This paper explores what contemporary anti-neoliberal revolts can teach us about the desire for change. Scholarly literature seems to bestow the latter with a peculiar straightforwardness that this article seeks to challenge. On the one hand, the influence of affective theory suggests that emancipation is a matter of breaking with our symbolic ties to unleash the potency of bodies. Here, the desire for change coincides with itself. On the other hand, psychosocial scholarship seems theoretically aware of the ambivalence of desire, but focuses primarily on its mobilisation in oppressive settings. Here, the desire for change remains largely underexplored. To counter this, I adopt a Lacanian perspective to argue that the psychoanalytic notion of fantasy is crucial to grasping the nuances of the desire for social transformation. My argument is substantiated through the empirical study of an emancipatory event: the 2019 Chile revolt known as estallido. Based on a larger study exploring the identification of local critical scholars with this event, I interpret one of these experiences to empirically demonstrate the intricacies of the desire for change. Particularly, I reconstruct a fantasmatic framework allowing subjects to navigate the unconscious effects of the revolt’s main motto: ‘Chile woke up’. Consequently, I treat the estallido as an emancipatory organisation of Chilean society rather than its interruption. My interpretation shows that amid this new symbolic organisation of the social, subjective identification with social change is much more ambivalent than often assumed. After a decade of anti-neoliberal uprisings around the world, learning from these experiences is crucial to understanding the complexities of the desire for change.

“It was the worst of times. It was the worst of times.” The first two sentences of Ali Smith’s Autumn (2016, p.1) – widely regarded as the first post-Brexit novel – insist on the continuation of speech in the face of negative experience. If the first sentence of the novel implies an apparently definitive assessment of the state of the nation in 2016 – “It was the worst of times” – the repetition of this phrase also implies a degree of irony: “The worst is not”, as Edgar remarks in King Lear, “So long as we can say ‘This is the worst.’” So is this really the worst? The inevitability of negative experience is the bedrock of Autumn: “That’s the thing about things. They fall apart, always have, always will, it’s in their nature” (Ibid.). But Smith contains this sense of ontological anomie within the seasonal cycle, in which things “fall apart” so that other things might live: an ecopoetics of mourning and metamorphosis. In this paper, I oppose Smith’s vision of seasonal interdependency to the melancholic isolationism she associates with Brexit. In relation to the conference theme, I suggest that her writing might help psychosocial studies to reflect on the meaning of “learning from experience”, by resituating that experience – specifically of Brexit – in terms of the literary co-constitution of an authentic social otherness. In more traditional philosophical terms, Smith encourages us to think – never without irony – about the inexhaustibility of “the good” as the immanent telos of linguistic exchange.

In addressing the pervasive challenge of information overload, this paper explores the application of Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic concept of the point de capiton, alongside his practices of scansion and variable-length sessions, to the current digital age. The point de capiton, analogous to an upholstery button that prevents the stuffing from moving too freely, represents moments where the endless slippage between the signified and the signifier is temporarily halted, producing an illusion of fixed meaning. This concept offers a unique lens through which to view the deluge of digital information, suggesting strategies for identifying or creating quilting points within the continuous stream of data that allow for meaningful pauses and reflections.

Drawing from Lacan's seminars on psychoses, the proposal highlights the significance of these anchoring points in maintaining the coherence of the symbolic order and preventing the psychotic rupture that occurs when such points give way. By applying this analogy to the digital context, the paper posits that strategically identifying or establishing quilting points amidst information can help individuals navigate the overwhelming flow of signification, promoting a more engaged and discerning interaction. This approach aligns with the conference theme "Information Overload: Knowledge Obstructing Thinking" by offering a psychoanalytic framework for understanding and mitigating information overload's psychological effects. The paper will also include preliminary findings from a qualitative study asking psychoanalysts how they employ scansion in the clinical setting. It will extend the themes from this study to delinate how scansion, by disrupting the flow of the analysand's speech and ego defenses, can address the problem of knowledge preventing thinking.

Through this interdisciplinary exploration, the paper aims to bridge psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice with contemporary challenges in information management, presenting a novel perspective on an era defined by excess.