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The afterlife of fictional media violence. A genetic phenomenology of emotions following Husserl and Freud

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A Correction to this article was published on 01 September 2022

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Abstract

Ever since the 1960s, media and communication studies have abounded in heated debates concerning the psychological and social effects of fictional media violence. Massive empirical research has first tried to tie film violence to cultivating either fear or aggressive tendencies among its viewership, while later research has focused on other media as well (television, video games). The present paper does not aim to settle the factual question of whether or not medial experiences indeed engender real emotional dispositions. Instead, it brings into play the resources of genetic phenomenology in order to ask how the formation of such dispositions would be generally possible. Thus, it aims to further the discussion by overtly employing the framework of Husserl’s later genetic phenomenology to the field of emotional experience. By posing questions with regard to how fictional emotional experiences contribute to the formation of apperceptions and to the specificities of emotional sedimentation, it also points out some shortcomings in Husserl’s account by drawing from Freud’s dynamic theory of drives and emotions.

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Notes

  1. Anderson & Bushman 2002: 2377.

  2. Huesmann & Malamuth 1986 and Bushman & Anderson 2015.

  3. Ferguson 2009; see also Rios & Ferguson 2020 for a more recent take on a similar matter.

  4. Barker & Petley 2001: 2 f.

  5. Summa 2019.

  6. Cavallaro 2019.

  7. See for an emphatic presentation of this argument Haneke 2010: 575 f.

  8. For a phenomenological account of dreaming inspired by Husserl see Geniusas 2021 and Ferencz-Flatz 2011a.

  9. See for this Welton 2003 and Ferencz-Flatz & Staiti 2018.

  10. Hua XI: 336; English translation: 624.

  11. Hua XI: 336; English translation: 624.

  12. Hua XI: 336; English translation: 624.

  13. For some more recent attempts to read Freud phenomenologically in view of Husserl’s work see also Gyemant 2021, Brudzińska 2019 and Lohmar & Brudzińska 2012. For a direct attempt to link Freud to genetic phenomenology, see Nicolas Smith’ doctoral thesis, Smith 2010.

  14. EU: 331; English translation: 275.

  15. EU: 335; English translation: 279.

  16. EU: 336; English translation: 279. For a comparison between Husserl’s and Freud’s understanding of “unconscious consciousness,” see Bernet 2002. For a more detailed account of Husserl’s (and Fink’s) interpretation of the unconscious, see also Geniusas 2020. For a more general discussion of the parallels between the phenomenological and the psychoanalytic understanding of the unconscious, see also Legrand & Trigg 2017, as well as Bodea & Popa 2020.

  17. For the latter, see also Ferencz-Flatz 2017.

  18. Hua III/1: 146; English translation: 158.

  19. See, for instance, Schmitz 2011: 29 f. as well as Schmitz 2003: 43–54.

  20. EU: 79; English translation: 76.

  21. EU: 80; English translation: 77.

  22. GW 10: 250f.; English translation: 148.

  23. GW 10: 126 f., 250 and 275 f.

  24. See for this especially Dwyer 2007 as well as the classical work on the subject matter by Elmar Holenstein, Holenstein 1972: § 25 f.

  25. Hua XXXIX: 411.

  26. See especially Hua XXXIX: 423 f.

  27. See for this especially Ferencz-Flatz 2012.

  28. Hua XI: 185; English translation: 235.

  29. Mills 2004: 674.

  30. Mills 2004: 674.

  31. See for this especially Brudzińska 2019: 174 f. and Kühn 2021.

  32. “Jeder Trieb ist ein Stück Aktivität.” (GW 10: 214).

  33. See for this Ferencz-Flatz 2014: 38 f.

  34. GW 10: 256.

  35. GW 10: 256.

  36. See also the famous passage in the Lectures on psychoanalysis: “This process would have been accompanied by a particular affect, and we now learn to our surprise that this affect accompanying the normal course of events is invariably replaced by anxiety after repression has occurred, no matter what its own quality may be. Thus, when we have a hysterical anxiety-state before us, its unconscious correlate may be an impulse of a similar character - anxiety, shame, embarrassment - or, just as easily, a positive libidinal excitation or a hostile aggressive one, such as rage or anger. Anxiety is therefore the universally current coinage for which any affective impulse is or can be exchanged if the ideational content attached to it is subjected to repression.“ (GW 11: 418 f.)

  37. See, for instance, Dworkins 1981.

  38. For a more detailed account of “motivation” in Husserl, see especially Hua IV, § 56. See also Rang 1973: 99–206; Mazzu 2007 and Ferencz-Flatz 2011b.

  39. See for this especially Hua IV, § 56 a-c.

  40. Hua IV: 222 f.; English translation: 234.

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  1. University of Bucharest, Bd. Regina Elisabeta 4-12, 030018, Bucharest, Romania

    Christian Ferencz-Flatz

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Ferencz-Flatz, C. The afterlife of fictional media violence. A genetic phenomenology of emotions following Husserl and Freud. Cont Philos Rev 55, 289–308 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-022-09573-0

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