Towards a Psychoanalytic Concept of Affective-Digital Labour

Abstract

This article draws on the argument that users on corporate social media conduct labour through the sharing of user-generated content. Critical political economists argue that such acts contribute to value creation on social media and are therefore to be seen as labour. Following a brief introduction of this paradigm, I relate it to the notion of affective labour which has been popularised by the Marxist thinkers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. To them, affective labour (as a sub-category of immaterial labour) denotes embodied forms of labour that are about passion, well-being, feelings of ease, immaterial products and generally a kind of communicative relationality between individuals. I point to some problems with a lack of clarity in their conceptualisation of affective labour and argue that the Freudian model of affect can help in theorising affective labour further through a focus on social media. According to Freud, affect can be understood as a subjective, bodily experience which is in tension with the discursive and denotes a momentary feeling of bodily dispossession. In order to illustrate those points, I draw on some data from a research project which featured interviews with social media users who have facial disfigurements about their affective experiences online. The narratives attempt to turn embodied experiences into discourse.

Digital Capitalism and Friendship

“…"through activities such as funny comments, 'likes' and tags" (Niland et al, 2015, p. 134). As can be guessed, there are two elements at play here: on the users' side, a certain quantification of friendship management and, on the structural level, the underlying incorporation of this management into a market logic following the dynamics of digital capitalism -this is, the integration into this market of a genuine online affective labour, in a further act of appropriation of non-socially recognised labour (see for instance Johanssen, 2018;Kiarina Kordela, 2023;Oksala, 2016;Zhongxuan, 2016).…”

The Digital Phenotyping Project: A Psychoanalytical and Network Theory Perspective

“…Among the various ethical issues that must be taken into account, those raised by digital labor testify to sensitive clinical problems (Favero and Candellieri, 2017;Johanssen, 2018). The Freudian affect model can help us better theorize the emotional work involved in social media (Johanssen, 2018).…”

“…Among the various ethical issues that must be taken into account, those raised by digital labor testify to sensitive clinical problems (Favero and Candellieri, 2017;Johanssen, 2018). The Freudian affect model can help us better theorize the emotional work involved in social media (Johanssen, 2018). Clinical data provide a relevant subjective view of what is emotionally involved in digital interactions, which should be considered as one of the dimensions of any post-analysis of the data produced by and with the support of the patient.…”

The Turn to Affect and Emotion in Media Studies

“…In his contribution "Towards a psychoanalytic concept of affective-digital labour", Jacob Johanssen (2018) starts from the concept of affective work posited by Hardt and Negri, arguing that the Freudian model of affect can contribute to existing philosophical concepts. In doing so, Johannsen turns attention to the unconscious nature of affective work on social media, taking discursive and physical aspects of experience into account.…”