June 5, 2018  8:00 pm

Presenter: Ben Fong, PhD
Discussant: Kevin Kelly, MD

Dr. Fong examines the connections between drive gratification and the contemporary technological lure.  From a Lacanian-Lowaldian-Marcusian perspective, he explores the attraction we all have towards technological manipulations of our lives.

Benjamin Y. Fong is a member of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago. He earned his PhD in Religion from Columbia University, where he was also an Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. His interests lie at the intersections of philosophy, psychology, critical social theory, and the study of religion. His first book, Death and Mastery: Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late Capitalism, which seeks to strengthen the psychoanalytic dimension of first generation critical theory in the hopes of rejuvenating its conception of subjection in late capitalism, was published by Columbia University Press.