The Fragmented Self and Its Selfie

This chapter deepens another path opened by Lacan as one of the consequences of the mirror stage: the disjoint between body, ego and self-image, and the aggressiveness at the nucleus of this relation. The Lacanian text dedicated to aggressiveness in psychoanalysis will offer important insights to understand the fascination human subjectivity finds in parts of the body. A central, contemporary phenomenon in social media, the selfie, functions as a special place to discuss these Lacanian insights, and also how a Lacanian critique enables us to go beyond mainstream, acritical proposals from communication and media studies. The selfie reveals itself as a neoliberal weapon, for it exposes the drive, in contemporary culture, towards a celebration of the self, a hyperindividualization of the experiences of the self.