Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how intimacies be invented in cyberspace and how the discourse of enjoyment and its intermediary representation operate in cyberspace and affect everyday life, through the understanding of the characteristics of structured thought.

Paper long abstract:

We are exploring interactive and safe ways to (re)connect intimately in times of lockdown and social distancing, such as live streaming, online activities via video-conferencing platform, and online erotic games or chatbots. With the internet, we are moving away from environmental and situational constraints, and freely experience pleasure, various identities and fantasies via a floating body. This paper attempts, by referring to libidinal economy in psychoanalysis: there is no enjoyment without discourse and no discourse beyond the discourse of enjoyment, to enter the discussion of the intimacy of the cyberspace. It draws on fieldwork of cyber-individual and the purpose of the research is to prepare for dealing with the nexus between reality and virtuality. Cyber-individual in the paper refers to the part of cyberspace where a person puts most of one’s desires, emotions and power into it. When they leave cyberspace, they either use symbolic order to cybernetize real life, or they will not adapt to everyday reality. Once the gap between cyberspace and real social space be hidden, a new mode of intimacy will be desired under the superficial violent gaze. Examing the idea that cyberspace is completely the representation of the externalization/cybernization of thinking, this paper explores why both disembodied intimacy and embodied intimacy are researches for the lost intimacy.