Desire Paths: User Strategies for Accessing Visual Culture in the Age of Digitality and Late Capitalism
(working title)
This dissertation draws on discourse analysis, critical theory, platform studies, and visual culture studies to examine how mechanisms of surveillance capitalism and the erosion of political governability shape the production and distribution of user-generated visual culture within digital cultures. It centers on the emergence of user strategies and practices—what I term desire paths. Specifically, the project is situated within three key areas: the discrepancies between the theoretical framework of copyright law and the lived realities of digitality; the influence of platform governance under conditions of tech oligarchy—particularly through terms of use and service; and the ongoing privatization and commodification of culture within the networked environments of late capitalism.
Desire paths emerge when users—particularly on social media platforms—deliberately circumvent or play with platform structures in response to terms of service that exclude, restrict, or fail to reflect actual usage practices. They represent user-driven strategies and practices that both express digital culture and mirror broader economic and political dynamics. While a range of interactions could potentially be labeled as desire paths, this study focuses specifically on those that create a subversive momentum through acts of tactical resistance or creative exploitation. Examples include practices such as algospeak, memeing, webweaving, and shared accounts. Desire paths can also manifest in art or research-based projects, such as the short film The History of the World According to Getty Images or the practice of girlblogging, which blends aesthetics, identity performance, and critique.
With the term desire paths, I refer both to the informal shortcuts that emerge and may become normalized—whether through collective affirmation or, conversely, capitalist appropriation—and to a broader conceptual layer, invoking desire in dialogue with Mark Fisher’s notion of postcapitalist desire. While not all desire paths may consciously channel the notion of postcapitalist desire, I argue that they frequently emerge from a growing frustration with late capitalism, redirecting this discontent into creative acts propelled by desire.
The dissertation explores how these dynamics materialize in concrete desire paths through close analyses of user practices across image-centric platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, and Tumblr. These examples are not intended to offer comprehensive coverage of the vast terrain of digital visual culture—social media is not a niche phenomenon but a dominant cultural infrastructure. Rather, they serve as analytical spotlights within a much broader field, helping to trace how platform governance, legal regimes, and cultural commodification structure the conditions under which visual user-generated content is created, circulated, and contested. By focusing on specific practices without collapsing the scope of inquiry, the project seeks to render the elusive logic of desire paths more tangible and theoretically productive.
At the same time, the dissertation itself is a product of its time—shaped by the volatility, fragmentation, and hyperlinked structure of contemporary digital cultures. It reflects the tensions and dynamics it seeks to theorize: the partial, contingent, and evolving nature of knowledge production in networked environments. Rather than imposing closure, the project foregrounds the ongoing negotiation between systemic constraints and user agency in the digital age.
As the gap between the practices of digital cultures and the surrounding environment—shaped by late-capitalist, techno-autocratic, and increasingly privatized structures—continues to widen, this dissertation also considers the potential consequences of an accelerated proliferation of desire paths in the near future. Ultimately, this project contributes to a critical understanding of how users navigate and subvert digital constraints—positioning desire paths as sites of resistance, speculation, and cultural production within late capitalist platform ecologies.
