Lacan and Žižek in the Metaverse

Gere, Charlie (2024) Lacan and Žižek in the Metaverse. In: The Arts and Computational Culture : Real and Virtual Worlds. Springer Series on Cultural Computing . Springer, Cham, pp. 373-387. ISBN 9783031538643

Abstract

This chapter considers the Metaverse through the work of the Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist, Slavoj Žižek (born 1949), and especially the French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, Jacques Lacan (1901–1981). It seems to me that psychoanalytical thought, especially as developed out of Freud’s work by Lacan and Žižek, offers a powerful means of understanding the underlying desires driving the development of such technologies. Lacan’s work allows us to see how the virtual world of the Metaverse manifests elements of our unconscious response to our own humanness.