Do Filminds Dream of Celluloid Sheep? Lacan, Filmosophy and Blade Runner 2049

This essay explores the role of the unconscious in both Daniel Frampton’s filmosophy (where it is unacknowledged) and in Blade Runner 2049 (where it is in question). Reading the “filmind” of 2049 as a “replicant film” or “replicant filmind”, the chapter examines the relationship between “posthuman” thinking in both Frampton and 2049, and relating it to the nonhuman thinking of the Lacanian unconscious—wherein the truth of the subject is to be found

Behind the Curtain: Fetishism and the Production of Virtual Reality Treatment for PTSD

Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan, a virtual reality (VR) exposure therapy designed for the treatment of combat-related PTSD, has generated wide public interest in the wake of growing concerns over mental health problems among service members. Enlisting concepts from the fields of cultural studies and psychoanalytic film criticism, the paper interprets the VR therapy program as a form of technology fetishism within the expanding apparatus of military mental health operations. Even as the program seeks to expose the “invisible wounds of war,” the stories produced through this use of visual culture conform closely to hegemonic military accounts of the psychological effects of combat