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The Paranoia of Popular Culture: Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Music Videos

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Jacob Glazier at University of West Georgia
Jacob Glazier
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Abstract

An interrogation of the paranoiac nature of knowledge seems all the pressing given recent developments around the world. Central to his theory of psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan had an intimate relationship with this topic that have never ceased holding a special place within his theory. In fact, Lacan goes on to ground human knowledge as such as fundamentally paranoiac in nature precisely because of the social dialectic that gives it form. It follows that the two go hand-in-hand, the degree of popularity of the signifier and the paranoiac ego that tries to comprehend it. To pose this as a question, how do the most highly circulated signifiers, those found in popular culture, help demonstrate the essentially paranoiac nature of knowledge? I will focus on the medium of popular music videos and the symbols that seem to appear consistently from one video to another. Subsequently, I will set this analysis against the backdrop of conspiracy theories, which can be read as producing a precisely paranoid discourse thereby demonstrating the nature of knowledge for Lacanian psychoanalysis. Far from obviating the semiologies of these conspirators, the dialectical move from the originarity of the symbol, in the video, toward the paranoid discourse represents a self-reinforcing and paranoiac sedimentation of the ‘knowledge’ itself therein reinforcing its popularity and shared epistemology. In other words, the distinction between what is real and what is not, as if there were a signified, gets lost in the textuality of popular culture.
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JACOB W. GLAZIER (PhD, LPC, NCC) is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Positive
Human Development and Social Change at Life University and an online Adjunct Professor in the
Department of Applied Psychology at New York University–Steinhardt. Dr. Glazier’s research
tends towards a transdisciplinary approach via theoretical and philosophical models and includes
subjects like critical theory, embodiment, and desire as well as their relation to praxis and clinical
practice. He can be reached at jacob.w.glazier@gmail.com.
The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Vol. 8 No. 2.5
Copyright © 2020
107
The Paranoia of Popular Culture: Lacanian
Psychoanalysis and Music Videos
JACOB W. GLAZIER
The coyote is the most aware creature there is […] because he is completely
paranoid. Charles Manson, circa 1969 (as cited in Hansen 413)
While not directly related to this essay, the coyote, in the above quotation,
represents a powerful figure, indeed one that is not just literary, which can be used
to demonstrate what it means to know in a “post-truth” culture. In fact, the
relationship the coyote has to knowledge may offer us, upfront, an almost complete
map of the relationship between paranoia and knowledge. With specific regard to
what follows, as I hope to show, the epistemological logic of the conspiracy theory
discourse comes as close as one can get to the paranoid nature of knowledge itself.
This final point, what is the nature of knowledge, is relative to one’s own biases,
philosophies, or personal stakes. Yet is not this very questioning the source of all
epistemic claims?
In agreement here is Jacques Lacan, who is arguably the most famous
psychoanalyst in history. Lacan perfected the Freudian practice of treatment over
the long course of his seminars, referred to in French as the Séminaire, which he
delivered from the years 1953 to 1980, right before his death. Perhaps, however, it
was his first seminal scholarly work, a doctoral dissertation on the case of Aimée
in 1932, that laid the foundation for what has come to be known in literary,
academic, and even popular culture circles as Lacanian theory.
In its properly conceptual treatment, paranoia is considered by psychoanalysis
and Lacan himself to be a diagnosis, a category or label, that the analyst assigns to
a patient to conceptualize and treat them. Its formal symptomology usually includes
an enduring suspicion or deep skepticism about the subject’s social role in relation
to the larger sociological structure, their culture or society (McWilliams 215). This
Conspiracy theories and pandemic management in Africa: critical reflections on contexts, contradictions and challenges
Article
Full-text available
  • Dec 2021
The coronavirus pandemic, though primarily a health issue, has had significant social, economic and political implications across the world. There are reasons to believe that some of the changes occurring are likely to be permanent even in a post-pandemic world, and there are even suggestions that the world may be entering a phase in which pandemics become recurrent. Making sense of all that the pandemic has brought has by no means been easy, even for scientists who have had to review and revise their claims as new discoveries about the virus are made. One of the fallouts of the pandemic has been a proliferation of conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus, as well as efforts to contain it. Summed up, these theories of various shades allege that certain powerful forces are behind the pandemic, in pursuit of some narrow ends that range from the political to the religious. In this paper, I analyse conspiracy theories and the motivations behind them. Situating conspiracy theories within the pandemic, I argue that they are best understood not within the framework of a single theory but by an understanding of how diverse motivations generate different, even contradictory conspiratorial accounts. I argue that whereas conspiracy theories have become a feature of modern society, and have been amplified in the age of technology, they have low credibility value in explaining the pandemic, while having significant implications. I also argue that if left unchecked, conspiracy theories have the capacity to further undermine governments’ capacity to respond to big crises in Africa in the future. I conclude that conspiracy theories are best managed in a pandemic through consistent, transparent engagement rooted in trust-building between the people and governments, especially in Africa.
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