From the Industrial Unconscious to the Cinematic to the Televisual to the Networked

Abstract

This essay offers a concept of the “post-postmodern” working off of the premise that the unconscious is historically specific. Thus, the Freudian unconscious, modeled according to the conventions of industrial reality, provides its greatest explanatory heft in regard to a realist subject. The Lacanian unconscious, however, modeled on the conventions of cinematic representation, more aptly describes the modernist subject, while an unconscious modeled on televisual principles best serves to understand the postmodern subject. In this context, the post-postmodern unconscious may reflect the synergistic world of new media, where reality is accessed rather than mediated, and the archive, instead of delimiting personal experience, is created by it. Post-postmodern reality, therefore, may characterize an eclectic and sui genris tapestry of rhizomatic connections. This phenomenon is exemplified by the difference between the 1977 Marina Abramovic postmodern performance, “Imponderabilia” and that performance’s incorporation in the post-postmodern MoMA retrospective of her work.