Cynicism, Interpellation, Slavoj Zizek Film Theory, and I Am Mother
This article critically details how the work of Slavoj Žižek theoretically elaborates on the links between nationalism and sport. Notably, it highlights how key terms, drawn from Žižek’s work on fantasy, ideology and the Real (itself... more
This article critically details how the work of Slavoj Žižek theoretically elaborates on the links between nationalism and sport. Notably, it highlights how key terms, drawn from Žižek’s work on fantasy, ideology and the Real (itself grounded in the work of Jacques Lacan), can be used to explore the relationship between sport, nationalism and enjoyment (jouissance). In outlining this approach, specific attention is given to Žižek’s account of the ‘national Thing’. Accordingly, by considering the various ways in which sport organizes, materializes and structures our enjoyment, the emotive significance of sport during national sporting occasions is both introduced and applied. Moreover, it is argued that such an approach offers a unique and valuable insight into the relationship between sport and nationalism, as well as an array of social and political antagonisms.
Research Interests: Sociology, Sociology of Sport, Media and Cultural Studies, Nationalism, Jacques Lacan, and 15 moreSlavoj Žižek, Sporting Events, Cultural Nationalism, National Identity, The Other, Slavoj Zizek, Zizek, Nations and nationalism, Nationality, Nation-State, Jouissance, Ethnicity and National Identity, Sports and national identity, Sociology of Sport and Leisure, and Ethnicity and Nationality
Theoretical applications of time and temporality remain a key consideration for both climate scientists and the humanities. By way of extending this importance, we critically examine Timothy Morton’s proposed “ecological awareness”... more
Theoretical applications of time and temporality remain a key consideration for both climate scientists and the humanities. By way of extending this importance, we critically examine Timothy Morton’s proposed “ecological awareness” alongside Slavoj Žižek’s “parallax view”. In doing so, the article introduces a “past-present parallax” in order to contest that, while conceptions of the past are marked by “lack”, equally, our conceptions of and relations to Nature remain grounded in an ontological incompleteness, marked by contingency. This novel approach presents an ecological awareness that remains temporally attuned to the impasses and inconsistencies which frame our relations in/with Nature.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Environmental Science, Time Studies, Slavoj Žižek, Ecology, and 15 moreSlavoj Zizek, Nature Culture, Object Oriented Ontology, Zizek, Philosophy of Nature, Temporality (Time Studies), Environmentalism, Žižek, Object-Oriented philosophy, Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects, Parallax View, Ecological Awareness, Parallax, and Sociology of Sport and Leisure
This article affords particular attention to the relationship between memory, the narrativization of news and its linear construction, conceived as journalism’s ‘memory- work’. In elaborating upon this ‘work’, it is proposed that the... more
This article affords particular attention to the relationship between memory, the narrativization of news and its linear construction, conceived as journalism’s ‘memory- work’. In elaborating upon this ‘work’, it is proposed that the Hegelian notion of retroactive causation (as used by Slavoj Žižek) can examine how analyses of news journalists ‘retroactively’ employ the past in the temporal construction of news. In fact, such retroactive (re)ordering directs attention to the ways in which journalists contingently select ‘a past’ to confer meaning on the present. With regard to current literature, it is noted that a retroactive analysis can highlight two important dialectics within the practice of news journalism: 1) the relation between contingency and necessity; and, 2) the relation between content and form. Indeed, it is argued that this theoretical account offers a novel approach to examining the significance of memory in news journalism as well as the inconsistencies which underscore journalism’s memory-work. It is in accordance with such inconsistency that broader reflections on time, temporality and our relations to the past can be made.
Research Interests: Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Journalism, Hegel, Slavoj Žižek, and 15 moreMemory Studies, Media and Memory, Slavoj Zizek, Zizek, Temporality (Time Studies), Memory, Temporality, Journalism Studies, Maurice Halbwachs, Journalism And Mass communication, Media and Communications, Contingency, Sociology of Journalism, Journalism and communication, and Form and Content
In Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), we watch the film’s protagonist, Theodore, as he struggles with the end of his marriage and a growing attachment to his artificially intelligent operating system, Samantha. While the film remains unique in its... more
In Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), we watch the film’s protagonist, Theodore, as he struggles with the end of his marriage and a growing attachment to his artificially intelligent operating system, Samantha. While the film remains unique in its ability to cinematically portray the Lacanian contention that “there is no sexual relationship,” this article explores how our digital non-relationships can be re-approached through the medium of comedy. Specifically, when looked at through a comic lens, notable scenes from Her are examined for the potential they provide in affording a self-decentrement which allows us to traverse the fantasies that structure our non-relations.
Research Interests: Psychoanalysis, Artificial Intelligence, Comedy, Digital Media, Slavoj Žižek, and 15 moreLove, Slavoj Zizek, Philosophy of Love, Zizek, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Singularity, Online Media, Film and Television Comedy, Comedy Studies, Alenka Zupancic, Philosophy of Love and Sex, Zizek studies, Love and Relationships, Slavoj Zizek Film Theory, and Spike Jonze
This article approaches the COVID-19 pandemic as an inherently antagonistic phenomenon. To do so, it carries forward the philosophical contentions (“revolution”) that Žižek outlines in his Pandemic! COVID-19 Shakes the World, as well as... more
This article approaches the COVID-19 pandemic as an inherently antagonistic phenomenon. To do so, it carries forward the philosophical contentions (“revolution”) that Žižek outlines in his Pandemic! COVID-19 Shakes the World, as well as his wider work. With reference to the parallax Real and McGowan’s Hegelian contradiction, it is demonstrated that Žižek’s philosophical premises hold a unique importance in politically confronting COVID-19. Indeed, by drawing specific attention to the various ways in which our confrontations with the Real expose the limitations of our socio-ideological orders, it is argued that it is in these very limitations (which now structure, manage and curtail our social interactions) that the limits of the Real are transposed through the various “fictions” we employ to fight and perceive it. In outlining this confrontation, a focused discussion on the Real as “impossible” – a “characteristic” that affords an important political significance for the present context and its ongoing limitations – is provided. In conclusion, if the COVID-19 pandemic demands a new “commons” (as argued by Žižek), and if our response to the crisis should be one where the desires of the nation-state are regulated and controlled, then, it may not simply be enough that we “demand the impossible”. Instead, it is today that the impossible demands a new “us”.
Research Interests: Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Lacanian theory, and 15 moreSlavoj Zizek, Dialectical Materialism, Bruno Latour, Zizek, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Parallax, Todd McGowan, Coronavirus, Covid-19, Coronavirus COVID-19, Coronavirus (COVID-19), Pandemic Coronavirus COVID19, COVID-19 Epidemic, Philosophy and COVID-19, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In his book, On the Pleasure Principle in Culture (2014), Robert Pfaller argued that our relationship to sport is one grounded in “illusion”. Simply put, our interest in and enjoyment of sport occurs through a process of “knowing better”.... more
In his book, On the Pleasure Principle in Culture (2014), Robert Pfaller argued that our relationship to sport is one grounded in “illusion”. Simply put, our interest in and enjoyment of sport occurs through a process of “knowing better”. Here, one’s knowledge of the unimportance of sport is achieved by associating the illusion of sport with a naïve observer – i.e. someone who does believe in sport’s importance. In the wake of the global pandemic, COVID-19, it would seem that Pfaller’s remarks have taken on an added significance. With major sporting events and domestic competitions being indefinitely postponed or canceled, Liverpool manager, Jurgen Klopp, commented that football was “the most important of the least important things”. In light of these remarks, this paper will critically locate sport’s sudden unimportance in relation to Pfaller’s contention that sport reflects an “illusion without owner”.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Football (soccer), Recreation & Leisure Studies, Slavoj Žižek, Leisure Studies, and 15 moreLeisure, Leisure (Social Sciences), Coronaviruses, Sports, Illusion, Robert Pfaller, Sociology of Sports, Interpassivity, Sociology of Sport and Leisure, Coronavirus, Covid-19, Coronavirus COVID-19, Pandemic Coronavirus COVID19, COVID-19 Epidemic, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
The underlying contention guiding this collection is that psychoanalysis can provide a novel approach to theorising our investments in sport. When exploring, examining, discussing, and debating the fascination and frustrations that... more
The underlying contention guiding this collection is that psychoanalysis can provide a novel approach to theorising our investments in sport. When exploring, examining, discussing, and debating the fascination and frustrations that characterizes sport, what this collection will consider are the very ways in which we become “stuck” in sport. For us, getting “stuck” helpfully describes the degree to which one can both be interested in sport, following a particular team or training regularly, while also being frustrated, angered, and undermined by sport (grievances, which, in most cases, in no way discount or prevent one’s very love of sport). What compounds this contradiction is that a psychoanalytic approach to sport does not necessarily provide or outline any answers to the problems of sport. Rather, we double-down on the fact there is no rational explanation as to why millions of people choose to partake in strenuous forms of physical exclusion for years on end, with the only reward being a medal or personal best for the lucky few—not to mention the multitudes who choose to watch these athletic spectacles. Certainly, this is not to say that sport does not have its explanations. We are all too familiar with the cliched responses and tired explanations: “it makes me feel good”, “it keeps me busy”, “it releases endorphins”, “I enjoy the social-side”, “my Dad followed this team, so, in a way, I’m continuing the tradition”. What goes amiss in such routine responses is why this specific activity—sport, in whatever form—is chosen? When so much of sport requires one to partake in choices that fundamentally affect one’s life, then we require a theoretical space in which we can begin to ask important questions of both sport and ourselves. On this basis, sport is not necessarily detached from our lives, a mere weekend past-time, separate from the world of work (although it can be described as such); instead, as this collection will assert, a psychoanalytic account of sport can allow us to question and explore what it is that makes us human and what is it about our inherent sociality that makes sport such an important part of so many lives. To do so, requires an investigation into the desires, fears, and fantasises that underscore the subject—the very phenomena that psychoanalysis seeks to examine.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Sociology of Sport, Psychoanalysis, Sport Psychology, Lacan, and 15 moreSports Management, Psychology of Unconscious, Jacques Lacan, Freud and Lacan, Psychoanalytic Theory, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Lacanian psychoanalysis, Sport, Sports, Unconscious, Psychoanalysis and culture, Sport Studies, Sociology of Sports, Lacanian Analysis, and Sociology of Sport and Leisure
Understandings of play are frequently tied to a sense of instinctual gratification—a something that must be completed, that all humans, young or old, should or need to partake in. Indeed, for many, play is characterised as a unique... more
Understandings of play are frequently tied to a sense of instinctual gratification—a something that must be completed, that all humans, young or old, should or need to partake in. Indeed, for many, play is characterised as a unique activity that stands apart from the ordinary and every day. While such assessments prefigure a clear demarcation between the fun of play and the more laborious, boring aspects of profane life, what this distinction alludes to is a greater sense of the creativity that underlies play. Drawing from a Lacanian perspective, the following chapter will determine that an essential aspect of play and sport is the creativity it provides, namely, by considering how the act of creativity is intricately tied to the very lack that constitutes the Lacanian subject. To do so, the concept of sublimation is used to consider how the codified rules and regulations that sport both asserts and requires renders apparent the importance of the limit. Rather than conceiving of this limit as a barrier to creativity, what is revealed in sublimation is how this limit proves constitutive of our very creativity. That is, the ability to sublimate—to creatively perform unique displays of physical or artistic expression— lies in the mundanity and utter importance of the playful and sporting activity and, more importantly, the inherent restrictions and constraints these activities impose. It is in accordance with the limit that one’s creativity can expose an emancipatory potential in the context of play and sport.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Creativity, Lacan, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, and 15 moreLacanian theory, Sports Ethics, Philosophy of Sport, Slavoj Zizek, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Children's Play, Sport, Sports, Pretend Play, Sublimation, Sports Sociology, Ethics of Sport, Sociology of Sports, Socio Cultural Studies In Sport, and Sociology of Sport and Leisure
In 2021, the men’s English national football team reached their first final at a major international tournament since winning the World Cup in 1966. This success followed their previous achievement of reaching the semi-finals (knocked-out... more
In 2021, the men’s English national football team reached their first final at a major international tournament since winning the World Cup in 1966. This success followed their previous achievement of reaching the semi-finals (knocked-out by Croatia) at the 2018 World Cup. True to form, the defeats proved unfalteringly English; with the 2021 final echoing previous tournament defeats, as England lost to Italy on penalties. However, what resonated with the predictability of an English defeat, was the accompanying chant, ‘it’s coming home’. A ubiquitous presence throughout the course of both tournaments—while chanted at England football matches, it was also repeated across social media, the press and commercial advertising—the chant originates from the 1996 single, Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home), performed by David Baddiel, Frank Skinner and The Lightning Seeds. In what follows critical attention will be given to examining how the song offers what will be argued is a melancholic outlook. By re-approaching examples of English nostalgia and hubris, this chapter will expose how illustrations of English melancholy offer the potential for promoting collective forms of expression, which, when contextualized alongside England’s lack of footballing success (for the men’s team, at least), can be offset against a melancholic mediation that is cognizant of the centrality of loss—both for the subject and our collective sporting endeavours.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Psychoanalysis, Football (soccer), Nationalism, Jacques Lacan, and 15 moreSlavoj Žižek, Melancholy, Lacanian theory, National Identity, Fandom, Sports Fans, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Lacanian psychoanalysis, World cup, Melancholy Studies, Football Culture, Sociology of Football, Mourning and melancholia, English nationalism, and sport psychoanalysis
In challenging orthodox notions of space, place, and identity, as well as examining how new ideas, communities and ways of living might emerge from the ruins of catastrophe, this Introduction Chapter outlines the importance of the... more
In challenging orthodox notions of space, place, and identity, as well as examining how new ideas, communities and ways of living might emerge from the ruins of catastrophe, this Introduction Chapter outlines the importance of the collection. We introduce Mark Fisher’s weird and eerie distinctions, emphasising how both terms, when applied to catastrophe, demand new ways of thinking that go beyond what we know about disasters in order to recalibrate our bodies and minds to thrive in an era without precedent. Finally, from their varying perspectives, each chapter is given a brief summary, with new insights on the significance of sport and physical activity in catastrophic environments highlighted.
Research Interests: Sociology, Environmental Sociology, Sociology of Sport, Political Ecology, Disaster Studies, and 15 morePhysical Activity, Ecology, Environmental Sustainability, Environmentalism, Sports, Sport Studies, Catastrophes, Mark Fisher, Environmental Values, Sociology of Sports, Sports and Society, The Weird, Socio Cultural Studies In Sport, Sociology of Sport and Leisure, and Eerie
In his book, On the Pleasure Principle in Culture (2014), Robert Pfaller argued that our relationship to sport is one grounded in “illusion”. Simply put, our interest in and enjoyment of sport occurs through a process of “knowing better”.... more
In his book, On the Pleasure Principle in Culture (2014), Robert Pfaller argued that our relationship to sport is one grounded in “illusion”. Simply put, our interest in and enjoyment of sport occurs through a process of “knowing better”. Here, one’s knowledge of the unimportance of sport is achieved by associating the illusion of sport with a naïve observer – i.e. someone who does believe in sport’s importance. In the wake of the global pandemic, COVID-19, it would seem that Pfaller’s remarks have taken on an added significance. With major sporting events and domestic competitions being indefinitely postponed or canceled, Liverpool manager, Jurgen Klopp, commented that football was “the most important of the least important things”. In light of these remarks, this paper will critically locate sport’s sudden unimportance in relation to Pfaller’s contention that sport reflects an “illusion without owner”.
Research Interests:
Alongside the increasing popularity of digital, ‘social’ media platforms, has been the emergence of self-styled digital life-coaches, many of whom seek to propagate their knowledge of and interests in a variety of topics through online... more
Alongside the increasing popularity of digital, ‘social’ media platforms, has been the emergence of self-styled digital life-coaches, many of whom seek to propagate their knowledge of and interests in a variety of topics through online social networks (such as, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, etc.). With many of these ‘social influencers’ garnering a large online following, their popularity, social significance and cultural impact offers important insights into the place and purpose of the subject in our digital media environment. Accordingly, this chapter will examine the proliferation of digital media technologies, which, on the one hand, propose the dissolution of the subject (wearable technology, technological singularity, etc.), while on the other, provide new opportunities for discovering, ‘sharing’ and/or improving one’s ‘inner-Self’ (digital media gurus, online health and fitness regimes, etc.). It is in considering how the effects of this ‘digital subject’ redefines traditional (Cartesian) conceptions, that the relative significance of ‘Digital Guru Media’ (DGM) can be drawn. In particular, explicit attention is given to examining how our engagements with social media can be considered in relation to Lacan’s (2002) notion of the big Other and its relevance in introducing, examining and, possibly, subverting, the digital media guru.
Research Interests: Psychoanalysis, Algorithms, Media Studies, Self and Identity, Digital Humanities, and 15 moreDigital Media, Lacan, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Social Media, Lacanian theory, Interactive and Digital Media, Slavoj Zizek, Zizek, Subjectivity Studies, Social Influence, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Health and Wellness, Mental Health and Wellbeing, and Social Influences
Although communities can be distinct and defined, helping to locate and orientate a particular identity, they can also be expansive, neither beginning nor ending in any particular temporal moment. Here, our relation to community is one... more
Although communities can be distinct and defined, helping to locate and orientate a particular identity, they can also be expansive, neither beginning nor ending in any particular temporal moment. Here, our relation to community is one that embodies us in both physical but also ‘spectral’ forms (Morton 2017). They exist in our pasts, yet communities can also be drawn around specific geographical co-ordinates. In short, as an analytical tool – in fact, as an understanding of reality – community remains a decidedly slippery and frustratingly paradoxical term (Blackshaw 2010). In view of such paradoxes, we seek to examine the relationship between community and leisure. Here we turn towards an understanding of community as ‘hyperobject’.
Research Interests: Sociology, Sociology of Sport, Philosophy, Recreation & Leisure Studies, Leisure Studies, and 15 moreCommunity, Leisure, Leisure (Social Sciences), Critical and Cultural Theory, Timothy Morton, Sports Sociology, Hyperobjects, Leisure time, Sport sociology, Sociology of Sports, Philosophy and Sociology, Sociology of Sport and Leisure, Belonging and Citizenship, Recreation and Leisure Studies, and "Hyperobjects"
This chapter examines how representations of Britain’s ‘imperial’ history continue to form an important part of contemporary mediated constructions of Britain. Specifically, this is explored in English national newspaper coverage of the... more
This chapter examines how representations of Britain’s ‘imperial’ history continue to form an important part of contemporary mediated constructions of Britain. Specifically, this is explored in English national newspaper coverage of the 2012 London Olympic Ceremonies. Accordingly, while the English press served to frame Britain in relation to its imperial decline, the subsequent success of the Games revealed discourses that reflected, reinvented and reimagined Britain’s past within the present. Indeed, such findings are particularly relevant for exploring how historical significances are embedded in mediated constructions and (re)constructions of the nation during sporting mega-events.
Research Interests:
It is this very contention that sits at the heart of Matthew Flisfeder’s, Algorithmic Desire: Towards a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media (2021). In spite of the accusation that, today, our social media is in fact hampering... more
It is this very contention that sits at the heart of Matthew Flisfeder’s, Algorithmic Desire: Towards a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media (2021). In spite of the accusation that, today, our social media is in fact hampering democracy and subjecting us to increasing forms of online and offline surveillance, for Flisfeder (2021: 3), ‘[s]ocial media remains the correct concept for reconciling ourselves with the structural contradictions of our media, our culture, and our society’. With almost every aspect of our contemporary lives now mediated through the digital, the significance of the algorithm maintains a pertinent importance in making sense of the social and psychic investments that our interactions on social media, as well as other forms of digital media, rely upon and encourage. The socio-political tensions and contradictions that such interaction prescribes remains a reoccurring theme throughout Algorithmic Desire, with Flisfeder masterfully navigating the problems and pitfalls of a burgeoning digital infrastructure that is redefining our lives as social beings. What becomes apparent from Flisfeder’s account is how debates and discussions regarding the algorithm can be couched in a number of pressing concerns, including the proliferation of online misinformation and the contradictions inherent to our freedom and security. While these debates are drawn together through the prism of the algorithm, it is mostly with regards to the medium of social media that Flisfeder examines how our desire and enjoyment are algorithmically organized. This focus is expertly followed throughout the book’s eight chapters, producing a critically engaging inquiry that continually considers the socio-political tensions and ambiguities that frame and sustain our digital media interactions. Ultimately, it is this contention that lends further support to Flisfeder’s assertion that algorithms play a key role in reading our desire. In the discussion that follows, this reading will be critically considered by tracing and outlining a number of key significances underpinning Flisfeder’s approach. Most notably, this will require a discussion of the Lacanian conception of desire; the effects of disavowal and cynical perversion; the importance of ‘maintaining appearances’; and, finally, the significance of the social media metaphor.
Research Interests: Psychoanalysis, Algorithms, Technology, Media Studies, New Media, and 15 moreMedia and Cultural Studies, Psychosis, Digital Media, Lacan, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Social Media, Lacanian theory, Metaphor, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Mass Communication and New Media, Media and Communications, Perversion, Communication and media Studies, and Salvoj Zizek
This review considers Stuart Jeffries’s Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School. Providing a detailed account of the work and lives of the Frankfurt School, Jeffries is commended for his ability to present an illustrative... more
This review considers Stuart Jeffries’s Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School. Providing a detailed account of the work and lives of the Frankfurt School, Jeffries is commended for his ability to present an illustrative biography of the school’s members and associates, as well as the variety of topics that their work engaged with. Consequently, while Jeffries manages to merge biography and academic theory in a readable and, at times, detailed and engaging narrative, such work is undermined by a tendency to focus on the salacious gossip of a group of men whose real-life complications can overcome the significance of their argument. Nevertheless, in view of the school’s work, it is suggested that the book’s paradoxes can serve as an important opening to contemporary topics and, more importantly, to theorizing these topics in light of the Frankfurt School.
Research Interests:
As noted by Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, race maintains a ‘distinctive ... belief structure and evokes powerful and very particular investments in its subjects’ (Desiring Whiteness, 4). Echoing such sentiments, Karen and Barbara Fields... more
As noted by Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, race maintains a ‘distinctive ... belief structure and evokes powerful and very particular investments in its subjects’ (Desiring Whiteness, 4). Echoing such sentiments, Karen and Barbara Fields highlight how examples of racecraft reveal a ‘pervasive belief’ in race (Racecraft 18). Their identification of racecraft exposes the extent to which race serves as the justification for racist beliefs as well as for the exploitation, marginalization, and violent discrimination of large proportions of the earth’s population. While accounts of race remain dependent on one’s cultural, historical, and geographical location, and whereas many remain fully cognizant of the fact that race is better conceived as a myth, such arguments tend to make little headway in undermining or combating racist perceptions. This is not simply an ignorance on behalf of those who openly and candidly acknowledge examples of racism, but, rather, speaks to a more fundamental concern in how race occupies a reified form in our social world that frames both its perpetuation and critique. On this basis, it can be said that it is not only the racial-realist who believes in race but also the racial equality advocate: for both assume a certain belief in race that functions to maintain its significance. In this paper, critical attention will be afforded to exploring the role of belief in upholding as well as fixing our reliance on race and the ongoing perpetuation of forms of racism. Specifically, it will draw from Jacques Lacan’s psychotic structure in order to locate these effects in view of what will be referred to as the psychosis of race (Black, Psychosis of Race). Indeed, it will be highlighted how psychosis presents a lack of belief in the Other. Due to the effects of foreclosure, the Other fails to offer any guarantee to the psychotic’s existence and to their own investment in language and signification. Accordingly, for the psychotic, their lack of belief is grounded in certainty: while they are able to acknowledge a sense of disbelief in the Other, which, for them, holds no value or credibility, they nonetheless concede its influence. It is in critiquing the Other’s credibility, however, that the psychotic inadvertently proposes that there is such an Other who could be conceived as credible. It is in this sense that the psychotic’s disbelief serves as a form of defence; ultimately, for the psychotic, their disbelief is directly subjectivized—there remains the belief in one’s disbelief. With links made to Lacan’s les non-dupes errant, it will be argued that it is through the psychosis of race that a belief in race can be conferred. By way of elaborating on this conference, insights will be drawn from the 1992 Bernard Rose film, Candyman, which, it will be argued, offers a unique insight into the effects of belief and its role within the psychosis of race.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Psychosis, Film Studies, Race and Racism, and 15 moreFilm Analysis, Lacan, Slavery, Race and Ethnicity, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Lacanian theory, Philosophy Of Race, Slavoj Zizek, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Lacanian psychoanalysis, Psychonalysis, Other, Candyman, and Jaques Lacan
The dynamic between individuals and an expanding array of artificially intelligent (AI) chatbots has become a distinctive focal point in psychoanalytic discussions. Alongside this, prevalent concerns often yield to a paranoid belief that... more
The dynamic between individuals and an expanding array of artificially intelligent (AI) chatbots has become a distinctive focal point in psychoanalytic discussions. Alongside this, prevalent concerns often yield to a paranoid belief that AI could attain ‘total knowledge’, thus transforming into an entity devoid of limitations. While these debates offer insights into our interaction with AI and its applications, my argument in this paper asserts that our connections with chatbots extend beyond their role as mere sources of knowledge. Rather, they are rooted in the subject’s desire not to know. To support this claim, I explore Lacan’s psychotic and perverse perspectives in order to critically examine the impact of such technology on the subject’s ethical responsibility. In doing so, I couch this discussion in a consideration of the extent to which the AI chatbot serves to expose the relation between two forms of subjectivity: the subject of knowledge and the subject of desire. It is argued that, outside of the very fears and anxieties that underscore our adoption of AI, the desire not to know reveals the potential to embrace the very loss AI avers as well as the opportunity to render a transformation in our digital lives. In this sense, the desire not to know reveals the opportunity to assert and define the gap inherent to both the subject and the AI we create. Through a Lacanian account of desire, the desire not know will help ground the discussion in a psychosocial approach to digital culture.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Psychoanalysis, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Media, and 15 moreSociology of Knowledge, Cultural Theory, Lacan, Jacques Lacan, Lacanian theory, Desire, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Knowledge, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Paranoia, LLM, Perversion, Chatbot, Jaques Lacan, and ChatGPT
Typically, post-racial assertions rely on the consideration that our societies are, today, ‘post-racism’—i.e., that the effects of racism no longer obtain the significance that they once held or that the history of racism is ‘in the... more
Typically, post-racial assertions rely on the consideration that our societies are, today, ‘post-racism’—i.e., that the effects of racism no longer obtain the significance that they once held or that the history of racism is ‘in the past’, and, thus, should now be ignored (approaches that clearly maintain forms of racism and racial inequality). However, in the ‘planetary humanism’ that he seeks to establish, Paul Gilroy adopts a unique relation to the articulation of a post-race future (Gilroy 2000). Though Gilroy’s project does not propose a post-racial outlook, it nonetheless seeks an approach that moves beyond the idea of race by taking (the human) race seriously. Following Gilroy, this paper argues that in order to criticise race, a consideration of the temporality that the ‘post’ prefix provides is required. That is, it is not simply the case that our racism should be challenged, but that our efforts towards forging our very anti-racism must look towards the ‘yet-to-come’: a ‘post-race’ position where one’s relation to the present and the past can be forged. Insofar as it is through introducing a relation to lack that our ties to race can be doubted (and challenged), this paper offers a psychoanalytically inspired account of the effects of time and temporality in the music of Kendrick Lamar. In lyrics that proffer a temporal experimentation of the ‘post-’, it is argued that Lamar develops a space through which the temporal ambiguity of the ‘post-’ can be confronted via the doubt it avails. This is achieved not from some external position of understanding or higher knowledge (an anti-racism driven by ensuring that one can be educated out of the racism they expel), but through encountering the Real. It is here that a restructuring of one’s relation to language and new forms of mediation can be achieved.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Critical Race Studies, Race and Racism, Critical Race Theory, Lacan, and 15 moreRace and Ethnicity, Jacques Lacan, Lacanian theory, Racism, Hip-Hop/Rap, Philosophy Of Race, Temporality (Time Studies), Hip-Hop Studies, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Lacanian psychoanalysis, Temporality, Paul Gilroy, Hip Hop Culture, Jaques Lacan, and Kendrick Lamar
In examples of anti-white racism, conspiracy theories are frequently employed to ‘explain’ the very ways in which the values and beliefs of ‘White society’ are assumed to be undermined or undervalued. In this regard, the resort to... more
In examples of anti-white racism, conspiracy theories are frequently employed to ‘explain’ the very ways in which the values and beliefs of ‘White society’ are assumed to be undermined or undervalued. In this regard, the resort to conspiracy has remained a prominent characteristic of white nationalist movements, most notably, the ‘alternative right’ (alt-right). Increasingly these conspiracies have infiltrated popular and political discourses, serving as both a point of criticism and debate amongst mainstream media outlets. By critically analysing the significance of conspiracy, this paper will explore the formal importance of conspiracy theories in aiding and perpetuating the dissemination of alt-right politics in sport. Paying particular attention to the development of alt-right conspiracies—from fringe online communities to popular social media spaces, such as, Twitter—we examine how online criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ protest, during the 2020 European Football Championship, sought to deride the tournament for being subject to a cultural Marxist, ‘woke agenda’. Detailing the extent to which alt- and far-right discourses have become mainstreamed, we first address how the decision to take the knee before the start of England’s games became linked to criticisms of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, and second, we reflect upon the modality of conspiracy and its role in perpetuating examples of anti-white racism through fear, paranoia, and racial hate. Together, these conclusions are used to reflect upon the role of sports journalists as well as the reporting—or, rather, laundering (Klein 2017)—of online hate in public news coverage. For this reason, our conclusions speak to the growing importance of conspiracy in media coverage of sport and the conceptual and analytical significances it provides for examining online hate.
Research Interests: Journalism, Race and Racism, Race and Ethnicity, Conspiracy Theories, Racism, and 15 moreTwitter, Online Journalism, Conspiracy Theories and Transparency, Conspiracy Culture, Anti-Racism, Journalism Studies, Conspiracy Theory, Conspiracy, Online Hate Groups, Belief in Conspiracy Theory, Online Racial and Hate Discrimination, Black Lives Matter, Alt-Right, alternative right, and Hate speech online
In examples of anti-white racism, conspiracy theories are frequently employed to ‘explain’ the very ways in which the values and beliefs of ‘White society’ are assumed to be undermined or undervalued. To this extent, the resort to... more
In examples of anti-white racism, conspiracy theories are frequently employed to ‘explain’ the very ways in which the values and beliefs of ‘White society’ are assumed to be undermined or undervalued. To this extent, the resort to conspiracy has remained a prominent characteristic of white nationalist movements, most notably, the ‘alternative right’ (alt-right). Increasingly, these conspiracies have infiltrated popular and political discourses, serving as both a point of criticism and debate amongst mainstream media outlets. By critically analysing the significance of conspiracy, this paper will explore the formal importance of conspiracy theories in aiding and perpetuating the dissemination of alt-right politics in sport.
Paying particular attention to the development of alt-right conspiracies—from fringe online communities to popular social media spaces, such as Twitter—we examine how online criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ protest, during the 2020 European Football Championship, sought to deride the tournament for being subject to a cultural Marxist, ‘woke agenda’. Detailing the extent to which alt- and far-right discourses have become mainstreamed, we first address how the decision to take the knee before the start of England’s games became linked to criticisms of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, and second, we reflect upon the modality of conspiracy and its role in perpetuating examples of anti-white racism through fear, paranoia, and racial hate. For this reason, our conclusions speak to the conceptual and analytical importance of conspiracy across sport and society.
Paying particular attention to the development of alt-right conspiracies—from fringe online communities to popular social media spaces, such as Twitter—we examine how online criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ protest, during the 2020 European Football Championship, sought to deride the tournament for being subject to a cultural Marxist, ‘woke agenda’. Detailing the extent to which alt- and far-right discourses have become mainstreamed, we first address how the decision to take the knee before the start of England’s games became linked to criticisms of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, and second, we reflect upon the modality of conspiracy and its role in perpetuating examples of anti-white racism through fear, paranoia, and racial hate. For this reason, our conclusions speak to the conceptual and analytical importance of conspiracy across sport and society.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Football (soccer), Digital Media, Race and Racism, Race and Ethnicity, and 15 moreConspiracy Theories, Social Media, Racism, Twitter, Conspiracy Culture, Football, Sociology of Football, Europe 2020, Conspiracy, English Football, Anti-White, Black Lives Matter, Hate speech online, Black Lives Matter (BLM), and Woke
The psychotic subject “has the object a in his pocket” (Lacan, “Petit discours aux psychiatres de Sainte-Anne”) “The work of theorizing the role of race in the constitution of the subject has only just begun” (Seshadri, “Afterword”,... more
The psychotic subject “has the object a in his pocket” (Lacan, “Petit discours aux psychiatres de Sainte-Anne”)
“The work of theorizing the role of race in the constitution of the subject has only just begun” (Seshadri, “Afterword”, 303)
It is widely asserted that race bears no epistemological significance, especially when seeking to delineate “racial” differences in the human population. Indeed, while such assertions serve to dismiss race as a false distinction, nothing more than a “social construction”, they nonetheless uphold an ontologization of race that just as easily reifies racial differences as much as it seeks their critique. In fact, despite the untenability of race, it is in its very resilience that its significance to Lacanian psychoanalysis can be found. By way of exploring this significance, this paper will draw from a Lacanian conception of psychosis in order to introduce what it will define as “the psychosis of race”. Specifically, Lacan’s account of psychosis will lend a new perspective to the central importance of lack and alienation in processes of racialization, perceived as an ‘illusion of being’ (George, “From alienation to cynicism” 361), while also exploring the effects of race in both masking and accentuating examples of racial visibility. It will be discussed how Lacan’s structure of psychosis, and the difficulties in articulating one’s subjective position, can become reproduced as part of a racial logic that pursues its very certainty in the racialization of both the subject and the other. This paper will make sense of such racialization by locating race as structurally grounded in the foreclosure of the Name of the Father, the jouissance of the Other and in the subject’s relation to the objet a. It is in accordance with the Lacanian objet a—the objet a of race—that its presence in psychosis exhibits the advertence of a racial anxiety, which works to fix the subject to a delusional ‘racial essence’. Here, assumed racial differences can be conceived as returns in the Real, expressed in examples of racial paranoia and fantasy.
“The work of theorizing the role of race in the constitution of the subject has only just begun” (Seshadri, “Afterword”, 303)
It is widely asserted that race bears no epistemological significance, especially when seeking to delineate “racial” differences in the human population. Indeed, while such assertions serve to dismiss race as a false distinction, nothing more than a “social construction”, they nonetheless uphold an ontologization of race that just as easily reifies racial differences as much as it seeks their critique. In fact, despite the untenability of race, it is in its very resilience that its significance to Lacanian psychoanalysis can be found. By way of exploring this significance, this paper will draw from a Lacanian conception of psychosis in order to introduce what it will define as “the psychosis of race”. Specifically, Lacan’s account of psychosis will lend a new perspective to the central importance of lack and alienation in processes of racialization, perceived as an ‘illusion of being’ (George, “From alienation to cynicism” 361), while also exploring the effects of race in both masking and accentuating examples of racial visibility. It will be discussed how Lacan’s structure of psychosis, and the difficulties in articulating one’s subjective position, can become reproduced as part of a racial logic that pursues its very certainty in the racialization of both the subject and the other. This paper will make sense of such racialization by locating race as structurally grounded in the foreclosure of the Name of the Father, the jouissance of the Other and in the subject’s relation to the objet a. It is in accordance with the Lacanian objet a—the objet a of race—that its presence in psychosis exhibits the advertence of a racial anxiety, which works to fix the subject to a delusional ‘racial essence’. Here, assumed racial differences can be conceived as returns in the Real, expressed in examples of racial paranoia and fantasy.
Research Interests: Psychoanalysis, Psychosis, Critical Race Studies, Race and Racism, Critical Race Theory, and 15 moreLacan, Race and Ethnicity, Jacques Lacan, Lacanian theory, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Racism, Everyday Racism, Philosophy Of Race, Racialization, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Anti-Racism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Race/Ethnicity, Psychotic Disorders, and Jaques Lacan
By allowing users to observe, manage and record their exercise, food consumption and sleep patterns, the increasing success of mobile technologies has seen the development of a plethora of health, fitness and lifestyle applications. These... more
By allowing users to observe, manage and record their exercise, food consumption and sleep patterns, the increasing success of mobile technologies has seen the development of a plethora of health, fitness and lifestyle applications. These applications comprise a growing field of mHealth technologies, which seek to support and, in some cases, deliver medical practice. While, for the moment, many of these technologies remain ‘outside’ the body, technological advancements are undoubtedly steering a path towards their ‘integration’ in the human body (most notably, on a bio-molecular level). These changes posit a relocation of ‘the body’ into a wider technological assemblage and algorithmic logic that controls, positions and manages the body’s materiality. By critically examining the interlinkages between posthumanism and assemblage theory, this paper will consider how the significance of emerging technological assemblages lies in their capacity to highlight the antagonisms and contradictions that inherently affirm the importance of the subject. Drawing from a psychoanalytic reading of the subject, it will be argued that it is through an ‘inhuman’ perspective that the ethical importance of our mHealth technologies can help to (re)imagine health and wellness for the contemporary (digital) subject, whilst also warning us of their role in the continued reinforcement of neoliberal, biomedical and individualized discourses. Indeed, it is only by recognizing the role of the subject that we can position users as undergoing a certain orientation to both themselves and their wider health assemblages. It will be argued that this can allow us to realise the capacities of such platforms, whilst mitigating against the potential to ‘fully’ concede to the embodied encroachment of internalized technologies.
Research Interests: Psychoanalysis, Technology, Posthumanism, Slavoj Žižek, Critical Posthumanism, and 15 moreSlavoj Zizek, Public Health, Humanism, Zizek, Transhumanism/Posthumanism, Psychoanalytic Theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Mhealth, Subjectivity, Health and Fitness, mHealth /eHealth, Post-Humanism, Posthumanities, mHealth and eHealth, and Posthumanism and Transhumanism
Drawing from psychoanalytic theory, this paper will explore how the importance of the gaze in film studies occupies both an auditorial and visual significance for the horror genre. This significance can be identified in the genre’s unique... more
Drawing from psychoanalytic theory, this paper will explore how the importance of the gaze in film studies occupies both an auditorial and visual significance for the horror genre. This significance can be identified in the genre’s unique relation to the cinematic object—the impossible Lacanian objet petit a—which is apparent in its employment of the gaze and voice. While working to dissolve the apparent separation of the spectator from the cinematic image—thus, laying bear our subjective desire and unconscious involvement—depictions of the gaze and voice offer a disturbing presence within film. This is apparent in ‘horror classics’, such as Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963), as well as a number of recently released franchise sequels. Indeed, while this paper will draw from various horror examples (past and present), specific attention will be given to examining the effects of the gaze and voice in Bernard Rose (1992) and Nia DaCosta’s (2021) Candyman films. In Rose’s Candyman (1992), examples of the voice occupy a key role in building the Candyman’s absent presence on-screen; yet it is only through comparing Rose’s original with DaCosta’s (2021) cinematic revival that examples of the voice are noticeably absent within DaCosta’s film. Although uncanny encounters with mirrored reflections pave the way for the Candyman’s deadly resurrection, DaCosta’s take on the horror classic relies entirely upon its adoption of the gaze. This allows us to question: What impact does this move from voice to gaze present for Candyman and its ‘legacy sequel’; and what does this change reveal about recent horror revivals, remakes, and sequels? By affording further reflection on the contemporary horror genre, the relation between gaze and voice will offer important conclusions regarding the Candyman legacy as well as the theoretical changes that this legacy brings to the genre.
Research Interests: Psychoanalysis, Film Studies, Film Theory, Race and Racism, Film Analysis, and 15 moreLacan, Race and Ethnicity, Horror Film, Jacques Lacan, Lacanian theory, Politics and Film, Horror Cinema, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Film and Media Studies, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Psychoanalysis and Film, Horror Studies, Horror, Lacanian psychoanalysis and film, and Candyman
It seems as if our very addiction to ‘social media’ has, today, become encapsulated in the tensions between its facilitation as a mode of interpersonal communication and as an insidious conduit for machine learning, surveillance... more
It seems as if our very addiction to ‘social media’ has, today, become encapsulated in the tensions between its facilitation as a mode of interpersonal communication and as an insidious conduit for machine learning, surveillance capitalism and manipulation. What is more, we remain fully aware of the problems and unethical practices perpetuated by digital media companies that we frequently use and require. While we realize and accept that not everything that we see online can be taken at ‘face value’, our relations to/with digital media continue to be characterized by a ‘fetishistic disavowal’ (Žižek, 2008). Though ‘we know very well that the media and our current cultural climate are influencing our behaviour and our choices as consumers to an extremely problematic extent, we still like to pretend that we are free to make our own choices’ (Mangold, 2014, 4). Such a pretense is grounded in a level of interactivity that, while affording the opportunity to engage with a ‘world wide web’, remains enveloped in a passive engagement with the content onscreen. It is this passive engagement which is paradoxically founded upon our own active involvement in digital environments. In this paper, attention will be given to exploring how our digital media relations can be read as a form of interpassive exchange, whereby the hysterical question, ‘what am I for the Other?’, can work to re-align our approach to digital media platforms. Specifically, I will draw from the position of the hysteric (Clemens and Grigg, 2006) in accordance with Robert Pfaller’s (2017) notion of interpassivity. Together, these concepts will be used to provide a psychoanalytic account of how our subjectivization through digital media renders an unconscious endorsement that both frames our awareness of the dilemmas encompassing social media, while also positing an inherent limitation that may offer a possible path out of its impeding affects. This subjective ambivalence – delegated yet reluctantly disavowed – offers an opportunity to realign discussions on the lost object of desire (objet a) and its reproduction in the algorithm.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Psychoanalysis, Algorithms, Digital Humanities, Digital Media, and 15 moreLacan, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Desire, Media, Slavoj Zizek, Zizek, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Lacanian psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytical Criticism, Interpassivity, Social Media, Communication and media Studies, Interpassivity, Interactivity, Interpassivity, and Hysterical Neurosis
Since its release in May 1996, the song ‘Three Lions’, performed by the Lightning Seeds and featuring popular comedians, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, has become an unofficial anthem of the English national football team. While... more
Since its release in May 1996, the song ‘Three Lions’, performed by the Lightning Seeds and featuring popular comedians, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, has become an unofficial anthem of the English national football team. While originally coinciding with England’s hosting of the 1996 European Championships, the song has subsequently achieved both national and international renown (most notably, in Germany).
Alongside the song’s success, the line, ‘It’s coming home’, continues to hold a popular resonance across social media, as well as being sung and chanted at football grounds, pubs and fan parks. What is more, the song is not without its controversies, with its lyrics and themes serving as a notable example of English arrogance, which remains unperturbed by a lack of footballing success.
In this paper, critical attention will be given to examining the song’s ‘comic’ significance during the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Set alongside a broader critique of irony and satire as comic forms, this paper will argue that it’s lyrics and themes offer a unique insight into the relationship between contemporary English nationalism and football.
Notably, this insight will be supported by Slavoj Zizek’s account of melancholy as well as Robert Pfaller’s work on interpassivity. Together, this will be used to highlight how the song’s national sporting themes remain tied to a certain form of English melancholy, which, at its heart, can be re-approached through a critical analysis of the comic form. By re-approaching accounts of English nostalgia and hubris, it will be argued that examples of English melancholy offer the potential for promoting collective forms of comic expression. Indeed, when contextualized alongside England’s lack of footballing success (both male and female), both the song, and its cultural significance, will be used to expose how hubristic forms of national assertion can be interpassively refracted through a sporting nationalism that is decidedly comic and reassuringly benign.
Alongside the song’s success, the line, ‘It’s coming home’, continues to hold a popular resonance across social media, as well as being sung and chanted at football grounds, pubs and fan parks. What is more, the song is not without its controversies, with its lyrics and themes serving as a notable example of English arrogance, which remains unperturbed by a lack of footballing success.
In this paper, critical attention will be given to examining the song’s ‘comic’ significance during the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Set alongside a broader critique of irony and satire as comic forms, this paper will argue that it’s lyrics and themes offer a unique insight into the relationship between contemporary English nationalism and football.
Notably, this insight will be supported by Slavoj Zizek’s account of melancholy as well as Robert Pfaller’s work on interpassivity. Together, this will be used to highlight how the song’s national sporting themes remain tied to a certain form of English melancholy, which, at its heart, can be re-approached through a critical analysis of the comic form. By re-approaching accounts of English nostalgia and hubris, it will be argued that examples of English melancholy offer the potential for promoting collective forms of comic expression. Indeed, when contextualized alongside England’s lack of footballing success (both male and female), both the song, and its cultural significance, will be used to expose how hubristic forms of national assertion can be interpassively refracted through a sporting nationalism that is decidedly comic and reassuringly benign.
Research Interests: Lacan, Nationalism, English, Hegel, Jacques Lacan, and 15 moreMelancholy, Lacanian theory, National Identity, Philosophy of Sport, Freud and Lacan, G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Humour, Hegel (Philosophy) (Philosophy), Lacanian psychoanalysis, Humour Studies, Football Culture, Film and Television Comedy, Sociology of Football, Mourning and melancholia, and Psychoanalysis (Freud and Lacan)
This paper will critically examine how psychosocial thinking can help to support interdisciplinary analyses of the other, and, specifically, media portrayals of the other’s body. Though it is widely accepted that media coverage plays a... more
This paper will critically examine how psychosocial thinking can help to support interdisciplinary analyses of the other, and, specifically, media portrayals of the other’s body. Though it is widely accepted that media coverage plays a pivotal role in framing and positioning outsider individuals/groups, this analysis will explicitly consider how media discourses can be used to extend our understanding of the body and national identity via psychoanalytic interpretations of the other. By exploring this relationship under the theme of “Psychosocial Bodies”, this paper will identify the various ways in which the other, and their body, are framed in relation to hegemonic conceptions of what constitutes “the nation”.
These aims will be demonstrated in newspaper coverage of the Canadian-born, British tennis player, Greg Rusedski. It will be noted how media framings of Rusedski centered on a particular feature of his body – his “smile”. In order to elucidate on the significance of Rusedski’s “smile”, Lacan’s (1997) notion of the “fragmented body” will be used to critically examine how the other’s body can prove effective in helping to elucidate wider anxieties, confusions and contradictions regarding English nationalism/national identity. Specifically, analyses of Rusedski’s “post-imperial” Otherness (an Otherness which centered on his “smile”) will serve as a demonstration of the splits, voids and contradictions which underscore a coherent and constituted (national) “us”. Through their elicitation in English national newspapers, these examples will emphasise how it is through “the body” that the nation’s inherent limitations are enacted via forms of obfuscation that work to both separate and delineate the ‘other’.
It will be argued that this “limit” can be brought to bear via Lacan’s notion of the “extimate” (extimité), defined by Alenka Zupančič as “an excluded interiority or an included exteriority” (Zupančič, 2019: 90). In particular, understandings of the extimate – and its relation to a psychosocial understanding of the other, the body and the nation – will reveal how Rusedski’s “smile” provided an uncanny disturbance for the English national press; one in which wider anxieties and tensions regarding English nationalism were constructed, framed and represented.
These aims will be demonstrated in newspaper coverage of the Canadian-born, British tennis player, Greg Rusedski. It will be noted how media framings of Rusedski centered on a particular feature of his body – his “smile”. In order to elucidate on the significance of Rusedski’s “smile”, Lacan’s (1997) notion of the “fragmented body” will be used to critically examine how the other’s body can prove effective in helping to elucidate wider anxieties, confusions and contradictions regarding English nationalism/national identity. Specifically, analyses of Rusedski’s “post-imperial” Otherness (an Otherness which centered on his “smile”) will serve as a demonstration of the splits, voids and contradictions which underscore a coherent and constituted (national) “us”. Through their elicitation in English national newspapers, these examples will emphasise how it is through “the body” that the nation’s inherent limitations are enacted via forms of obfuscation that work to both separate and delineate the ‘other’.
It will be argued that this “limit” can be brought to bear via Lacan’s notion of the “extimate” (extimité), defined by Alenka Zupančič as “an excluded interiority or an included exteriority” (Zupančič, 2019: 90). In particular, understandings of the extimate – and its relation to a psychosocial understanding of the other, the body and the nation – will reveal how Rusedski’s “smile” provided an uncanny disturbance for the English national press; one in which wider anxieties and tensions regarding English nationalism were constructed, framed and represented.
Research Interests: Psychoanalysis, Lacan, Nationalism, English, The Body, and 15 moreJacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Lacanian theory, National Identity, The Other, Canadian Culture & Identity, Canadian Identity, Politics of the Body, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Lacanian psychoanalysis, Otherness, Psychoanalysis and culture, English national identity, Nationalism and identity construction, and Extimate
In this seminar, I critically examine how the use of comedy – drawing specifically from the British sitcom, The Office – can help to reframe discussions on, but also, interpretations of, British multiculturalism. Through examining UK... more
In this seminar, I critically examine how the use of comedy – drawing specifically from the British sitcom, The Office – can help to reframe discussions on, but also, interpretations of, British multiculturalism. Through examining UK media coverage of the ‘Team GB’ athlete, Mo Farah, it is highlighted that newspaper discourses served to frame Farah as a celebrated symbol of Britain’s multicultural inclusivity and cultural diversity.
In contrast to this framing, and with specific critique being given to the notion of ‘inclusivity’, it is argued that Farah reflected a multicultural subject whose ‘otherness’ was minimalized or ignored, instead being used to promote some idealized form of harmonious British multiculturalism. Accordingly, by exploring the ‘antagonisms’ which remain integral to multiculturalism, diversity and cultural difference, this seminar proposes new ways of approaching ‘difference’, as reflected in cultural formations. For this, two terms are drawn upon: ‘parallax’ and ‘parapraxis’.
Notably, through the practice of comedy, Zizek’s ‘parallax view’ and Elsaesser’s ‘parapraxis’, are used to highlight how the ‘working through’ of cultural differences as well as their associated tensions, can help draw attention to those moments of cultural miscommunication, where such tensions are revealed as faux pas or performed failures.
In contrast to this framing, and with specific critique being given to the notion of ‘inclusivity’, it is argued that Farah reflected a multicultural subject whose ‘otherness’ was minimalized or ignored, instead being used to promote some idealized form of harmonious British multiculturalism. Accordingly, by exploring the ‘antagonisms’ which remain integral to multiculturalism, diversity and cultural difference, this seminar proposes new ways of approaching ‘difference’, as reflected in cultural formations. For this, two terms are drawn upon: ‘parallax’ and ‘parapraxis’.
Notably, through the practice of comedy, Zizek’s ‘parallax view’ and Elsaesser’s ‘parapraxis’, are used to highlight how the ‘working through’ of cultural differences as well as their associated tensions, can help draw attention to those moments of cultural miscommunication, where such tensions are revealed as faux pas or performed failures.
Research Interests: Multiculturalism, Television Studies, Comedy, Race and Ethnicity, Nationalism, and 15 moreSlavoj Žižek, National Identity, Slavoj Zizek, Cultural Diversity, Zizek, Ethnicity, 2012 London Olympics, Paul Gilroy, Integration, Film and Television Comedy, Ethnicity and National Identity, Parallax, Inclusivity, Thomas Elsaesser, and 2012 London Games
With regard to the various criticisms which have been leveled at the profession of sports journalism (Rowe, 2007), over the past decade little improvement has been made with regards to the gender disparities that continue to exist within... more
With regard to the various criticisms which have been leveled at the profession of sports journalism (Rowe, 2007), over the past decade little improvement has been made with regards to the gender disparities that continue to exist within the profession, with fewer women reporting on, and writing about sport, compared to men. In fact, while there are numerous opportunities for women to gain employment as political, business, crime or health reporters, sports journalism continues to be dominated by male journalists (Fraysse and Mennesson, 2016; Strong and Hannis, 2007). This disparity bears a semblance with the lack of coverage that is often afforded to female athletes (Black and Fielding-Lloyd, 2016).
Indeed, while there is a wealth of work exploring how gender is framed within the media, this paper will seek to examine the media careers of six professional women working within the sports journalism industry. Drawing upon interviews conducted with women working for local (Yorkshire, UK) and international (Sky Sports) media organizations, interviewee responses revealed the gender dynamics and power relations that structured working environments as well as the prescribed roles that women performed when working in these environments. This included discussions of the challenges that the women faced as well as apparent improvements which had been made for women in the sports media industry.
From these responses, specific attention is afforded to exploring how each woman responded to questions relating to their career development, career ambitions and the opportunities available to them to progress within the industry. In doing so, Elias and Scotson’s (1994) ‘established-outsider’ relations and Matthews’s (2014) ‘pastiche hegemony’ will be used to examine the power relations that frame working environments as well as the potential opportunities which are available to challenge working environments within the media industry.
Indeed, while there is a wealth of work exploring how gender is framed within the media, this paper will seek to examine the media careers of six professional women working within the sports journalism industry. Drawing upon interviews conducted with women working for local (Yorkshire, UK) and international (Sky Sports) media organizations, interviewee responses revealed the gender dynamics and power relations that structured working environments as well as the prescribed roles that women performed when working in these environments. This included discussions of the challenges that the women faced as well as apparent improvements which had been made for women in the sports media industry.
From these responses, specific attention is afforded to exploring how each woman responded to questions relating to their career development, career ambitions and the opportunities available to them to progress within the industry. In doing so, Elias and Scotson’s (1994) ‘established-outsider’ relations and Matthews’s (2014) ‘pastiche hegemony’ will be used to examine the power relations that frame working environments as well as the potential opportunities which are available to challenge working environments within the media industry.
Research Interests:
Whether examining interpretations of the 'past' in Hollywood blockbusters or when critiquing the ways in which mediated representations can undermine 'historical truth', it is apparent that 'the media' occupies a unique position in how... more
Whether examining interpretations of the 'past' in Hollywood blockbusters or when critiquing the ways in which mediated representations can undermine 'historical truth', it is apparent that 'the media' occupies a unique position in how explanations of the past are (re)presented, interpreted and disseminated. At the heart of this dissemination is how the 'past' is routinely used and re-used in making sense of the 'present'. One notable example of this is in media coverage of national and international sporting mega-/media events. Here, the interrelationship between sport and the media offers a unique opportunity to examine how 'mediated memories' form a constitutive feature in the reporting of sport. Accordingly, by way of exploring the intersections between media, memory and sport, this paper will examine recent debates on the mediatization of memory. Drawing upon examples from the 2012 London Olympic Games and the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games, it will examine how the media and, in particular, national newspapers provided a pivotal role in employing collective memories of the past in order to make sense of contemporary social and political debates. This included accounts of the former British Empire, its relation to the contemporary Commonwealth of Nations and its impact on the UK and its constitutive 'home nations'. More importantly, attempts will be made to build a theoretical interpretation that examines the ways in which mediated memories center on a past-present alignment which, in this instance, served to influence the ways in which 'history' was mediated.
Research Interests:
Transcending sport, politics and culture, the American boxer, Muhammad Ali, occupies a prominent place in discussions on sport, identity, politics and ‘race’. Images of Ali’s sporting career, his numerous remarks, phrases and assertions –... more
Transcending sport, politics and culture, the American boxer, Muhammad Ali, occupies a prominent place in discussions on sport, identity, politics and ‘race’. Images of Ali’s sporting career, his numerous remarks, phrases and assertions – captured and available for prosperity via the media – and his appearances at global sporting mega-events; such as, the 1996 Atlanta and 2012 London Olympic Games, are all interspersedly used and reused by media companies, advertising agencies and global development projects. In sum, it is evident that Ali’s ‘authenticity’ as a sporting star, and, more significantly, as a global ‘cultural icon’, is predicated upon a plethora of interpretations, cultural readings and media representations. By way of exploring ‘Ali’, this presentation will critically consider the notion of authenticity, and, will draw upon, the work of György Lukács and his conception of reification, in order to examine how media coverage of Ali’s death discursively (re)produced ‘Ali’ via media reports and public responses that interdependently aimed to know and reflect upon his celebrity image. In particular, it will expose how a set of competing, and, often, contradictory, appraisals of Ali’s life and career, served to present ‘Ali’ as an observable, reified form. Through a façade of mediation, interpretation and representation, these debates formed a constitutive part of Ali’s legacy. Echoing other celebrity deaths, Ali’s significance and his prominent location within the memories of audiences and fans resulted in a transcendent and polysemous portrayal.
Research Interests:
This paper examines English national newspaper coverage of the 2015 Women’s FIFA World Cup held in Canada. Specifically, attention is given to exploring how the press constructed, framed and represented the English women’s team as they... more
This paper examines English national newspaper coverage of the 2015 Women’s FIFA World Cup held in Canada. Specifically, attention is given to exploring how the press constructed, framed and represented the English women’s team as they unexpectedly finished third in the competition.
Certainly, the women’s success provides a striking contrast to the men’s team who, in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, failed to win a match for the first time since 1958 and did not proceed past the group stages. To this end, 2015 offers a unique opportunity to examine shifting press narratives of sporting achievement, gendered expectations and the female apologetic.
Given the infancy of the domestic professional league in England (the Football Association Women’s Super League began in 2011) and their history of only qualifying for 50% of previous World Cup tournaments, England women’s success was largely unanticipated by both the English media and sport fans in general (Taylor, 2015). Indeed, the success of the women’s team coincides with work that has highlighted the problematic coverage of women’s sport in the printed press (Christopherson et al, 2002; Vincent et al, 2007), the discursive management of soccer as a privileged site for maleness and masculinity (Williams, 2014) and that exceptional performances are necessary for women's sport to attract significant media attention (Ravel and Gareau, 2014). Newspapers play a key role in representing gender norms in sport (Pfister, 2015) as the discursive construction of gender boundaries serves to frame both male and female athletes in particular ways.
Consequently, this study employs a qualitative investigation of the press’ coverage in order to identify how framings of the women’s team were reconfigured in accordance with their on- field performances. Newspaper articles were chronologically examined via open coding.
To date, this study has found that coverage of the team increased as they progressed through the tournament and, by positioning the women as heroes, was almost uniformly positive. However, their success was simultaneously patronised with infantilising discourses that reinforced their hegemonic femininity. In particular, audiences were reassured of the players’ status as mothers and partners. The extent to which this reflects a revised version of the female apologetic, given that several of the team are openly gay, will be debated.
Our analysis identifies that the women’s success was frequently used as a tool to unpick the England men’s failure at recent World Cups and to deride the culture of English soccer more generally. This highlighted that the male version of the game was commonly brought to the forefront as the familiar frame of reference. Lastly, the women’s unanticipated success was reconfigured from a tentative position of ‘hope’ to a self-congratulatory, neo-liberal assumption of ‘legacy’ for women's soccer in England.
Certainly, the women’s success provides a striking contrast to the men’s team who, in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, failed to win a match for the first time since 1958 and did not proceed past the group stages. To this end, 2015 offers a unique opportunity to examine shifting press narratives of sporting achievement, gendered expectations and the female apologetic.
Given the infancy of the domestic professional league in England (the Football Association Women’s Super League began in 2011) and their history of only qualifying for 50% of previous World Cup tournaments, England women’s success was largely unanticipated by both the English media and sport fans in general (Taylor, 2015). Indeed, the success of the women’s team coincides with work that has highlighted the problematic coverage of women’s sport in the printed press (Christopherson et al, 2002; Vincent et al, 2007), the discursive management of soccer as a privileged site for maleness and masculinity (Williams, 2014) and that exceptional performances are necessary for women's sport to attract significant media attention (Ravel and Gareau, 2014). Newspapers play a key role in representing gender norms in sport (Pfister, 2015) as the discursive construction of gender boundaries serves to frame both male and female athletes in particular ways.
Consequently, this study employs a qualitative investigation of the press’ coverage in order to identify how framings of the women’s team were reconfigured in accordance with their on- field performances. Newspaper articles were chronologically examined via open coding.
To date, this study has found that coverage of the team increased as they progressed through the tournament and, by positioning the women as heroes, was almost uniformly positive. However, their success was simultaneously patronised with infantilising discourses that reinforced their hegemonic femininity. In particular, audiences were reassured of the players’ status as mothers and partners. The extent to which this reflects a revised version of the female apologetic, given that several of the team are openly gay, will be debated.
Our analysis identifies that the women’s success was frequently used as a tool to unpick the England men’s failure at recent World Cups and to deride the culture of English soccer more generally. This highlighted that the male version of the game was commonly brought to the forefront as the familiar frame of reference. Lastly, the women’s unanticipated success was reconfigured from a tentative position of ‘hope’ to a self-congratulatory, neo-liberal assumption of ‘legacy’ for women's soccer in England.
Research Interests:
The 2012 London Olympic Games provided Britain a unique opportunity to celebrate its national identity, character and culture. However, despite the success of ‘Team GB’, references to English nationalism, amongst the English press, were... more
The 2012 London Olympic Games provided Britain a unique opportunity to celebrate its national identity, character and culture. However, despite the success of ‘Team GB’, references to English nationalism, amongst the English press, were largely absent. Indeed, this stood in contrast to examinations of newspaper coverage in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, where constructions of national identity were vividly represented.
Certainly, whereas depictions of English culture may be widely known, the distinct lack of cultural expression in areas such as the media, reveal a notable polarity between England and the other home nations. In the face of a possible Scottish exit from the Act of Union and in light of recent comments by English footballer, Jack Wiltshire, the desire for England to have its own ‘constitutive story’ within Britain, presents an opportunity to discuss and debate English identity, post 2012 (Colley & Lodge, 2013).
Accordingly, this paper will present a selection of the English press’ coverage on both the Diamond Jubilee and London Olympic Ceremonies in order to reveal how both tabloid and broadsheet publications reflected notions of anxiety, self-deprecation and national malaise. Here, it will be argued that while such notions suggest a lingering attachment to the former British Empire, when placed in the context of Britain’s post-imperial decline, these findings can help to elucidate upon discussions pertaining to English national identity, the post-imperial decline of Britain and the possibility of an independent Scotland.
Certainly, whereas depictions of English culture may be widely known, the distinct lack of cultural expression in areas such as the media, reveal a notable polarity between England and the other home nations. In the face of a possible Scottish exit from the Act of Union and in light of recent comments by English footballer, Jack Wiltshire, the desire for England to have its own ‘constitutive story’ within Britain, presents an opportunity to discuss and debate English identity, post 2012 (Colley & Lodge, 2013).
Accordingly, this paper will present a selection of the English press’ coverage on both the Diamond Jubilee and London Olympic Ceremonies in order to reveal how both tabloid and broadsheet publications reflected notions of anxiety, self-deprecation and national malaise. Here, it will be argued that while such notions suggest a lingering attachment to the former British Empire, when placed in the context of Britain’s post-imperial decline, these findings can help to elucidate upon discussions pertaining to English national identity, the post-imperial decline of Britain and the possibility of an independent Scotland.
"*This presentation took time to discuss recent changes to the English history curriculum by Michael Gove. While Gove's aim to provide an overreaching narrative to the teaching of history was commended, this presentation argues that... more
"*This presentation took time to discuss recent changes to the English history curriculum by Michael Gove. While Gove's aim to provide an overreaching narrative to the teaching of history was commended, this presentation argues that greater focus needs to be given to the interdependencies underlying Britain's domestic and imperial history and its effects upon contemporary forms of British identification.*
In this presentation the mediated construction of ‘Britain’ and British identity during 2012 will be examined. While forming part of an ongoing doctoral thesis, this research sheds light on the relationship between Britain’s national and imperial history within the domestic and foreign press coverage of the 2012 Diamond Jubilee and London Olympic Games.
Arguably, if discussions on what constitutes Britishness and British identity in the twenty-first century are to be both historically reflexive and contemporarily accountable, the relationship between Britain’s largely imperial past and its fragmented present requires much closer investigation. In fact, despite recent attempts to invoke discussions on the British Empire, both academic and public, the relationship between the British Isles and the British Empire and its affects upon contemporary constructions of British identity, remain somewhat divorced from wider debates on the post-imperial decline of Britain.
Accordingly, this presentation will aim to address such issues by exploring how the English national press construct, frame and represent notions of Britishness in their coverage of the 2012 Diamond Jubilee and London Olympic Ceremonies. Theoretically guided by a process/figurational approach, the results of this research were obtained via a qualitative thematic content analysis of the printed press.
Underpinning this analysis, two interrelated questions were considered. First, how has a history of British imperialism shaped perceptions of British identity in the English press’ coverage of the 2012 Diamond Jubilee and London Olympic Ceremonies, and second, what does this reveal in regards to contemporary ‘mediated’ constructions of Britain?
Consequently, from this sample of the data four interrelated themes were obtained: ‘Imperial nostalgia, ‘Imperial decline’, ‘Reinvented Britain’ and ‘‘Great’ Britain’. Indeed, these themes reveal that ‘narratives of empire’, both positive and negative, remained prominent within the English press’ construction of Britain during each event. In fact, despite the de-colonization of Britain’s African colonies, the handing over of Hong Kong and the move towards devolution within the U.K., the press’ portrayal of ‘Britain’ drew upon both national and imperial (re)constructions. To this extent, the British Empire continued to play a key part in the English press’ framing of Britain 2012."""
In this presentation the mediated construction of ‘Britain’ and British identity during 2012 will be examined. While forming part of an ongoing doctoral thesis, this research sheds light on the relationship between Britain’s national and imperial history within the domestic and foreign press coverage of the 2012 Diamond Jubilee and London Olympic Games.
Arguably, if discussions on what constitutes Britishness and British identity in the twenty-first century are to be both historically reflexive and contemporarily accountable, the relationship between Britain’s largely imperial past and its fragmented present requires much closer investigation. In fact, despite recent attempts to invoke discussions on the British Empire, both academic and public, the relationship between the British Isles and the British Empire and its affects upon contemporary constructions of British identity, remain somewhat divorced from wider debates on the post-imperial decline of Britain.
Accordingly, this presentation will aim to address such issues by exploring how the English national press construct, frame and represent notions of Britishness in their coverage of the 2012 Diamond Jubilee and London Olympic Ceremonies. Theoretically guided by a process/figurational approach, the results of this research were obtained via a qualitative thematic content analysis of the printed press.
Underpinning this analysis, two interrelated questions were considered. First, how has a history of British imperialism shaped perceptions of British identity in the English press’ coverage of the 2012 Diamond Jubilee and London Olympic Ceremonies, and second, what does this reveal in regards to contemporary ‘mediated’ constructions of Britain?
Consequently, from this sample of the data four interrelated themes were obtained: ‘Imperial nostalgia, ‘Imperial decline’, ‘Reinvented Britain’ and ‘‘Great’ Britain’. Indeed, these themes reveal that ‘narratives of empire’, both positive and negative, remained prominent within the English press’ construction of Britain during each event. In fact, despite the de-colonization of Britain’s African colonies, the handing over of Hong Kong and the move towards devolution within the U.K., the press’ portrayal of ‘Britain’ drew upon both national and imperial (re)constructions. To this extent, the British Empire continued to play a key part in the English press’ framing of Britain 2012."""
How are nostalgia and melancholia connected to football? And are they 'political'? In this episode, co-hosts Guy and Francesco talk to Sheffield Hallam University's Jack Black about the meaning of the popular English football song, "It's... more
How are nostalgia and melancholia connected to football? And are they 'political'? In this episode, co-hosts Guy and Francesco talk to Sheffield Hallam University's Jack Black about the meaning of the popular English football song, "It's Coming Home" and how melancholy and nostalgia are part and parcel of football culture in England and beyond. That sets up a wider discussion about nostalgia in football and its connection to politics, especially those on the far right.
Research Interests: Football (soccer), Lacan, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Sigmund Freud, and 15 moreMelancholy, Lacanian theory, Freud and Lacan, Slavoj Zizek, Zizek, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Football Studies, Sociology of Football, English national identity, Mourning and melancholia, English National Identity and football, Football Ideology Politics Culture, Freudian Psychoanalysis, International Politcs of Football, and Freud
In this episode, we talk with Dr Jack Black from Sheffield Hallam University. We begin with an exploration of what Psychoanalysis might offer Sport. We then discuss Jack’s recent research on tackling online hate in football. Dr Jack... more
In this episode, we talk with Dr Jack Black from Sheffield Hallam University. We begin with an exploration of what Psychoanalysis might offer Sport. We then discuss Jack’s recent research on tackling online hate in football.
Dr Jack Black, an Associate Professor of Culture, Media, and Sport at Sheffield Hallam University. We discuss Jack’s latest book 'The Psychosis of Race: A Lacanian Approach to Racism and Racialization' (Routledge, 2023) and explore what psychoanalysis might offer sport. We also discuss his UKRI/AHRC funded project, 'Tackling Online Hate in Football', which analyses examples of online hate across digital media platforms.
Dr Jack Black, an Associate Professor of Culture, Media, and Sport at Sheffield Hallam University. We discuss Jack’s latest book 'The Psychosis of Race: A Lacanian Approach to Racism and Racialization' (Routledge, 2023) and explore what psychoanalysis might offer sport. We also discuss his UKRI/AHRC funded project, 'Tackling Online Hate in Football', which analyses examples of online hate across digital media platforms.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Sociology of Sport, Psychoanalysis, Race and Racism, Lacan, and 15 moreRace and Ethnicity, Sports Management, Jacques Lacan, Lacanian theory, Philosophy of Sport, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Lacanian psychoanalysis, Sport, Sports, Sport Studies, Sociology of Sports, Lacanian Analysis, Jaques Lacan, Sociology of Sport and Leisure, and Hate speech online
This week, we're joined again by Jack Black, Associate Professor of Culture, Media, and Sport at Sheffield Hallam University. We're talking football, melancholy, and English football anthems. How does football, or 'soccer', serve as an... more
This week, we're joined again by Jack Black, Associate Professor of Culture, Media, and Sport at Sheffield Hallam University. We're talking football, melancholy, and English football anthems. How does football, or 'soccer', serve as an emblematic example of Freudian/Zizekian concept of drive? Give a listen!
Research Interests: Psychoanalysis, Football (soccer), Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Lacanian theory, and 15 moreDesire, Philosophy of Sport, Slavoj Zizek, Zizek, Psychoanalytic Theory, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Žižek, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Football, Sport, Sports, Football Culture, Sociology of Football, Zizek studies, and Lacan and Zizek
Dr Jim Cherrington and Dr Jack Black from Sheffield Hallam University in the UK connect our everyday experiences of sport and activity with living in an age of catastrophe. Drawing on 13 case studies from their new edited book, they... more
Dr Jim Cherrington and Dr Jack Black from Sheffield Hallam University in the UK connect our everyday experiences of sport and activity with living in an age of catastrophe. Drawing on 13 case studies from their new edited book, they explore the consequences of this age, and what individuals and communities can do in the face of omnipresent catastrophes.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Disaster Studies, Sports Management, Physical Activity, Philosophy of Sport, and 15 moreNature Culture, Nature, Environmentalism, Sports, Exercise and physical activity for health, Sport Science, Catastrophes, Catastrophism, Sports Managment, Catastrophe Theory, Philosophy of Sports, Sociology of Sports, Sociology of Sport and Leisure, Sports Science, and The end of time
Jim Cherrington and Jack Black from Sheffield Hallam University in the UK join the Series to discuss their new edited collection, 'Sport and Physical Activity in Catastrophic Environments'. We discuss the role of sport around the world in... more
Jim Cherrington and Jack Black from Sheffield Hallam University in the UK join the Series to discuss their new edited collection, 'Sport and Physical Activity in Catastrophic Environments'. We discuss the role of sport around the world in rebuilding after catastrophe, the relationship between nature and technology, and mountain biking. The weird and eerie also feature.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Political Ecology, Environmental Studies, Risk Management, Philosophy of Sport, and 15 morePhilosophy of Nature, Nature, Disasters, Nature-Based Sport, Sport Studies, Catastrophes, Mountain Biking, Catastrophism, Mark Fisher, Sports Studies, Philosophy of Sports, Sociology of Sports, Sport and the Environment, Socio Cultural Studies In Sport, and Nature Sports
This week, the fellas are joined by Jack Black, Senior Lecturer at Centre for Culture, Media and Society, Sheffield Hallam University. Oriented around Jack's new book, 'Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy' (Routledge), we... more
This week, the fellas are joined by Jack Black, Senior Lecturer at Centre for Culture, Media and Society, Sheffield Hallam University. Oriented around Jack's new book, 'Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy' (Routledge), we talk 'true' and 'false' comedy, the concrete universal, the Office, and racist jokes. Thanks Jack!
Research Interests: Comedy, Critical Race Studies, Race and Racism, Critical Race Theory, Lacan, and 15 moreRace and Ethnicity, Hegel, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Lacanian theory, Slavoj Zizek, Stand Up Comedy, G.W.F. Hegel, Zizek, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Anti-Racism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Jokes, Film and Television Comedy, and Sociology of Ethnicity and Race
Jack Black (no, the Other Jack Black) joins the Pill Pod to discuss his new book "Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy: A Psychoanalytic Exploration." We cover all the hits from Hegel to Monty Python, and up to Žižek, Zupančič... more
Jack Black (no, the Other Jack Black) joins the Pill Pod to discuss his new book "Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy: A Psychoanalytic Exploration." We cover all the hits from Hegel to Monty Python, and up to Žižek, Zupančič and Sacha Baron Cohen.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Psychoanalysis, Comedy, Race and Racism, Lacan, and 15 moreHegel, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Žižek, Lacanian theory, Philosophy of Humour, Lacanian Theory (Culture), Lacanian psychoanalysis, Humour Studies, Jokes, Film and Television Comedy, Alenka Zupancic, Racist jokes, Lacanian Analysis, Jaques Lacan, and Xenophobia and Racism
Jack Black, Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy (Routledge 2021). In what ways is comedy subversive? This vital new book critically considers the importance of comedy in challenging and redefining our relations to race and... more
Jack Black, Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy (Routledge 2021). In what ways is comedy subversive? This vital new book critically considers the importance of comedy in challenging and redefining our relations to race and racism through the lens of political correctness.
On this episode of New Books Network, your host Lee M. Pierce (they) interviews author Jack Black (he) about psychoanalysis, PC culture, The Office, and the subversive potential of comedy to change our collective experience. Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy engages with the social and cultural tensions inherent to our understandings of political correctness, arguing that comedy can subversively redefine our approach to ‘PC debates’, contestations surrounding free speech and the popular portrayal of political correctness in the media and society. Aided by the work of both Slavoj Žižek and Alenka Zupančič, this unique analysis adopts a psychoanalytic/philosophical framework to explore issues of race, racism and political correctness in the widely acclaimed BBC ‘mockumentary’, The Office (UK), as well as a variety of television comedies. Jack Black is a Senior Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. After completing his postgraduate studies at Loughborough University, his research has continued to explore the interrelationships between sociology, media and communications and cultural studies.
On this episode of New Books Network, your host Lee M. Pierce (they) interviews author Jack Black (he) about psychoanalysis, PC culture, The Office, and the subversive potential of comedy to change our collective experience. Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy engages with the social and cultural tensions inherent to our understandings of political correctness, arguing that comedy can subversively redefine our approach to ‘PC debates’, contestations surrounding free speech and the popular portrayal of political correctness in the media and society. Aided by the work of both Slavoj Žižek and Alenka Zupančič, this unique analysis adopts a psychoanalytic/philosophical framework to explore issues of race, racism and political correctness in the widely acclaimed BBC ‘mockumentary’, The Office (UK), as well as a variety of television comedies. Jack Black is a Senior Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. After completing his postgraduate studies at Loughborough University, his research has continued to explore the interrelationships between sociology, media and communications and cultural studies.