The Online “Addiction” as a Malaise of the 21st Century: From repression by the law to “free” unlimited stimulation

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article proposes to explore the notion of “civilization malaise”, or discontent, as defined by Sigmund Freud in 1930, focusing on the challenges posed by the “addictive” use of digital communication and information technologies. Using the genealogical perspective, the hypothesis is that in the last decades a great historical transformation is happening, which affects subjectivities and ways of suffering. The obedient citizens of industrial society, repressed by the rigor of the law under “bourgeois morality” or “protestant ethics”, asphyxiated by the solid institutional walls and by the rigidity of the modern “iron cage” would be losing prominence. In their place, hyperstimulated and self-centered consumers proliferate, governed more by desire and self-realization than by duty and guilt. The insistent connection to digital networks, voluntary although difficult to (self) control is a paradigmatic case to study these changes.