Ka psihoanalitičkom razumevanju novinarskog identiteta i želje za objektivnošću
Moving Towards a Psychoanalytical Understanding of Journalistic Identity and the Desire for Objectivity

Summary/Abstract: This article reconceptualises journalistic objectivity by relating it to Ernesto Laclau’s discussion on univeralism and particularism, as well as to the Lacanian concepts of desire and fantasy. These reflections lead to a theoretical framework in which the particularity of objectivity is constructed at two levels: objectivity-as-a-value and objectivity-as-a-practice. Firstly, objectivity-as-a-value is considered a particular value, which is simultaneously universalised and hegemonised as a nodal point of ‘good journalism’. Secondly, objectivity unavoidably needs to be materialised at the level of practice, which also renders it particular and always-imperfect. The particularity of objectivity creates a gap between journalistic ideology and practice, problematic and constitutive for both. Here, the Lacanian concepts of desire and fantasy offer an explanatory model for the desire for objective reporting and its fantasmatic realisation. At the same time this fantasy turns out to be unachievable, as the particular always intervenes. In conceptualising objectivity as the objet petit a of journalism, the objectivity norm – as the objectcause of desire – is transformed from an unattainable horizon into the ultimate starting point for journalism. The journalistic gap can thus be articulated as a generative driving force and an absolute requirement for the production of mediated meaning.

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