« Binge-Scrolling on TikTok. Hypnosis, Affects, and Spirit Dis/Possession »

Binge-scrolling on digital media-the autonomic gesture of scrolling through potentially infinite feeds for extended periods of time-is a widespread practice at the core of the ever-expanding digitalization of the user unconscious. Drawing from a multimodal pilot research project on the affective experience of binge-scrolling on TikTok, this talk moves away from techno-phobic critiques of digital media and proposes an “enchanted hermeneutics” of the binge-scroll, one which considers binge-scrolling as a ritual practice that facilitates the user’s entrance into hypnotic states of consciousness. The talk describes how algorithmic predictions and repetitive scrolling curate powerful hypnotic inductions that make users available to affective forces that move across the neural networks of the techno-sphere and territorialize the user’s psychic life. Through a provocative engagement with anthropologies of rituals and spirit dispossession, the talk asks if an “exorcist cybernetics of affects” can help us address the contemporary condition.

Biographie

Samuele Collu is an Assistant Professor in Medical and Psychological Anthropology at McGill University. His work focuses on psychic life, affects, and therapeutic transformation. He has done ethnographic research on spirit possession in Cambodia, a rare neurological malformation in Italy, couples therapy and clinical hypnosis in Argentina. He is now finishing a book titled Into the Loop, which explores the contemporary entanglement between screens, affective attachments, and compulsive repetition.