ABSTRACT

Debates in WhatsApp groups often seem meaningless when the participants make ghostly, ghastly, and free-floating arguments outside established norms, yet meaning in such a genre of post-truth can be read through a grammar suitable for interpreting the meaninglessness of the unconscious. This study extends the grammar of phantasmagoria, the functioning of pre-cinema apparatuses, to read the unconscious in WhatsApp debates that seem irrational. Through this approach, the study gives meaning to chats on predatory publishing by university lecturers to show that both justification and condemnation of what is obviously an objectionable publication style reveal struggles at the unconscious level in the era of corporatized universities and alternative facts. It is argued that predatory publishing is, on the one hand, open academic fraud, but on the other, part of the unintended consequences that symbolise the failure of the neoliberal university.

摘要

当参与者在既定规范之外进行幽灵般的、可怕的和自由浮动的论点时，WhatsApp 小组中的辩论通常看起来毫无意义，但可以通过适合解释无意识无意义的语法来解读这种后真相类型的意义。这项研究扩展了幻觉的语法，即电影前装置的功能，以解读 WhatsApp 辩论中看似不合理的无意识。通过这种方法，该研究为大学讲师关于掠夺性出版的谈话赋予了意义，以表明对明显令人反感的出版风格的辩护和谴责都揭示了公司化大学时代无意识层面的斗争和替代事实。有人认为，掠夺性出版一方面是公开的学术造假，但另一方面，