Obsessional writing

Abstract

This essay seeks to respond to recent claims concerning the radical and decisive transformation of media, technology and communications in contemporary times, by proposing a theory of obsessional writing in which the latter manifests itself in terms of an originary technicity. Drawing on psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and the writings of Sartre and Genet, the essay argues that the originary technicity of obsessional writing entails a ceaseless reinvention without origin, producing variants and mutations (tele-effects) in the realms of writing, media and technology, which in turn force us to rethink conceptions of the ‘newness’ of contemporary forms of communication and archivization.