Media and the Deconstruction of Subjectivity

Sven-Olov Wallenstein

These technological changes will no doubt affect our conceptions of subjectivity, and the new space-times of VR will deliver a blowÑalthough presumably not a deadly oneÑto the phenomenology of perception as we have known it. It is my thesis, however, that the equaling of the deconstruction of subjectivity with the experience unfolding in the new media spaces is a highly unsure equation. The very emphasis on communication and transparency in these new models should make us suspicious, not least since this ideology of limitless communicative transparency was in fact one of the main targets of the post-structuralist critique of the subject (the sphere of communication being posed as a new kind of infinite subjectivity). Seen from the point of view of deconstruction, the current utopia of communication may in fact turn out to be another version of the metaphysics of presence, of subjectivity and mastery, only this time even more powerful and thus in dire need of a critical assessment.