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<h1 id="toc_marker-4" class="article-title"><a id="Social-Media---or-Towards-a-Political-Economy-of-Psychic-Life" />Social Media, or Towards a Political Economy of Psychic Life</h1>
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<p class="red">On what basis should we develop alternatives to Facebook and other for-profit social networking sites? A great deal of discussion and a large number of projects presented at the Unlike Us Amsterdam<em> </em>conference in 2012 focused on alternatives to Facebook that disentangle the social from the for-profit motive. Overall, alternatives to Facebook have been focused on the politics and rights of users, with special attention to rebuilding privacy on social networks, from the right to anonymity to re-empowering users to be able to decide what kind of data can be collected on them and for what purposes. </p>
<p>While crucial, the question of privacy is not the only one that needs to be addressed. The uniqueness of social media can be examined not so much as content delivery platforms, but rather as platforms through which we live our lives. Social media, contrary to the media of old, are not in the business of developing content: social media users are the main content creators, be they professional app developers or high school students. What social media do, which is unique to them and radically different from other media, is that they offer us a set of tools and practices to make content meaningful to us, to our likes, to our life. </p>
<p>Social media, then, are in the business of making us live our lives by helping us find, foster and maintain meaningful connections to information, people, movements, and in all, the world at large. This is perhaps why we have grown so attached to them in their short period of existence. </p>
<p>This conception of social networks as platforms for living begs for further exploration. Living in this specific context has to do with the constant search for meaning: meaningful connections, meaningful information, meaningful action. The kind of living I am referring to here is mundane, but also philosophical, and as I would particularly like to argue here, psychological. What happens, though, when our psychic lives have to be mediated by information technologies that primarily serve a for-profit motive? That psychic life has become a new market to be invested in is bound to raise some concerns. At the same time, one should not deny the potential for developing new spaces that make use of information and network technologies in ways that are more at the service of human users: technologies for fostering creativity and, in psychoanalytic terms, authenticity.</p>
<h3 class="text_subtitle">Platforms for Living</h3>
<p>‘Why won’t more people give up on Facebook now that we know how bad it is for privacy?’ Such a question, which was raised in one of the discussion periods of the Unlike Us Amsterdam conference, is somewhat tricky to tackle for any critic of social media focused on thinking about alternatives. Indeed, the dangers of the likes of Facebook for privacy are routinely making the headlines and yet, Facebook is getting more users. Answers to this conundrum usually include the stickiness of for-profit social media as now essential components of human communication; the loss of connection that would happen if one was to give up the main platforms through which to be in touch with friends and family; the uncanny and widespread addiction to constantly changing flows of updates; and the pervasive attitude that privacy does not matter as most people do not feel like they have something to hide.<sup><a id="footnote-296135-1-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-1">1</a></sup> Or to put it simply, for-
profit social media are just too much a part of our lives for us to do without, and too complicated and expensive for us to construct alternatives.</p>
<p>All these answers suggest that social media hold a new kind of power, that they are more than just tools, or means of communication. Giving up social media is not on the same level as, say, giving up watching TV or playing computer games. What is at stake is more than entertainment or information gathering: social media allow us to carry on living and provide a platform for experiencing friendship, love, utter boredom, and loneliness in no particular order, in short, the very stuff of life. Without them as a constant presence on our computers, tablets, or cell phones, we would be missing out, quite literally, on our lives. It is this point – that social media are platforms through which we live our lives – that I would like to explore here. </p>
<p>Social media are both incredibly dangerous and incredibly liberating because their main investment is in lives being lived. What we need now is a new framework to understand the relations between social media and life, and in particular, the ways in which social media operate within the realms of not only social or cultural life, but also psychic life: not only our practices and knowledge, but also our emotions, affects, desires and fears, both extraordinary and mundane. Social media, and this is what I focus on here, operate at the moment of the opening up of the psyche to the world: the moments when we seek an outside confirmation of what it is we are experiencing inside, the moments when we seek out external contact in order to feed our psychic needs for comfort, support, excitement, and reassurance.</p>
<p>Such a perspective on the psychic process of opening up to the world has mostly been developed within psychoanalysis, and under the label of a ‘relational’ approach.<sup><a id="footnote-296135-2-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-2">2</a></sup> The relational approach includes a wide array of theoretical perspectives that start with the premise that relationships to other human beings are at the core of the development of the psyche.<sup><a id="footnote-296135-3-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-3">3</a></sup> These theories, in short, argue that subjectivity and personal identity formation cannot exist without intersubjectivity, without an other subject to recognize us as individual subject, and relate to us as such.<sup><a id="footnote-296135-4-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-4">4</a></sup> From a psychoanalytic treatment perspective, becoming a robust individual capable of feeling a wide range of emotions, of being creative and
resourceful, requires having been in relation with benevolent figures. </p>
<p id="abc-test"><a href="#def-test">How do social media invest in psychic life? Social media are structuring platforms linking language, technology, economics, and psychology in very unique ways: language now is both a reflection of the psyche as well as it is a set of informational technologies. Thoughts, affects, and emotions do not simply emanate from the human psyche anymore, they are valuable products that can now be produced by search engine and recommendation software in an environment that makes a profit out of people expressing themselves and living their lives.</a> </p>
<p>As such, most of the popular social media, with the exception of Wikipedia, have been invaded by the for-profit motive, and the informational capacity of social media makes it possible to open up psychic life – the life of intangible thoughts, affects and emotions - to marketization. It is time, therefore, to develop a political economy of psychic life: we need to study the structuration of power formations serving specific interests (i.e. commercial profit-making) through the building of alliances of diverse political, economic, cultural, technological, linguistic, and psychic processes. A political economy of social media specifically interrogates how these dynamics of structuration are organized and patterned through the interfaces, data repository, and information processing systems developed within and across social media platforms. Such an analytical project will make it possible to identify alternatives to social media with regards to psychic involvement.</p>
<h3 class="text_subtitle">Free Communication and Liberated Lives?</h3>
<p>Social media, and in particular the most popular platforms such as the parts of the Google universe (Blogger, YouTube, Google +), along with social networking sites (Facebook), and micro-blogging platforms (Twitter), have radically deconstructed the links between free communication as the unfettered exchange of information and positive social change, and collective and individual empowerment and transformation. Social media seemingly reconcile the promise of democratic, free, and uncensored communication with for-profit ventures. Now, as the mainstream story goes, democratic revolutions such as the 2011 Arab Spring are rendered possible by giant social media platforms, in particular Facebook and Twitter. </p>
<p>It thus seems that meaningful connections, creative potential, and transformative actions (in short, the stuff that makes life worth living), go hand-in-hand with the for-profit motive. As the story goes, it does not matter what kind of social media is being developed: whether for-profit or not-for-profit, social media mean undeniable progress towards more egalitarian and socially relevant forms of communication. </p>
<p>The problem with such an equation between unfettered communication and positive transformation is that it only looks at one aspect of social media: the communication among human users at the interface level. Social media are much more than that: software and informational machines communicate with users as well, particularly through search suggestions, targeted recommendations, and automated updates. Furthermore, communication on social media is not simply at the interface level, it also takes place at the back-end through the trafficking of user data in order to generate large amounts of profiling information that can then be sold to third parties. </p>
<p>As such, we now need to consider that free communication among users should not be entirely equated with positive transformation and liberation: after all, the content I put on for-profit social media ceases to belong to me, and is captured and monitored for purposes other than what I intended. I might be free to communicate, but what I express can be privatized, put under surveillance and monitored without my consent. </p>
<p>One could argue anyway that the communication among users is still important and can evolve and circulate in the human sphere and have deep social, political, and psychic repercussions regardless of what data capture system is being used. However, social media play a crucial role in trying to establish the meaningfulness of information. Social media do not simply display information, they rank it from the more meaningful to the less meaningful. Social media have different logics of ranking, but increasingly they have to do with personalization, that is, closeness in a network of connections: what is meaningful is what is near me, speaks my language, is liked by my network, and fits with my views and those of my peers. In so doing, the politics of human communication are not simply about what is being said, or put out there: they have to do increasingly with the informational logics of social media, and how social media distribute, hierarchize, and attribute meaningfulness to information.</p>
<p>Given this new context, we should be weary of the once unquestionable link between free communication and transformation for the better, although for-profit social media are based on this assumption: the ideology of social media is that the more the platform knows about a user, the more it can serve his or her needs, suggest discovery paths, and find answers. As such, social media are not just venues for sharing information and communication – they offer patterns and guidance about how to go about our daily lives and our being with others. Social media are mundane, ubiquitous and psychic. Their purpose is to tell us what we should do, what we want, how we should feel, who should be our next friend, what is our next favorite TV show, novel or movie, and which political cause is worthy of our attention, etc. </p>
<p>One of the paradoxes of social media, however, is that in their constant search for meaningfulness, they end up making communication meaningless. This perhaps is more of a Western ‘so what?’ phenomenon: so many activists and citizens have a presence on social media, yet it does not often lead to any kind of meaningful change. Meaningful is the keyword here: in the deconstruction of the politics of communication that happens through social media, simply saying something is not enough. In order for any kind of human communication to be meaningful, it has to be noticed by others, and then lead to some kind of political action, or social change, or shift in awareness. </p>
<p>The problem is that communication on social media does not always lead to transformative practices and meaningful actions. More often than not, raising awareness about an issue just stagnates at the level of never-ending discussion. While I do not want to suggest that communication tactics could not be put in place to address this phenomenon, there is a built-in paradoxical logic of social media platforms: in order to retain the attention of users, the search for meaningfulness has to be never-ending, and any kind of gratification needs to be temporary or constantly delayed. As such, the constant circulation of information in networks that are cut off from real transformative possibilities gives rise to meaninglessness. </p>
<p id="def-test">Furthermore, the articulation of data gathering and specific search logics for personalization purposes is not the same as mirroring the unknown desires and psychic needs of users, although for-profit social media do a very good job at convincing us of this. In particular, social media suffer from an excess of positive connectivity: the assumption is that a happy individual is one who is constantly connecting with others online. The right to be left alone, to look at a distance, to be weary, in short, to have multiple kinds of connection with others, including negative connections, tends to not exist on for-profit social media.</p>
<p>In all, social media have inserted themselves as the media who can help in the unfolding of our lives, although their success in doing so is sometimes negated by their for-profit motive. Rather than in the therapeutic situation, where we are mainly encouraged to rely on ourselves with the support of a benevolent other for change, social media allow us to expel our uncertainties and desires, to literally find the answer elsewhere. Our critical interest, then, should be placed on those moments when social media seek to meet and match-up with the human psyche through personalized recommendations, suggestions, and admonitions. </p>
<h3 class="text_subtitle">From Machinic Subjectivation to Psychic Investment</h3>
<p>Social media platforms teeter on a fine line, between enriching our lives and, in their ever-growing knowledge about us, overly controlling them. It is not possible to deny one of these two aspects of social media, as they are intrinsically linked: the economic success of for-profit social media is based on users’ continuous search for and struggle with meaningfulness, connection, and self-discovery. Social media make use of communication, of information networks, of data-mining to produce ways in which we can engage in this search. What is needed is a framework to understand what life on social media has become, and in particular the new contours of such a problematic articulation of capitalist motives and psychic life through software platforms and data networking.</p>
<p>For these reasons, I would like to further explore the trafficking of data at the back-end of social media but in so doing to turn away from questions of software and network architecture towards the question of life: how do social media insert themselves within the process of self-discovery through opening up to the world? Such an exploration is already well under way thanks to autonomist works that have identified the rise of new forms of capitalism that financially and technologically invest in creativity, intelligence, knowledge, and language for economic success. </p>
<p>The trafficking of user data is about the management of subjectivation.<sup><a id="footnote-296135-5-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-5">5</a></sup> Looking at subjectivation means looking at the processes through which we become specific subjects. Subjectivation takes place when we are educated, invited, forced, coerced, or convinced to try to fit within specific power formations. In the for-profit social media environment this actualization can take the form of product purchases that are recommended to us on our Gmail or Facebook account, or having to watch advertisements on YouTube before being able to watch the video of our choice. In these cases, we are strongly invited to fit in with the customer subject position, and to realize that one of our central modes of proving our existence is through the buying of commodities. </p>
<p>However, such a classical form of consumer subjectivation is but one aspect of what is taking place on for-profit social media. Subjectivation also means fitting within the logic of social media platforms through continuous status updates, accepting recommendations, clicking on links, etc., overall, through continuous use of the platform. Such good behaviors can be rewarded: if I invite other people to use a social media platform, then I can get bigger storage for my account or credit for purchases, and other perks. Subjectivation takes place when we are invited and encouraged to adopt specific modes of usership – ways of expressing ourselves, ways of valuing the informational logic of the platform and its recommendation system, and ways of relating to others. One of the biggest perks of being a ‘good’ user is to be recognized and seen by the rest of the network: the more I contribute on Facebook and interact with peers and accept lack of control over my own data, the more prominently my contributions
will be featured, therefore, the more popular I will become; the more I review products on other social media platforms, the more I will be presented as a trustworthy contributor. </p>
<p>This reward system allows for a sense of empowerment of the user, of greater possibilities, and is in keeping with Foucault’s definition of power as productive rather than entirely repressive.<sup><a id="footnote-296135-6-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-6">6</a></sup> The subject, in this case, the social media user, has to conform to some rules and ways of doing things in order to have the possibility to enrich his or her self. The influence of autonomist thought is key to understanding the new form of capitalism that is developed through social media: one that feeds directly off the subjective life of users in order to create the ideal conditions of consumption.<sup><a id="footnote-296135-7-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-7">7</a></sup> Social media are not about the selling of commodities, they are about creating the attitudes and subject positions that can be mined for commercialization purposes. </p>
<p>While subjectivation is an important site of analysis, we should keep in mind that the concept of the subject is not the same as psychic life. Subjectivation can operate on multiple levels: psychic, but also biological, political, and economic among others. Psychic life, in turn, cannot be reduced to being one aspect of the process of subjectivation: it also includes the multiple reactions, both conscious and unconscious, that take place as we encounter the world and derive from it models of behavior, expectations, and beliefs.<sup><a id="footnote-296135-8-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-8">8</a></sup> </p>
<p>Looking at the psychic reactions to processes of subjectivation invites us to analyze a whole realm of human experience that has been so far mostly discussed within the field of psychoanalysis. In relational theories, one way to analyze the relationships between subjectivation and psychic life is through the concept of the false self.<sup><a id="footnote-296135-9-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-9">9</a></sup> A false self is created to fit into external pressures that one cannot control and the true self – the self capable of creativity, of forging meanings, of transforming itself – is buried. What that entails, though, is a pervasive feeling of living an empty and depleted life marked by mental health issues such as depression, anguish, stress and paranoia. What I would like to argue next, then, is that depression, dissociation, desires, feelings of satisfaction, as well as the search for attachment figures, the navigating of relationships to the Other, now have to be included
in any critical approach to social media, including a political economy one. </p>
<p>Such a bridge between questions regarding the psyche and critical studies is well under way: theories of subjectivity have been combined with psychoanalytic theory,<sup><a id="footnote-296135-10-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-10">10</a></sup> while psychic life, starting with Deleuze and Guattari’s <em>Anti-Oedipus,</em><sup><a id="footnote-296135-11-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-11">11</a></sup> along with Guattari’s work on schizo-analysis,<sup><a id="footnote-296135-12-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-12">12</a></sup> has been taken out of the confines of the psychoanalytical setting to become a matter of politics and technology. In all, the turn towards immaterial forms of labor has raised greater awareness of the state of the psyche as a reflection of contemporary power struggles. Bifo’s exploration of the ‘soul at work’<sup><a id="footnote-296135-13-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-13">13</a></sup> and
his examination of depression, stress and paranoia as a product of a capitalist system that feeds off the human psyche by investing in the human capacity for creation and imagination illustrate this new turn in the mining of psychic life through information technologies. </p>
<p>In the case of social media, dissatisfaction with one’s location as a site of subjectivation gives way to a range of phenomena that current critical and political economy analyses tend to ignore: lassitude, paranoia, non-engagement, apathy, depletion in the face of the constant personalized streams of information we receive should be taken into account. Sherry Turkle’s <em>Alone Together</em>,<sup><a id="footnote-296135-14-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-14">14</a></sup> while often summarized as yet another pessimistic account of social media, raises an important point: through social media use, we expose our vulnerabilities – our need for connection, for recognition, for meaningfulness – to a technological apparatus that has instilled itself as that which can make sense of the world for us. The problem is that connection to the world in order to discover one’s place in the world is not the same as network connectivity: the constant linking that happens through social media
gives very little space to pauses, constructive breakdowns, and the creation of new ways of seeking reassurance from the world. </p>
<h3 class="text_subtitle">Transitional Media</h3>
<p>Given this new context of what could be called a form of psychic capitalism, what could alternatives to for-profit social media look like? It should be clear at this point that the design of user interfaces is only part of the answer. The Amsterdam Unlike Us conference was extremely useful in pointing out that the communication that happens at the interface level among users is only the tip of the iceberg, if we want to understand the new kind of power that social media yield. </p>
<p>At the interface level, we can have an impression of free communication and free expression, where expressions can be shared by anybody. However, it is crucial to study the back-end of social media platforms, and the trafficking and mining of user data, profiles, likes, behaviors, and preferences that can be associated with commodities. Worries about privacy, intellectual property, black-boxed platforms, and networks thus highlight the fact that the site of power struggles has shifted from communication among human actors to the circulation of one’s data within invisible networks that come back to haunt us as a constant stream of personalized recommendations. Indeed, the capacity to track individual users online, but also, through the spread of geo-location tools, in the real world, raises serious concerns about the overbearing presence of insidious marketing in our lives. </p>
<p>My point about social media and psychic life should be seen as an extension of this concern with privacy: through constant tracking and profiling, social media attempt to pinpoint potential moments of when one’s psyche opens up to the world. The new markets for personalized commodification and marketing that this offers are barely being defined, but one could easily see the risk posed by the expansion of subjection strategies further and further into the psyche.</p>
<p>While I do not want to negate the crucial importance of the negative aspects of social media, I would like to turn now to examining their more potentially transformative aspects. This really is about how social media platforms have inserted themselves as central components of psychic and subjective life as we use social media more and more as platforms for self-discovery, for forging relationships (whether intimate or more superficial, whether for friendship or professional networking), for, in short, being with each other and with ourselves. In many ways, this work is already under way: the design of alternative social networks obviously includes a reflection on the condition of being a user, and on the ideal relation among users and between users and technology.<sup><a id="footnote-296135-15-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-15">15</a></sup> Reflecting on social networking technology as an aid to psychic living aims to give new conceptual tools for furthering such reflections.</p>
<p>Any kind of transformative project, including political ones, requires opening up a sense of possibilities. Social media do open up this sense of possibilities, but their focus on the for-profit motives curtails and oftentimes eventually negates the very sense of creative possibility through authentic encounters with others. This sense of possibility cannot simply be material – it has to enter into psychic life. Thus from economics and information politics we switch to psychotherapy and sociotherapy to examine how social media can enrich lives. This pharmacological perspective, from Stiegler’s concept of pharmacology as that which is both poison and cure depending on dosage and mixing with other ingredients,<sup><a id="footnote-296135-16-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-16">16</a></sup> requires thinking about social media beyond the notion of connectivity to that of authentic recognition. That is, we need to develop social media as spaces where we are not only put in touch with
others, but also where we can fully explore what relationships with others can mean, and how they can help generate a sense of creativity and transformation.</p>
<p>The problem is that the cultivation of psychic transformation at the service of reviving one’s creativity and life-force is mostly addressed through the very specific setting of the psychoanalytical clinic: a therapist and a client or clients devoting a specific amount of time to work on resolving conflicts and issues that prevent the formation of an authentic self capable of defining and finding meaningfulness. Such a setting, of course, would be difficult to transpose to a social media platform. In particular, the contemporary psychoanalytic setting is dependent on the absence of mediation: the main mode of transformation is through a direct verbal exchange between client and therapist. Social media should not be re-included in psychic life as some kind of artificial intelligence that could take on the traditional therapeutic role of objective interpreter of psychological symptoms. Rather, as much as current psychoanalytic treatment is based on reflecting on and exploring the relational space between
therapist and clients, so social media can act as a space of mediation to explore the contours of creativity in one’s specific setting.</p>
<p>As such, there is much promise in conceptualizing social media as transitional spaces. The idea of the transitional comes from Winnicott’s analysis of children’s relationships with special toys or objects (i.e. a special teddy bear, or a special blanket). Winnicott argues that these objects serve a fundamental transitional function in that they offer a place that is neither entirely internal to the child’s psyche nor completely belonging to an external reality.<sup><a id="footnote-296135-17-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-17">17</a></sup> The transitional object offers a secure space in-between the external and internal where a subject can experiment with the world out there. Transitional objects can be extended to art as artistic experiences transmit and awaken in the spectator a sense of creativity, of new potential. The question, then, is to know how social media could be designed as transitional spaces. This requires thinking about how information and data processing could be
used to allow users to create, rehearse and play with representations of themselves and representations of others. </p>
<p>At the same time, it is crucial to develop a kind of social media that does not provide only a gaming simulation. This would foster a solipsistic environment where everything becomes unreal, simulated, and cut off from life out there. Thus, thinking about social media as transitional spaces requires that we understand them as providing what Judith Butler<sup><a id="footnote-296135-18-backlink" class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-296135-18">18</a></sup> calls norms of recognition: the spaces and patterns through which we examine, figure out, and forge who we are in relation to others. In that sense, social media as transitional media should include a space of reflection on authentic encounter and should be able to raise awareness about the conditions of being subjects in the world with others. Such recommendations, at this point, might seem too broad and vague, but they might be helpful for developing new perspectives about technically-mediated connections to others and the world. </p>
<h3 class="text_subtitle">Psychic Life and the Importance of Recognition </h3>
<p>Needless to say, talking about psychic life is fraught with perils, the first one being the very real risk of sounding extremely corny by bringing in to the fore affects and emotions (such as love, loneliness and yearning) that are usually not considered as part of any ‘serious’ political and critical projects. However, it would be a mistake to only see social media from the perspective of information politics in the narrow sense: social media are not just tools for control, they are the platforms through which we live our lives, through which, increasingly and perhaps sometimes exclusively, we express our search for meaning and connection. Not taking into account the many consequences of this search – from privacy issues and surveillance to the commodification of psychic life – would be detrimental to crafting viable alternatives to social media. </p>
<p class="text-last">Social media impose specific patterns of connectivity to psychic life: social media are not about providing content (that is the job of other users or third parties), they are about providing the patterns through which the exchange of content can become an act of meaningful recognition of one’s place in the world (with friends, with institutions, with cultural texts, etc.) and can therefore lead to action (such as the purchase of a commodity, or engagement in political acts). Of course such patterning is not smooth, and the emotional and existential dissatisfactions we experience with for-profit social media are important indicators of the interpenetration of economic motives and psychic development. Deconstructing such interpenetration, in turn, can lead to a new conception of the role of social media in psychic life. </p>
<h6 class="references_title">References</h6>
<p class="references">Benjamin, Jessica. <em>Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis</em>, 1st edition, London: Routledge, 1997.</p>
<p class="references">______. <em>Like Subjects, Love Objects: Essays on Recognition and Sexual Difference</em>, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.</p>
<p class="references">Berardi, Franco ‘Bifo’. <em>The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy</em>, trans. Francesca Cadel and Giuseppina Mecchia, New York: Semiotext(e), 2009.</p>
<p class="references">Berlant, Lauren. <em>Cruel Optimism</em>, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011.</p>
<p class="references">Butler, Judith. <em>The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection</em>, 1st edition, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.</p>
<p class="references">______. <em>Frames Of War</em>, London and New York: Verso Press USA, 2010.</p>
<p class="references">Deleuze, Gilles. <em>Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia</em>, 1st edition, Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 1983.</p>
<p class="references">Foucault, Michel. <em>Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977</em>, New York: Vintage, 1980.</p>
<p class="references">Frosh, Stephen. <em>Psychoanalysis Outside the Clinic</em>, London: Palgrave Macmilan, 2010.</p>
<p class="references">Guattari, Félix. <em>The Machinic Unconscious: Essays in Schizoanalysis</em>, trans.Taylor Adkins, New York: Semiotext(e), 2010.</p>
<p class="references">Kelty, Christopher M. <em>Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software</em>, Durham and London: Duke University Press Books, 2008.</p>
<p class="references">Lazzarato, Maurizio. <em>Révolutions Du Capitalisme</em>, Paris: Empêcheurs de Penser en Rond, 2004.</p>
<p class="references">______. <em>The Making of the Indebted Man: An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition</em>, trans. Joshua David Jordan, New York: Semiotext(e), 2012. </p>
<p class="references">Stiegler, Bernard. <em>For a New Critique of Political Economy</em>, Malden and Cambridge: Polity, 2010.</p>
<p class="references">Turkle, Sherry. <em>Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other</em>, New York: Basic Books, 2011.</p>
<p class="references">Solove, Daniel. ‘“I’ve Got Nothing to Hide” and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy’, Social Science Research Network, 12 July 2007, <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=998565">http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=998565</a>.</p>
<p class="references">Virno, Paolo. <em>A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life</em>, trans. Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito and Andrea Casson. 1st US edition, New York: Semiotext(e), 2004.</p>
<p class="references">Winnicott, D.W. <em>Playing and Reality</em>, 2nd edition, London: Routledge, 2005.</p>
<p class="references-last">______. ‘Ego Distortion in Terms of True and False Self’, in D.W. Winnicott, <em>The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development</em>, New York: International UP Inc., 1965, pp. 140-152.</p>
<div class="footnotes">
<h6 class="references_title">Notes</h6>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-1" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-1-backlink">1</a>.	Daniel Solove, ‘“I’ve Got Nothing to Hide” and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy’, Social Science Research Network, 12 July 2007, <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=998565">http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=998565</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-2" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-2-backlink">2</a>.	Stephen Frosh, <em>Psychoanalysis Outside the Clinic</em>, London: Palgrave Macmilan, 2010, p. 32.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-3" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-3-backlink">3</a>.	D.W. Winnicott, <em>Playing and Reality</em>. 2nd edition, London: Routledge, 2005.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-4" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-4-backlink">4</a>.	Jessica Benjamin, <em>Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis</em>, 1st edition, London: Routledge, 1997; Jessica Benjamin, <em>Like Subjects, Love Objects: Essays on Recognition and Sexual Difference</em>, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-5" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-5-backlink">5</a>.	Maurizio Lazzarato, <em>The Making of the Indebted Man: An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition, </em>trans. Joshua David Jordan, New York: Semiotext(e), 2012; Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, <em>The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy</em>, trans. Francesca Cadel and Giuseppina Mecchia, New York: Semiotext(e), 2009; Paolo Virno, <em>A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life</em>, trans. Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito and Andrea Casson, 1st US edition, New York: Semiotext(e), 2004.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-6" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-6-backlink">6</a>.	Michel Foucault, <em>Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977</em>, New York: Vintage, 1980.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-7" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-7-backlink">7</a>.	Maurizio Lazzarato, <em>Révolutions Du Capitalisme</em>, Paris: Empêcheurs de Penser en Rond, 2004.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-8" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-8-backlink">8</a>.	Judith Butler, <em>The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection</em>, 1st edition, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 86.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-9" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-9-backlink">9</a>.	D.W. Winnicott, ‘Ego Distortion in Terms of True and False Self’, in D.W. Winnicott, <em>The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development</em>, New York: International UP Inc., 1965, pp. 140-152.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-10" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-10-backlink">10</a>.	Butler, <em>The Psychic Life of Power</em>; Lauren Berlant, <em>Cruel Optimism</em>, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-11" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-11-backlink">11</a>.	Gilles Deleuze, <em>Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia</em>, 1st edition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-12" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-12-backlink">12</a>.	Félix Guattari, <em>The Machinic Unconscious: Essays in Schizoanalysis</em>, trans. Taylor Adkins, New York: Semiotext(e), 2010.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-13" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-13-backlink">13</a>.	Berardi, <em>The Soul at Work</em>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-14" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-14-backlink">14</a>.	Sherry Turkle, <em>Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other</em>, New York: Basic Books, 2011.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-15" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-15-backlink">15</a>.	Christopher M. Kelty, <em>Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software</em>, Durham and London: Duke University Press Books, 2008.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-16" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-16-backlink">16</a>.	Bernard Stiegler, <em>For a New Critique of Political Economy</em>, Malden and Cambridge: Polity, 2010.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-17" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-17-backlink">17</a>.	D.W. Winnicott, <em>Playing and Reality</em>.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote">
<p class="xfootnote"><a id="footnote-296135-18" class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-296135-18-backlink">18</a>.	Judith Butler, <em>Frames Of War</em>, London and New York: Verso Press USA, 2010.</p>
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