ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Richard Prince’s New Portraits as a way of exploring psychoanalytic writings on fantasy, enjoyment and the social. In understanding why New Portraits has caused so much anger, the work of Jodi Dean is useful. Dean’s use of psychoanalysis to theorize communicative capitalism shows that one needs to take seriously the role of enjoyment if one is to grasp what underpins the Instagram community and recognize what is at stake in Prince’s contravention of it. In the society of enjoyment the private enjoyment of individuals that must be sacrificed in the society of prohibition becomes a stabilizing force. The shift from prohibition to enjoyment does not designate a change in social reality but a shift in the fantasies that constitute the social bond. In the society of prohibition, the desire of the Other was articulated through social regulations. Lacking such guidance in the society of enjoyment one interprets the desire of the Other through the lens of consumerism.
