The neoliberal subject, reality TV and free association: A Freudian audience study of Embarrassing Bodies

This article presents particular themes from an audience study with viewers of the British reality show Embarrassing Bodies (Channel 4). A methodology based on the Freudian technique of free association was used to research viewers’ narratives about the programme. I focus on two participants who spoke about the show in terms that make use of internalised neoliberal discourses about the limits to entitlement to public healthcare as well as self-responsibility for staying healthy. They also discussed aspects which contradicted those themes. The narratives were of an ambiguous nature and shifting views were outlined in the course of each interview. I theorise such shifting with Sigmund Freud’s concept of ‘negation’ whereby an idea is rejected in order to avoid further engagement with it. Rather than accusing the viewers of lying or having false consciousness, psychoanalysis opens up nuanced ways of interpreting the data. It helps us to understand how individuals are (un)consciously positioned in contemporary austerity and crisis discourses around healthcare. Given the ambivalent interview narratives, I conclude that the current economic climate in the UK has resulted in the formation of subjectivities who struggle to make sense of it as they simultaneously resist and embrace it

Immaterial Labour and Reality TV: The Affective Surplus of Excess

Drawing on discussions of neoliberalism, immaterial labour and exploitation of reality television participants, this article argues that the patients on the British reality show ‘Embarrassing Bodies’ are exploited because they receive no monetary return for their performances and are frequently shamed on camera. It then seeks to theorize exploited labour on reality television through Debord’s notion of the Spectacle. The author argues that in contemporary reality television the Spectacle is amplified through shame and affect. This is particularly evident in programmes that are about health and the body. The spectacular labour depicted in such programmes may serve to attract audiences for entertainment purposes, as well as to discipline them so that they remain healthy and productive workers

Towards a Psychoanalytic Concept of Affective-Digital Labour

This article draws on the argument that users on corporate social media conduct labour through the sharing of usergenerated content. Critical political economists argue that such acts contribute to value creation on social media and are therefore to be seen as labour. Following a brief introduction of this paradigm, I relate it to the notion of affective labour which has been popularised by the Marxist thinkers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. To them, affective labour (as a sub-category of immaterial labour) denotes embodied forms of labour that are about passion, well-being, feelings of ease, immaterial products and generally a kind of communicative relationality between individuals. I point to some problems with a lack of clarity in their conceptualisation of affective labour and argue that the Freudian model of affect can help in theorising affective labour further through a focus on social media. According to Freud, affect can be understood as a subjective, bodily experience which is in tension with the discursive and denotes a momentary feeling of bodily dispossession. In order to illustrate those points, I draw on some data from a research project which featured interviews with social media users who have facial disfigurements about their affective experiences online. The narratives attempt to turn embodied experiences into discourse

Did We Fail? (Counter-)Transference in a Qualitative Media Research Interview

Drawing on Joke Hermes’ (2006) account of a troubling interview, this article reproduces and reflects on passages from a qualitative interview with a user of a social networking site that was experienced as uncomfortable by both interviewee and interviewer (myself). The psychoanalytic concept of (counter-)transference is used to analyse the possible processes that led to the emergence of two narratives by the interviewee and interviewer and resulted in an unsuccessful research encounter. It is suggested that the analysis of the interview narratives may contribute to Wanda S. Pillow’s (2003) notion of an ‘uncomfortable reflexivity’. It may further add to methodological discussions of the interview in media research by placing an emphasis on a complex theory of the subject and intersubjective dynamics

The Subject in the Crowd: A Critical Discussion of Jodi Dean’s “Crowds and Party”

This article presents a critical discussion of Jodi Dean’s (2016) book “Crowds and Party”. I pay particular attention to her discussion of crowds and the Communist Party that is influenced by psychoanalysis. Dean has put forward an important argument for the affectivity within crowds that may be transformed into a Communist Party that is characterised by a similar affective infrastructure. I suggest that Dean’s discussion of affect is slightly vague at times and may be supplemented with Sigmund Freud’s work on affect. In contrast to Dean, who stresses the collectivity and deindividuation of the crowd, I argue that the crowd needs to be thought of as a place where individuality and collectivity come together and remain in tension. Such a tension may then be managed by the Party, as Dean illustrates

Competing narratives in framing disability in the UK media: a comparative analysis of journalistic representations of facial disfigurement versus practices of self-representations online

By using discourse analysis, this paper compares and contrasts the journalistic coverage of the story of a beauty blogger with facial disfigurement with her blog. On the one hand, we will show the extent to which a self-representational account may align with the journalistic coverage, reinforcing rather than contesting mainstream representations of disability. On the other, we will demonstrate how a person with a disfigurement can use blogging to reclaim her own identity and challenge the medical objectification of her body perpetuated by mainstream media. This research found that rather than being mutually exclusive, journalism and blogging can play a complementary role in shaping the society’s understanding of the complexities and contradictions surrounding disfigurement