Matthew Flisfeder

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Matthew Flisfeder is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Communications. He is the author of Algorithmic Desire: Toward a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media (Northwestern University Press 2021), Postmodern Theory and Blade Runner (Bloomsbury 2017), The Symbolic, the Sublime, and Slavoj Žižek’s Theory of Film (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), and co-editor of Žižek and Media Studies: A Reader (Palgrave Macmillan 2014).

Dr. Flisfeder is currently working on a project funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant called, “The Hysterical Sublime: A Critical Study of the Aesthetics, Rhetorics, and Ethics of New Materialist and Posthumanist Critical Theory.” Through a critical examination of New Materialist and Posthumanist critical theory, this project endeavours to produce a new theory of dialectical humanism for theorizing the twin dilemmas of anthropogenic climate change and the displacement of human agency by digital automation and artificial intelligence. Dialectical humanism aims to shift our critical gaze away from contradictory critiques of Anthropocentrism and the “Anthropocene,” and onto the structural contradictions of twenty-first century capitalism, or the “Capitalocene.”

Experience

  • 2019–present
    Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Communications, University of Winnipeg
  • 2016–2019
    Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Communications, University of Winnipeg
  • 2014–2016
    Assistant Professor of Media and Political Theory, Ryerson University

Education

  • 2010 
    Ryerson University and York University, Ph.D. Communication and Culture
  • 2005 
    Ryerson University and York University, M.A. Communication and Culture
  • 2003 
    York University, B.A. Hon Double Major in Fine Arts Cultural Studies and Communication Studies

Publications

  • 2021
    Algorithmic Desire: Toward a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media, Northwestern University Press
  • 2019
    Postmodern Marxism Today: Jameson, Žižek, and the Demise of Symbolic Effciency, International Journal of Žižek Studies
  • 2019
    'Make American Great Again' and the Constitutive Loss of Nothingness, Third Text
  • 2018
    'Trump' - What does the name signify? Or, Protofascism and the Alt-Right: Three Contradictions of the Present Conjuncture, Cultural Politics
  • 2018
    The Ideological Algorithmic Apparatus: Subjection Before Enslavement, Theory & Event
  • 2017
    Love and Sex in the Age of Capitalist Realism: On Spike Jonze's Her, Cinema Journal
  • 2017
    Postmodern Theory and Blade Runner, Bloomsbury
  • 2017
    Morality or Enjoyment? On Althusser's Ideological Supplement of the Law, Mediations
  • 2015
    The Entrepreneurial Subject and the Objectivization of the Self in Social Media, South Atlantic Quarterly
  • 2014
    Enjoying Social Media, Žižek and Media Studies: A Reader
  • 2014
    Žižek and Media Studies: A Reader, Palgrave Macmillan
  • 2013
    Communism and the End of the World, PUBLIC
  • 2013
    Debt: The Sublimated Object of Capital, TOPIA
  • 2012
    The Symbolic, The Sublime, and Slavoj Žižek's Theory of Film, Palgrave Macmillan

Grants and Contracts

  • 2020
    The Hysterical Sublime: A Critical Study of the Aesthetics, Rhetorics, and Ethics of New Materialist and Posthumanist Critical Theory
    Role:
    Principal Investigator
    Funding Source:
    Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Professional Memberships

  • Canadian Communication Association
  • Association for Economic and Social Analysis

Contact Matthew for

  • General
  • Media request
  • Speaking request
  • Consulting / Advising
  • Research collaboration
  • Research supervision