Deimosology - Producing enjoyment in the excessive impasse of techno-driven consumer culture
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This doctoral dissertation consists of three independent articles and one synthesising introduction. The introduction presents the concept of deimosology as a speculative endeavour to grapple with wicked eschatological problems of our capitalocentric present. The articles are grounded in a post-structural and psychoanalytic onto-epistemological stance and are developed with a sensitivity to the unconscious desires and affects that operate in the backdrop of our quotidian lives and shape our way of being in the world. While approaching different topics, the articles share an underlying motivation to map out affective deadlocks that occlude attempts at systematic change. This stark state of capitalist realism, where a socio-political form of organising beyond our current one is not only deemed unfeasible but presented as unimaginable, lies at the heart of what deimosology aims to address – namely why are we so locked in place, and what critical and affirmative projects can we envision if clarion calls to consumers, managers, and various stakeholders rationality continuously fail to produce effects. By theorising the central role of unconscious enjoyment in capitalist consumer culture, its intensification through technology and the subjects produced by it, the articles form the starting point for addressing such questions.
Source: Aaltodoc (Aalto University)
Author: Ahlberg, Oscar
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7008853889