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The ‘Mastery’ of the Swipe: Smartphones and Precarity in a Culture of Narcissism. 2017

Establishing a dialogue between two discrete critical methodologies in order to consider the role of ‘distracted’ smartphone use within a socio-political context. By ‘distracted’ the speaker is referring to the banal, everyday interactions we have with our smartphones throughout our day; the processes of swiping, tapping and gazing at our handheld devices, which occur dozens, if not hundreds of times a day, and which have taken on the appearance of a habit or social ‘tic’. 

Drawing on the work of Winnicott (1971) Lasch (1991), Silverstone (1993), Ribak, (2009) and Kullman (2010), the speaker commutes between psychoanalytic and political-economy methods in order to connect an analysis of distracted smartphone use to a broader discussion of social, political and economic precarity. Such an approach allows for the exploration of the relationship between the individual and society in order to identify how contemporary digital media practice is both a product of, and a response, to political, social and economic uncertainty.