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Foucault, Rape, and the Construction of the Feminine Body
Author(s): Ann J. Cahill
Source: Hypatia, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Winter, 2000), pp. 43-63
Published by: Wiley on behalf of Hypatia, Inc.
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Foucault, Rape, and the Construction
of the Feminine Body
ANN J. CAHILL
In 1977, Michel Foucault suggested that legal approaches to rape define it as
merely an act of violence, not of sexuality, and therefore not distinct from other types
of assaults. I argue that rape can not be considered merely an act of violence because
it is instrumental in the construction of the distinctly feminine body. Insofar as the
threat of rape is ineluctably, although not determinately, associated with the development of feminine bodily comportment, rape itself holds a host of bodily and sexually
specific meanings.
The theoretical possibilities and pitfalls which the work of Michel Foucault
presents for feminist theory are well documented (if not exhausted), and indeed on their own constitute a significant dialogue within the field of scholar-
ship. That dialogue for the most part takes up Foucault’s major philosophical
tenets, especially those concerning the production and expression of power,
and applies them to feminist problems, often resulting in crucial new insights.
However, in one case, it was a specific claim made by Foucault which caused
an immediate, and sustained, tremor in feminist intellectual circles. I refer, of
course, to his stated support for the decriminalization of rape as defined as a
sexual crime.
One can always produce the theoretical discourse that amounts
to saying: in any case, sexuality can in no circumstances be the
object of punishment. And when one punishes rape one should
be punishing physical violence and nothing but that. And to
say that it is nothing more than an act of aggression: that there
is no difference, in principle, between sticking one’s fist into
someone’s face or one’s penis into their sex…. [T]here are problems [if we are to say that rape is more serious than a punch in
Hypatia vol. 15, no. 1 (Winter 2000) © by Ann J. Cahill
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the face], because what we’re saying amounts to this: sexuality
as such, in the body, has a preponderant place, the sexual organ
isn’t like a hand, hair, or a nose. It therefore has to be protected,
surrounded, invested in any case with legislation that isn’t that
pertaining to the rest of the body…. It isn’t a matter of sexuality, it’s the physical violence that would be punished, without
bringing in the fact that sexuality was involved. (Foucault
1988, 200-202)
Foucault’s comments were made during a 1977 roundtable discussion concering, among other matters, his work in Discipline and Punish (1979), and
were inspired by questions posed to him by a French commission concerned
with the reform of the penal code (1988, 200). At first glance, it would appear
that Foucault’s suggestion was remarkably in keeping with the current feminist wisdom, which sought to define rape solely as a violent crime. It is perhaps
surprising, then, that both the women who were present at the discussion and
subsequent feminist thinkers responded vehemently, and negatively, to his
position. The similarities between Foucault’s suggestion, namely, that rape be
redefined merely as another type of assault without any sexual specificity, and
Susan Brownmiller’s call for a “gender-free, non-activity-specific” law (1975,
378) are striking. Yet the differences between the philosophical motivations
compelling the proposals are significant. Whereas feminist thinkers such as
Brownmiller were seeking to purge rape of its sexual content in order to render
moot the legal question of victim (i.e., female) culpability, Foucault viewed
the desexualization of rape as a liberating blow against the disciplining discourse which constructed sexuality as a means of social and political power.
Even so, one could still expect Foucault’s position to be largely in agreement
with feminist theories which also located sexuality as one means by which a
patriarchal culture maintained control over women. If this is so, it is perhaps
surprising that his comments produced such an immediate and sustained
response in feminist intellectual circles. It is important to note at this juncture
that Foucault’s comments were relatively spontaneous and not fully devel-
oped; nevertheless, they at least appear to be generally consistent with his
larger ethical concern with desexualization, and therefore cannot be dismissed
out of hand. The gauntlet was immediately taken up by Monique Plaza (1981),
and later most directly by Winifred Woodhull (1988) and Vikki Bell (1991),
although several other feminist works on Foucault (including Biddy Martin
[1988]) have mentioned the problem in passing. Most recently, Laura Hengehold (1994) has attempted a new analysis by locating the crime of rape in
the overall system of hysterization of women which Foucault himself posited.
While her argument succeeds in doing just that, it and other feminist theories
seem unable to answer the question posed by Foucault: why should an assault
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Ann J. Cahill
45
with a penis be treated any differently in the legal world than an assault with
any other body part?
Even this particular posing of this question leads us to a distinction which
will prove crucial to our questioning. Foucault here is considering rape as
something which is done by a penis, while legally, rape can be accomplished by
a variety of tools. Because Foucault’s implied definition is centered around the
male physiology, it does not include a consideration of the multiple ways in
which a woman can be violated sexually; is the “rape” of which Foucault speaks
necessarily a vaginal entering? To redefine rape not as something a man does,
but something which a woman experiences, shifts the discussion in important
ways. This provisional re-defining of the act of rape also has its problems, for
women are not the only beings who can be raped; this empirical fact does not,
however, place the act of rape outside of the realm of sexual dynamics. While
men are capable of being raped, they are not subjected to the pervasive threat
of rape which faces women in the present culture. Nor are they raped at the
horrifying (if controversial) numbers that women are. The fact that men can
be, but are not often, raped, emphasizes the extent to which rape enforces a sys-
tematic (i.e., consistent, although not necessarily conscious), sexualized control of women. Thus Monique Plaza writes, “Rape is an oppressive act exercised
by a (social) man against a (social) woman, which can be carried out by the introduction of a bottle held by a man into the anus of a woman; in this case rape is not
sexual, or rather it is not genital. It is very sexual in the sense that it is fre-
quently a sexual activity, but above all in the sense that it opposes men and
women: it is social sexing which underlies rape” (1981, 29; emphasis in the orig-
inal). Thus a crucial aspect of the shame of man-on-man rape is the implicit
womanizing which occurs upon the victim, who is placed in the role of the
sexually submissive and helpless. He is, at that moment, a “social woman.”
These preliminary remarks already gesture to the substance of this discussion. At this early stage, then, let us return to the question as formulated by
Foucault: how is an assault with a penis different than an assault with a fist?
The answer to this question, I will argue, is dependent not only upon the bodily phenomenon of rape, as Foucault seems to assume, but also on the social
production of the feminine body. Woodhull points to this necessity when she
claims, “If we are seriously to come to terms with rape, we must explain how the
vagina becomes coded-and experienced-as a place of emptiness and vulnerability, the penis as a weapon, and intercourse as violation, rather than naturalize these processes through references to ‘basic’ physiology” (1988, 171).
However, Woodhull here has neglected to consider seriously enough Foucault’s
concern with the oversexualization of certain body parts to the neglect of others, an historical process which he documents in his first volume of The History
of Sexuality (1990). We must remember that it is precisely upon the basis of the
social construction of the sexual body, a construction which not only privi-
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leges the genitals but also sexuality in general as a primary seat of identity, and
the consequent ethical imperative of desexualization, that Foucault reaches
his unnerving conclusion.
Since Foucault grounds his legal suggestions for rape on his project of desexualization, and since the very question concerns the comparison of various
body parts, it seems appropriate to begin with a Foucauldian analysis of the
body. From there, I shall argue that the act of rape is distinct from other types
of assault not solely because of the body parts involved in the act, but more
importantly, because of the role which rape (or more precisely, the threat of
rape) plays in the production of the specifically (and socially recognizable)
feminine body. Moreover, I will assert that the legal reform suggested by Foucault-that is, the redefinition of rape as assault, and the eradication of rape
as a distinct crime-would serve to veil aspects of the crime which impinge
directly on women’s experience and bodies, and which therefore (given the
centrality of women’s experiences to the definition of rape) constitute the cur-
rent phenomenon of rape itself in important ways.
THE BODY FOR FOUCAULT
Perhaps one of the most well-known aspects of Foucault’s work is his compelling analysis of power (for three particularly interesting discussions of the
role of power in Foucault’s thought, see Ladelle McWhorter [1990], Annie
Bunting [1992], and Mary Rawlinson [1987]; Judith Butler [1987] briefly considers some of Foucault’s assertions regarding power and the body specifically
in relation to the theories of Simone de Beauvoir and Monique Wittig). Refusing the traditional description of power as primarily repressive and imposed
solely from a position of authority, Foucault claims instead that power actually
produces social bodies and realities, and does not emanate from one central
source, but rather is diffused throughout the social structure.
Power would be a fragile thing if its only function were to repress, if it worked only through the mode of censorship, exclu-
sion, blockage and repression, in the manner of a great Superego, exercising itself only in a negative way. If, on the contrary,
power is strong this is because, as we are beginning to realise, it
produces effects at the level of desire-and also at the level of
knowledge. Far from preventing knowledge, power produces
it. If it has been possible to constitute a knowledge of the body,
this has been by way of an ensemble of military and educationsal disciplines. It was on the basis of power over the body that a
physiological, organic knowledge of it became possible. (1980,
59)
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Ann J. Cahill
47
Thus for Foucault the structures and dynamics of power actually create the
possibilities of various social discourses by constituting the subjects who will
undertake them. In this model, what is significant is not only who has power
over whom, but how power has produced the specific and characteristic moments of a discursive reality.
If power is not solely a punishing, authoritarian force which seeks to control
the actions of subjects primarily by prohibiting certain ones, if instead it is a
subtle, pervasive, creative force which seeks to influence actions on the level
of desire and identity, then it is not surprising to find the body as its privileged
site. Indeed, as Foucault claims, “[N]othing is more material, physical, corporal
than the exercise of power” (1980, 57-58). The body, then, far from being in
any sense natural or primary, is the location of inscription. Specifically, Fou-
cault is concered with the power dynamics which construct the body as
sexual.
What I want to show is how power relations can materially pen-
etrate the body in depth, without depending even on the mediation of the subject’s own representations. If power takes hold
on the body, this isn’t through its having first to be interiorised
in people’s consciousness. There is a network or circuit of biopower, or somato-power, which acts as the formative matrix
of sexuality itself as the historical and cultural phenomenon
within which we seem at once to recognise and lose ourselves.
(1980, 186)
Thus, within the context of Foucault’s analysis of power, the body and its
corresponding abilities, desires, and habits are the result of an inscription of
power dynamics which renders knowledge as well as agency possible. Through
this inscription, individual bodies are produced with certain powers, capabilities, and expectations. Jana Sawicki writes, “Disciplinary power is exercised on
the body and soul of individuals. It increases the power of individuals at the
same time as it renders them more docile (for instance, basic training in the
military)” (1991, 22). Any limitations imposed on the body are always concomitant with certain, delimited powers, but both the limitations and the endowed capabilities are directly related to, and supportive of, the overall power
dynamic.
That the body is the result of power dynamics does not necessarily imply
that the body is wholly or predictably determined. Even as he terms the body
“docile,” referring to its status as reflection or, better, projection of the dom-
inant discourse, Foucault insists that the body as constructed is not incapable
of resisting or defying some (if not all) of the demands of that discourse. Because power is diffuse and lacking a single source as well as a single object, its
effects are scattered and uneven with regard to individual bodies, even as its
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predominant claims may be coherent and consistent. For Foucault, resistance
is the necessary counterpart to power, for while power produces bodies-that
is, subjects-with certain and different capabilities, it cannot control the ways
in which those abilities are utilized. As pervasive as the play of power is, its
control is not omnipotent; excess always exists.
[T]here is always something in the social body, in classes, groups
and individuals themselves which in some sense escapes relations of power, something which is by no means a more or less
docile or reactive primal matter, but rather a centrifugal re-
movement, an inverse energy, a discharge …. This measure
… is not so much what stands outside relations of power as
their limit, their underside, their counter-stroke, that which
responds to every advance of power by a movement of disen-
gagement. (1980, 138)
Thus, for Foucault, the fact that the body is socially constructed by the play
of power does not necessitate its own powerlessness. Rather, its very ability
to resist certain expressions of power is itself attributable to the existence of
power; however, just as the power which Foucault describes is not omnipotent,
the resistance which is possible is not limitless. No embodied subject is capable
of resisting any and all expressions of power, for the simple reason that to do so
would be to undermine that very subject’s ability to act at all.
The meaning and coding of the body differ radically in various historical
and social situations, and indeed, Foucault’s point is that the sole commonly
held characteristic or property of bodies of varying environments is that of
effect-hood. The only stable point about the body is its relationship to power;
in all other matters, it is necessarily in flux, subject to change, lacking any
ontological status. Ladelle McWhorter writes,
In Foucault’s work, “body” has no trans- or extra-historical
meaning; it has, simply, a function. It functions as a scattering
point, a locus of dispersion for all that proponents of culture as
the escape from death or of nature as the eternally pure would
stop their ears against. We must hear “body” in Foucault’s discourse, not as a metonym for nature as opposed to culture, but
rather as a term referring to no thing but standing in opposition
to our desire for a sure and singular source for the truth of man.
(1989, 614)
McWhorter, Lois McNay (1991 and 1992, 11-47) and Judith Butler (1989)
have challenged this concept of the body. For McWhorter, it leaves moot the
possibility of liberty; if the body is marked only by its function to be formed
according to power relations, “he leaves us with nothing to liberate” (1989,
608), and surely, as Foucault’s emphasis on the project of desexualization im-
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Ann J. Cahill
49
plies, liberation seems fundamental to his purposes. McNay, while for the most
part accepting Foucault’s theory of the “docile” body, also argues that it fails to
account sufficiently for a variety of experiences central not only to women’s
experience, but also to the development of a feminist consciousness. Butler
takes Foucault to task because his analysis seems to imply, contrary to his
asserted purpose, that the body does in fact exist, prior to power’s inscription,
precisely as a blank surface-for, after all, power must have something to write
on, and thus “it would appear that ‘the body,’ which is the object or surface
on which construction occurs, is itself prior to construction” (1989, 601).
McNay’s and McWhorter’s analyses fail to acknowledge sufficiently the
deeply implicated relationship between power and resistance. In Foucault’s
model, liberation of a sort is certainly possible; at any given moment, certain
aspects of the dominant discourse are vulnerable and subjects are capable of
questioning and undermining them. With regard to real, live bodies themselves, and the disciplinary power which shapes them and their possibilities,
the only hope of liberation lies in our ability to see them precisely as a site of
this inscription of power dynamics (as long as we understand their inscribed
status as not utterly determinative). An analysis of these dynamics can serve to
loosen certain aspects of the discourses of power imposed upon actual bodily
persons.
To complain that such bodies would then be reinscribed with different dis-
courses is to forget Foucault’s analysis of power, which insists that power involves not only oppression, but also production. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault writes,
To analyse the political investment of the body and the microphysics of power presupposes, therefore, that one abandons –
where power is concerned – the violence-ideology opposition,
the metaphor of property, the model of the contract or of con-
quest; that – where knowledge is concerned – one abandons the
opposition between what is “interested” and what is “disinterested,” the model of knowledge and the primacy of the subject.
(1979, 28).
If to “liberate” bodies is to render them utterly independent from the various discourses which exist in the particular historical and cultural context,
then indeed such a goal is, within the context of Foucault’s project, impossible.
There is no purely “natural” or “free” body to reclaim. If, however, one seeks to
liberate individual bodies from certain aspects of the particular dominant
discourses, then precisely this type of analysis is necessary. To recognize that
virtually no aspect of bodies can be described in terms of universally true,
objective discourses (for example, the scientific discourse)-that is, to recognize them as fundamentally un-natural-does not weaken familiar feminist insights concerning various cultural and bodily methods of expressing and enThis content downloaded from 129.81.226.78 on Tue, 20 Dec 2016 23:06:04 UTC
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50
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forcing women’s inferiority. It is rather to say that the effects of power do not
stop at such blatant practices as corseting, foot-binding, clitoridectomies, and
forced sterilization, but that these are only the most obvious results of a discourse whose influence is far deeper and more subtle than originally thought.
Whereas traditional feminist thought has relied on the objective and ostensibly value-free realm of the “natural” to serve as a contrast to the artificial aspects of femininity, Foucault’s model allows no such easy opposition. In fact, it
allows no totality of any sort, so that while resistance is possible (that is, while
subjects can express and effect their objections to certain aspects of the dominant discourse, and can even eradicate some), total resistance, that is, a wholesale resistance to the power structure as such, is not. Because the body is always
already implicated in the play of power, because the inscription of power occurs at the moment at which the body enters culture (that is, at its very mo-
ment of conception), Butler’s point that Foucault’s model demands a “blank
slate” stage is mistaken. The body only and always exists as a social and cultural entity; prior to the “construction,” as Butler puts it, there is literally no
body at all. The stage of the blank slate does not exist.
If, as Foucault claims, individual bodies are produced with certain identifiable characteristics which relate directly to power dynamics, then bodies are
texts which may be read in order to discern the (sometimes implicit) claims of
the dominant discourse. Given the admittedly complex, but always central,
role of the body in the political oppression of women, the feminine body is a
particularly crucial text. Indeed, much feminist scholarship has been devoted
to reading the details of the feminine body for precisely such purposes. The
specifics of the feminine body, and particularly feminine bodily comportment,
reflect the power relations which have produced them and the myriad ways
in which this production is accomplished. A closer look at the behavior and
habits of bodies typically described and recognized as feminine is therefore
warranted. The work of two feminist theorists is invaluable here: Iris Marion
Young’s “Throwing Like a Girl” (1990) and Sandra Lee Bartky’s “Foucault,
Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power” (1988).1
THE FEMININE BODY
Describing “the” feminine body in a distinctly phenomenological sense presents, of course, a host of difficulties. Strictly speaking (and importantly for the
purposes of patriarchy), there is no one feminine body, no single incarnation
which fulfills perfectly the ideal set up for it. Moreover, it would appear doubt-
ful that even within the confines of a particular culture and a particular his-
torical period, there is one static ideal of the feminine body. Definitions of
“feminine” behavior, appearance, and character vary widely among classes and
ethnicities, and gender is only one means by which bodies are constructed and
categorized. Given these multiple and varied factors, phenomenological at-
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Ann J. Cahill
51
tempts to discern that which is feminine, such as those of Young and Bartky,
can run the risk of ignoring other factors in the construction of the feminine
body, thus implicitly holding up one ideal of femininity to the exclusion of all
others.
While I am sympathetic to such criticisms-criticisms to which, it seems to
me, all phenomenological analyses are vulnerable-I do not consider them
ultimately fatal. For while such analyses may in fact be describing a femininity which is, for example, distinctly white, the fact of the matter is that it is
white femininity which has a dominant, albeit not solitary, place in the con-
struction of gender.2 In the context of culture at large, women who are excluded from this dominant class are often nevertheless defined or measured
over and against this standard. In certain cases, the dominance of this particular articulation of femininity serves to define women of certain ethnicities
or classes out of their femininity (and thus, importantly, out of their very
humanity). In the light of these dominant parameters, then, African-American women may not be perceived as “real” “women.” They have certainly not,
historically, been accorded the chivalrous courtesy allegedly commanded by
those of the fairer sex (hence the paradoxical, and unanswerable, question
which Sojourner Truth reiterated in her famous speech). It is no coincidence
that the structures of feminine experience, and the modalities which shape
women’s bodies and comportment, are raced; however, it is a mistake to assume
that the diverse articulations of femininity hold equal social sway. They do not,
and as long as virtually all women, regardless of race, class, and sexual orientation, are subject to the dominant and multi-faceted construction of femininity (whether or not they actually fulfill that construction), it will remain
relevant (although in differing ways, and to differing degrees) to women’s experiences.
In her essay, Young is primarily concerned with the limited scope of feminine motility. Although she focuses her analysis on goal-oriented actions, and
therefore claims to avoid “sexual being” (1990, 143), her conclusions shed
considerable light on the bodily fear which constricts the sphere of feminine
physical experience. One of her central claims is that the feminine body is
treated by the woman as an object, a thing which exists separate from (and
again, often opposed to) the aims of the woman as subject. “[T]he modalities
of feminine bodily existence have their root in the fact that feminine existence
experiences the body as a mere thing-a fragile thing, which must be picked up
and coaxed into movement, a thing that exists as looked at and acted upon”
(1990, 150; emphasis in original). The woman then experiences her body as
an alien, unwieldy, weak object which, depending on the particular goal, needs
either massive transformation or kid-glove treatment. Faced with the fragility
of her flesh, and the dangers which confront it, the woman attempts to protect
her appallingly vulnerable body by restricting its spatial scope and limiting its
physical endeavors. Feminine bodily comportment is marked by an odd econ-
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omy, where any given action is undertaken not by the entirety of physical capabilities that could be gathered, but rather only with the necessary minimum.
“Women often do not perceive themselves as capable of lifting and carrying
heavy things …. We frequently fail to summon the full possibilities of our
muscular coordination, position, poise and bearing” (Young 1990, 145).
Unlike Young, Bartky is working explicitly out of a Foucauldian analysis of
the body, although she decries his failure to account sufficiently for the implications of sexual difference (1988, 63). She attempts to answer this omission by examining “those disciplinary practices that produce a body which in
gesture and appearance is recognizably feminine” (1988, 64). In her analysis
of the social practices of dieting, exercise, and makeup, she reveals a systematic, and simultaneous, vilification and disempowering of the female body. The
impetus to transform one’s body into something beautiful by means of cosmetic force transforms the body into a hostile entity, constantly threatening to re-
vert to its natural, hence unbeautiful, state, and in so doing manifesting itself
to be directly oppositional to the wishes of the woman. The war against unwanted weight is an even more confrontational phenomenon. Here, the body
demands constant surveillance, and one’s appetites and desires must be carefully guarded against, lest unwanted pounds find their way onto the hard-won
slender frame. The body is constituted again, perhaps even more insidiously, as
that which the woman needs to struggle against, to control, to whip into shape,
despite its inherent tendencies to lapse into an unattractive appearance.
If the feminine body is constituted and experienced as the enemy of the
woman-not a docile body in relation to power dynamics, but a hostile one in
relation to the social desires of the woman-it is also a paradoxically weak one.
Bartky describes the limitations of feminine motility as the results of bodily
fear. That is, the woman experiences her body not as a means by which to
accomplish a variety of physical tasks, but rather as a barrier to those accomplishments. In a point which Young takes up in greater detail, Bartky claims
that “woman’s space is not a field in which her bodily intentionality can be
freely realized but an enclosure in which she feels herself positioned and by
which she is confined” (1988, 66). Here the body is not so much an enemy as
an assumed hindrance, plagued by weakness, uncertainty, and fragility.
Both Young and Bartky’s analysis describe a feminine bodily comportment
which is marked by fear: fear of bodily desires (so strong they threaten to undo
all the subject’s best efforts), and fear of harm (so likely that the subject constructs a small “safety zone” around the body). What is significant about these
analyses is that they stress the degree to which the woman experiences her own
individual body as culpable for making all of these dangers possible. It appears
that the feminine body is not only essentially weak, but that it somehow cre-
ates its own vulnerability. The feminine body which Young and Bartky describe is that of a pre-victim. If it attempts something beyond its highly limited
capacities, if it wanders beyond its safety zone, it can expect to be hurt. The
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Ann J. Cahill
53
woman who experiences her body in this way does not locate the dangers presented to her body as originating from outside of her body. Rather, they have
as their source the fact and nature of her body itself. If, then, that body is hurt
or violated, then the blame must rest on the woman’s failure to sufficiently
limit its movements.
That contemporary women experience their body in this way is also supported by the sense in which, as Young emphasizes, the feminine body is constituted as that which is alien to the female subject. Considering the body as a
force or element somehow fundamentally separated from the wishes and desires of the female subject confirms its status as a source of impending danger.
Likewise, perceiving the body as a liability positions it outside the female subjectivity in such a way as to endow it with a degree of alienation. Yet if the body
is so distanced from the female subject, we may wonder whether that subject
can be held at all responsible for the control of her charge. For who could hope
to control this wild and weak mass of flesh? But insofar as it is able to be con-
trolled at all, that responsibility rests squarely on the female subject. Only she
can take that flesh, mold it in the image of the beautiful, and shelter it from the
ramifications of its own countless failings. Even when a degree of the respon-
sibility is abdicated to a man, still the (adult) woman bears the responsibility
of finding a suitable protector. If control is lost, ultimately only she bears the
blame.
Feminist phenomenological theories of the feminine body, such as Bartky’s
and Young’s, constitute only a small subsection of recent feminist theory on the
body. Other theorists, rather than emphasizing the degree and ways in which
the feminine body has been implicated in the patriarchal oppression of women, have noted that the feminine body provides a model and opportunity for
challenging the devaluing of the body with regard to subjectivity. Rosi Brai-
dotti (1994) and Elizabeth Grosz (1994), for example, both locate embodiment, and therefore sexual difference, as fundamental to personhood and
agency; moreover, they note that the distinctness of the feminine body serves
to challenge the validity of traditional modem dichotomies (mind/body, form/
matter, activity/passivity). Whereas the analyses of Young and Bartky speak to
the defining and confining aspects of the feminine body in a patriarchal context, theories such as Braidotti’s and Grosz’s emphasize the degree to which the
feminine body always exceeds and therefore undermines the universalist ten-
dencies of modem, masculinist thought. Also, they remind us that the body
and its meanings are not exhausted by its participation in a discursive regime
of power, or, rather, that the body constructed in the context of such a discursive regime is never wholly determined by it, but always carries the possibility of resistance to that regime (the feminine body, given both sexual difference and a patriarchal discourse, even more so). Finally, both Braidotti and
Grosz note that both the body in general and individual bodies in particular
are significantly indeterminate, such that no one incarnation of the body can
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Hypatia
constitute a model for all bodies everywhere. A corollary to this insight would
be that, despite the strength of the discursive regime which produces distinctly
feminine bodies, not all bodies so marked will encapsulate all aspects of the
demands of femininity in equal or even similar fashion.
These two bodies of feminist thought, while containing significant disagreement, are not directly in opposition. To understand the feminine body as
holding the potential to threaten dominant masculine discourses to a significant degree is not, after all, to claim that such a body is utterly outside of those
discourses. Bartky and Young are describing the feminine body as presently
constructed (perhaps, as I mention above, without sufficient acknowledgement
of the differences which occur among feminine bodies), insofar as that construction serves an explicitly patriarchal and male-centric discourse. Braidotti and Grosz, on the other hand, are considering what meanings feminine
bodies, as well as other bodies which have been excluded from the social norm,
can hold over against such discourses. Certainly it is not the case that the
femininity which Bartky and Young describe is universally or identically held
by all women in contemporary society, nor is it the case that femininity is
wholly exhausted by definitions which emphasize weakness and persistent fear.
Theorists such as Braidotti and Grosz remind us that the power of these social
narratives is never without limits, and so the feminine body can also be a site
of agency and resistance. Yet we may still agree that many women’s embodied
subjectivities-precisely because those bodies are marked as feminine-are
characterized by the kinds of habits and behaviors listed by Bartky and Young.
The fact that individual bodies are not entirely, or identically, determined by
that particular construction does not weaken the claim that, generally speaking, feminine bodies are produced within a context which, because of a hierarchy based on sex, marks them disproportionately and gender-specifically as
weak, hostile, and responsible for the danger which constantly threatens them.
RAPE AND FEMININE BODILY COMPORTMENT
The feminine habits and motility described by Bartky and Young clearly
imply a constant state of danger for the feminine body, and indeed find the
source of the danger within the feminine body itself. But what specific dangers
do all the hard-won feminine habits seek to counteract? In refusing to call
upon the totality of physical abilities present in the feminine body, the woman
attempts to reduce the risk of self-inflicted bodily harm. To throw with her
whole arm may cause her slender muscles to snap; to run fast, hard, for an
extended period of time may overtax her gentle heart.
However, women’s limitation of the space within which her body can move
seems to gesture not towards self-inflicted harm, but rather towards harm inflicted by other bodies. Within the invisible wall she throws up around her, a
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Ann J. Cahill
55
woman may consider herself safe; in this space, she has increased control over
her body. To go beyond that space is to enter an arena where her body is in
danger of being violated. This limited, individual safety zone which determines the smallness of a woman’s step, the gathering in of her sitting body, and
the daintiness of her gestures mirrors in fact the larger hampering of her
mobility. For a woman, the travellable world is a small place. Entire portions of
each 24-hour period are deemed unsafe, and unless accompanied by a man (or,
alternatively, many women), these hours should be spent in the safety of one’s
own home. Geographical areas which may be completely accessible to men
are, for women, sites of possible (even likely) harassment, molestation, or rape.
What is important in this comparison is that where women are encouraged
or mandated to restrict their movement for safety’s sake, the danger described
is not to the body in general. That danger is almost always specifically sexualized. That is, the reason that men can travel where women ought not to is only
that women can be and are raped (whereas men can be, but are not often), not
that women can be and are mugged or beaten up (as in fact men can be, and
are). For the male subject, the threat presented is one of the destruction of the
body; for the feminine body, the trenchant threat is one aimed at their sexual
being and freedom. Women’s individual restriction of their bodily movements
reflect an attempt to deny unwanted sexual access, yet paradoxically this very
denial serves to highlight their inherent accessibility.
In an extraordinary series of over two thousand photographs,
many candid shots taken in the street, the German photogra-
pher Marianne Wex has documented differences in typical
masculine and feminine body posture. Women sit waiting for
trains with arms close to the body, hands folded together in
their laps, toes pointing straight ahead or turned inward, and
legs pressed together. The women in these photographs make
themselves small and narrow, harmless; they seem tense; they
take up little space. Men, on the other hand, expand into the
available space; they sit with legs far apart and arms flung out at
some distance from the body. Most common in these sitting
male figures is what Wex calls the “proffering position”: the
men sit with legs thrown wide apart, crotch visible, feet pointing outward, often with an arm and a casually dangling hand
resting comfortably on an open, spread thigh. (Bartky 1988, 67)
The men’s sex is expressed freely, almost defiantly, while the women cover
theirs, for fear of its being stolen, violated, consumed. The women, conscious
of the sexual dangers which surround them, attempt to make themselves even
tinier, as if the safest status they could hold would be invisibility.
The hesitancy with which women enter the bodily world, the assumption
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56
Hypatia
of responsibility, the locating of danger within the facticity of the feminine
body, all these express the power dynamic which blames women for the sexual
assaults inflicted upon them. That rape is experienced as a fate as frightening
as death (in fact, according to a study performed by Mark Warr [1984], most
women in most age groups fear rape significantly more than they fear death)
demonstrates the privileged role which the threat of sexual violence plays in
the production of the feminine body. If we claimed previously that the socially
produced feminine body is precisely that of a pre-victim, we may also claim
that it is the body of the guilty pre-victim. In the specific moments and movements of this body are written the defense of the sexual offender: she was
somewhere she should not have been, moving her body in ways that she should
not have, carrying on in a manner so free and easy so as to convey an utter
abdication of her responsibility of self-protection, that is, of self-surveillance.
Returning to our Foucauldian analysis of the body, we are compelled to ask:
what power relations are inscribed upon this feminine body? To what purpose
has it been created, and whom does it serve? In feminine gestures and bodily
comportment, we see the effects of a power dynamic which holds women responsible for their own physical victimization. Insofar as the assaults which are
considered most dangerous, and most pervasive, are precisely sexual assaults,
we may also recognize the production of culpable feminine sexuality, which by
its very existence alone incites men, who remain allegedly powerless in the
presence of its overwhelming temptation, to violence. Let us be exact about
this process. In acquiring the bodily habits which render the subject “feminine,” habits which are inculcated at a young age and then constantly re-defined and maintained, the woman learns to accept her body as dangerous, willful, fragile, and hostile. It constantly poses the possibility of threat, and only
persistent vigilance can limit the risk at which it places the woman. The production of such a body, of course, reflects and supports a status quo which assumes that the victim is morally responsible for the behavior of the assailant,
at least until she can be proven sexually prudent or innocent.
The threat of rape, then, is a constitutive and sustained moment in the production of the feminine body. It is the pervasive danger which renders so much
public space off-limits, a danger so omnipresent, in fact, that the “safety zone”
which women attempt to create rarely exceeds the limits of their own limbs,
and quite often falls far short of that radius. Women not only consider their
flesh to be inherently weak and breakable, but also violable. The truth inscribed on the woman’s body is not that, biologically, all men are potential
rapists. It is rather that, biologically, all women are potential rape victims. The
inscription carries along within it the notion of natural necessity. Note, too,
that this bodily inscription may take place without the articulation of the
concept of “rape” or the actual experience of sexual assault. Girls especially
may know that their bodies are inherently dangerous without being clear as
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Ann J. Cahill
57
to the precise nature of the danger they present. They may only sense that
something very bad, and very hurtful, will befall them should their surveillance
falter, and, correspondingly, that all sorts of social opportunities will be open to
them should their project of femininity be successful.
THE PROBLEM OF RESISTANCE
With the feminine body so described, that is, diagnosed as the expression of
a distinct power discourse which includes at a fundamental level the threat of
rape, the question of resistance again becomes pertinent. Foucault, it will be
remembered, insisted both upon the constitutive role of power and upon the
necessarily concurrent force of resistance-resistance, that is, not to the entirety of the discourse, but to particular and localized expressions of it. With
regard to rape, Foucault’s suggestions seem to imply that a legal redefinition of
the crime would constitute a major change in the discourse, thus helping to
free women’s bodies from the defining elements which produce them as previctims. It is important to remember here that Foucault’s suggested remedy is
particularly limited to the legal realm, and to legal discourse; it is, after all, a
proposed change in the state’s penal code.
Yet a mere change in the legal definition of rape is not nearly sufficient to
answer the constitutive and productive effects of this particular discourse, a
discourse which may overlap the legal arena significantly, but which is not
reducible to legislation or the procedures of the criminal justice system. Indeed, to believe that such a change would have the desired result is to accept
the legal realm as a highly privileged source of power with determinative
effects. Clearly, the legal world is a source of considerable political and social
power, as well as a reflection and extension of the dominant discourses which
Foucault describes. However, it is not the only source of power; it is but one
node in a complex matrix of relationships and institutions. It not only expresses dominant discourses, but is subject to them.
Here, in fact, we see one significant result of the differing motivations behind the similar claims of Foucault and feminist theorists. In seeking primarily to liberate sexuality from the disciplinary legal discourse, and doing so in a
way which, as many feminist criticisms have stated, does not sufficiently take
into consideration the differing power positions related to sex and gender,
Foucault perhaps has the luxury of approaching the law (perhaps understood as
an ungendered space?) as a viable means to his end. Without a sufficiently deep
or considered understanding of the intersecting forces of power, gender, and
the law, Foucault ultimately (if implicitly) is concerned with liberating male
sexuality. And indeed, were rape to be redefined as primarily a crime of assault,
the sexual behavior and aggression inherent in this particular crime, which is
virtually always the action of a man, would be accorded no legal relevance.
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Hypatia
The role which this particular action plays within the context of a larger
discourse of power would also be deemed legally irrelevant. Yet the horror and
harms of rape are importantly linked to that privileged role. That is, a significant element of the woman victim’s experience of rape is directly related to the
constitutive element of a power discourse which produces her body as violable, weak, and alien to her subjectivity. To redefine the crime as primarily as-
sault would mask these connections. Moreover, given the historical relationship of the law and women’s bodies, it seems dubious (although not impossible)
that the categories, language, and concepts found in the legal world could be
effectively wielded to change significantly the character of the produced fem-
inine body.
Foucault’s suggested decriminalization of rape as a sexual crime forgets that
the very bodies of rape victims are themselves expressions of a given power
discourse, and that the act of rape itself, especially given its pervasiveness, is
fundamental to the discourse which defines women as inferior and socially expendable. It is precisely these meanings that form women’s experience of rape,
and any legal consideration of the crime must take them seriously. The real,
live, living, breathing women who experience rape and the threat of rape on a
daily basis, and whose very bodily behavior and beings are in part formed by the
presence of the threat of rape, will not be liberated in any sense by a redefinition of rape which excludes its constitutive and oppressive effects upon their
existence.
Where, then, is resistance to be found against this pervasive and constitu-
tive discourse of power? Given that rape is, among other things, a crime rec
ognized by society (even as it is implicated in fundamental social dynamics
and beliefs), it has a legal status which feminists are correct to preserve. Tha
is, regardless of how rape is defined or understood, it is recognized as a behavior
worthy of legal recriminations, and despite feminist concerns with the means
of law enforcement in the U.S. (especially its distinctly racist results), it woul
seem all but impossible to imagine a feminism which did not urge serious lega
action against the rapist. Foucault, after all, does not wish to render rape itsel
legal, but merely wishes to punish only one particular aspect of rape, that per
taining to its violence. The analysis of rape’s role with regard to women’s bod-
ily comportment and experience suggests that one way of resisting this partic
ular discourse is forcing society, by means of its system of justice, to punish no
only the violence of rape (although that element should certainly be recognized as punishable as well) but also its role as an enforcement of a set of patriarchal, misogynist values. The legal definition of rape should include, there
fore, an understanding of the bodily and sexual harms possible (and indeed,
fundamental) in the action of rape, and should take those harms into consideration when considering the appropriate legal response to such an assailant
Maintaining the sexual element of the legal definition of rape-that is
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Ann J. Cahill
59
maintaining the legal recognition that rape is a particularly sexual crimedoes not, of course, in and of itself constitute resistance to the power discourses
which include the act of rape. As feminists such as Brownmiller have demonstrated, emphasizing the sexual elements of rape can invite, among other
things, assumptions of the culpability of feminine sexuality. Indeed, if the
sexual aspects of rape are understood to be part and parcel of a natural, biology-
based system which includes aggressive male sexual behavior and passive (yet
paradoxically threatening) female sexual behavior, then the inclusion of sex
within the legal definition of rape could be quite harmful to women indeed.3
What is needed is the recognition of sex as a socially constructed and crucial
factor in a larger system of sexual hierarchy; failing to include sex in the legal
definition of rape makes precisely this recognition impossible.
To illustrate this point, we may compare rape, understood as a sexual crime,
to sexual harassment.4 Should sexual harassment be reconceptualized as professional harassment, wherein sex was deemed irrelevant to the behavior (both
in terms of the sexes of the parties involved, and as an element of a larger,
oppressive discourse), essential aspects of the behavior would be lost. The behavior itself could not be understood in terms of exercising privileges that have
been traditionally and unfairly extended to men at the expense of women. In
a similar way, defining and therefore approaching rape as if sex were irrelevant
would render impossible a consideration of rape’s privileged role in the power
discourse which is sexual hierarchy.
A great deal of the power behind the particular discourses which constitute
and produce the feminine body is due to their allegedly natural (that is, biological and hence irrefutable) claims. By directly recognizing the role of such
discourses in an overarching and markedly un-natural sexual hierarchy, the
claims of a “natural” women’s sexuality (especially one which accepted, and
even enjoyed, dominance as part of a sexual experience) would be easily dismissed. Foucault’s strategy, on the other hand, by silencing any and all sexual
elements of the act of rape, would allow these assumptions to remain intact (if,
perhaps, unsaid in the courtroom itself).
In other words, given that rape is a constitutive element of women’s experience, and that it is a social means of sexual differentiation (such that it has
radically different meanings and effects for men and women), it must be approached legally in such a way that its sex-specific meanings may be articulated. Foucault’s analysis of power, and especially the way in which power discourses act on real, live, living bodies should remind us that the individual
women rape victims who prosecute their cases were marked by the threat of
rape-simply because they were women-long before their bodies were actually violated, and that their experience of rape is not exhausted (although it is
certainly dominated) by the one particular incident which commands the
court’s attention.
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60
Hypatia
THE ACT OF RAPE
However, this location of the threat of rape as a basic source of feminine
bodily comportment does have specific ramifications for the individual experience of being sexually assaulted. On a bodily level, a woman will be likely to
experience a rape in some important sense as a threat fulfilled. The typical reactions of a rape victim, marked by overwhelming guilt and self-loathing, are
the reactions of a person who should have known but temporarily forgot that
she was always at risk, that in fact the risk followed her everywhere she went,
that it was inescapable. To have believed for even a moment that she was not
in danger, for whatever reason, is felt to be the cause of the attack. Those
assumptions which were prevalent in the production of her bodily comportment have been confirmed, and the attack itself may well be considered as a
reminder for the need of increased self-surveillance.
Why is an attack with a penis distinct from an attack with any other body
part? Precisely because the attack with the penis is the danger which is at the
basis of the specifics of feminine bodily comportment. To desexualize the act of
rape, to consider it legally only as any other assault, would be to obfuscatenot to weaken!-its role in the production of the sexual hierarchy through the
inscription of individual bodies. Rather than resisting the insistent process of
sexualization which Foucault describes and decries, it would in fact support the
equally insistent process of sexual hierarchization which places women’s bodies at such daily risk. Teresa de Lauretis writes:
In the terms of Foucault’s theoretical analysis, his proposal may
be understood as an effort to counter the technology of sex by
breaking the bond between sexuality and crime; an effort to
enfranchise sexual behaviors from legal punishments, and so to
render the sexual sphere free from intervention by the state.
Such a form of “local resistance” on behalf of the men impris-
oned on, or subject to, charges of rape, however, would paradoxically but practically work to increase and further to legiti-
mate the sexual oppression of women. (1987, 37; emphasis in
original)
Foucault’s error lies in his interpretation of rape only as something which a
man does, and for which a man may be punished. From this perspective, he is
concerned with protecting all aspects of (masculine) sexuality from the normalizing forces of the law. However, in locating the man as central to the phenomenon, he has forgotten to ask the question of the bodily significance of the
experience of being raped. This analysis allows us to claim that an assault with
a penis is distinct not due to what it claims about the masculine body, but
rather due to what it claims about the feminine body, and how those claims
are located in an overall power structure. To challenge that entire set of cul-
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Ann J. Cahill
61
tural assumptions, that entire discursive discourse which produces the feminine body (a Foucauldian purpose if ever there was one), necessitates not a
desexualization of rape, but rather a relocation of its significance.
Interestingly enough, our analysis may lead us to a conclusion quite the opposite of Foucault’s. While the threat of rape is, I have argued, the most trenchant threat, more compelling even than the threat of death, it is not the only
threat. Other assaults, including those made with fists, and especially those
which occur within the context of sexual relationships, may in fact be experienced as sexual in nature precisely insofar as they confirm the assumptions
about the feminine body discussed above. In some ways, these assaults may be
perceived as precursors to the act of rape, the ultimate violation. If this is the
case, then our analysis would call for a serious reconsideration of domestic
violence not merely as an act of assault, but rather as an act with an underlying
set of sexual meanings as well.
If the feminine body is a location whereon the tenets of a sexually hierarchical culture are written, it is also the site where they may be fought. Working out
the Foucauldian notion of resistance, McNay writes, “… the sexed body is to
be understood not only as the primary target of the techniques of disciplinary
power, but also as the point where these techniques are resisted and thwarted”
(1992, 39). When women’s bodies are constituted not as objects which incite
other, more innocent bodies to violence, but rather as powerful means of coun-
teracting that violence, the power structures which support the all too pervasive phenomenon of rape will be seriously undermined.
NOTES
1. For a compelling Foucauldian analysis of a group of disorders usually associated
with the female body and/or psyche, see Bordo (1991).
2. To characterize the femininity described by Bartky and Young as “white” is not
sufficiently specific. Within subgroups that may be white but which are also delineated
by religion or class (e.g., fundamentalist Christianity or orthodox Judaism), femininity
may be produced in distinctly different ways, ways which do not conform to the phe-
nomenological analyses as discussed in this article. Nevertheless, it is accurate to approach this ideal as a racialized one, while also recognizing that race is not the only
element which shapes it. I thank the editors of Hypatia for bringing this point to my
attention.
3. Renee Heberle has recently, in these pages, sounded another warning note:
“[W]hat if in emphasizing the strategy of piecing together our reality as a rape cultur
through speakouts and detailed descriptions of experience, we participate in setting u
the event of sexual violence as a defining moment of women’s possibilities for bein
in the world?… Simply put, what if this strategy furthers the reification of masculin
ist dominance?” (Heberle 1996, 65). To speak the realities of sexual violence for women, in other words, is to substantiate those very realities further. Yet I would argue that
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Hypatia
making these realities visible in the legal world, and laudable in larger society, is a
necessary step towards understanding them as unnecessary and socially constructed,
even if that speaking may be partially or temporarily used against the interests of
women.
4. I thank the editors of Hypatia for suggesting this illum
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Article
Make, share, review, remix:
Unpacking the impact of the
internet on contemporary
creativity
Convergence: The International
Journal of Research into
New Media Technologies
1168–1184
ª The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1354856517751391
journals.sagepub.com/home/con
Ioana Literat
Teachers College, Columbia University, USA
Abstract
This article advances a holistic framework that aims to facilitate a better understanding of the
nuanced impact of the internet on contemporary creative participation. Functioning simultaneously as the context, locus, and medium for creative activity, the internet affects each stage in the
life cycle of a creative product – creation, distribution, interpretation, and remix. In addition, this
influence is felt in a wide range of creative products: off-line and online, professional and vernacular. Previous research has not examined these different processes and types of creative output in
conversation with each other; by advancing an integrative analytical approach and synthesizing
research from multiple domains, this work attempts to address this gap. As a way to illuminate this
impact and demonstrate the value of the proposed framework, the article applies this framework
to three case studies: a work of off-line art (The Artist Is Present), online art (Moon), and online
nonart or vernacular online creativity (Pepe the Frog memes). This analysis facilitates a deeper
understanding of these interrelated processes, attends to the complex ways in which new media
blurs the borders between those categorizations, and discusses the potential implications of these
complex contemporary dynamics.
Keywords
Art, digital art, memes, new media, online creativity, vernacular creativity
The field of art and creativity has experienced significant change as new media technologies
permeate all aspects of cultural life. More and more artists are using the internet as a platform for
creative works; internet-based art is on the rise (Cornell and Halter, 2015), and it is experimenting,
increasingly, with participatory approaches to engage digital publics (Literat, 2012). Online
Corresponding author:
Ioana Literat, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 W 120th St, Box 19, New York, 10027, USA.
Email: literat@tc.columbia.edu
Literat
1169
platforms and social media are teeming with the products of everyday digital creativity, from
memes to YouTube videos to digital art. In addition, many contemporary artists also draw heavily
on user-generated content, further blurring boundaries between art and vernacular creativity, and
engaging in complex practices of digital remix and appropriation (Halter, 2015; Olson, 2008).
Online spaces fulfill important functions in the distribution, promotion, and commercialization of creative work, from fine art online marketplaces like Artsy or Saatchi Art to platforms
like Etsy, which focus on handmade goods and a wide variety of arts and crafts. Contemporary
art, so often perceived by the general public as inaccessible or elitist, is welcoming new audiences through web-based means of consumption and criticism. For example, on The Art
Assignment, an online video series created in partnership with PBS Digital Studios, artists
describe their practice in short videos, and then give viewers an open-ended ‘assignment’ – for
example, ‘Find an object you feel bad for [and] fix it in your own style’ (Shpungin, 2015) –
which is then to be uploaded and shared publicly. Platforms such as Yelp make it easier to share
vernacular reviews of art shows and museums (Droitcour, 2014) with a more ‘casual’, ‘direct’,
and ‘personal’ style than that of formal art criticism in professional venues (Gat, 2013).
Such examples begin to demonstrate the nuanced and often subtle ways in which the internet –
as a context, locus, and medium for creative activity – shapes the contemporary field of creative
practice, in terms of the public’s engagement with art and creativity, as well as the practices of
creators themselves. The key argument advanced here is that the impact of the internet within this
domain is multifaceted and complex and that, in order to adequately understand this impact, we
need to look at all the key stages in the life cycle of a creative product – (1) creation/production, (2)
exhibition/distribution, (3) interpretation/criticism, and (4) appropriation/remix – and at the different kinds of creative products that illustrate these contemporary changes: off-line art, online art,
and online nonart.1 As a way to illuminate this impact and demonstrate the value of the proposed
framework, I will apply this framework to three case studies: a work of off-line art (The Artist Is
Present), online art (Moon), and online vernacular creativity (Pepe the Frog memes).
The Artist Is Present (Figure 1) was a performance by artist Marina Abramovic at the Museum
of Modern Art (MoMA) in the spring of 2010. Individual museum visitors were invited to sit in a
chair facing Abramovic, and maintain eye contact with her for as long as the visitor chose to
remain there, which ranged from a few minutes to several hours. The second case study, Moon
(Figure 2), is a digital art project, by contemporary artists Ai Weiwei and Olafur Eliasson (2013),
which exists entirely online and invites global visitors to create imagery for display on a virtual
moon surface at https://www.moonmoonmoonmoon.com/. The third case study, Pepe the Frog
(Figure 3), is an internet meme based on an anthropomorphic frog character from the comic series
Boy’s Club by Matt Furie. Various incarnations of Pepe have been used as reaction memes –
including Feels Good Man, Sad Pepe, Angry Pepe, Smug Pepe, and Well Meme’d – making it one
of the most prominent and widely shared memes of 2016 (Know Your Meme, 2017).
Each of the four sections – creation/production, exhibition/distribution, interpretation/criticism,
and appropriation/remix – will begin by integrating relevant literature, then discussing the nature
and scope of the impact of the internet on that particular domain, within the spheres of off-line art,
online art, and online vernacular creativity, exemplified by the case studies described above.
However, it is important to note that these four key stages, which will represent the focus of this
inquiry, are not always neatly defined; in many cases, they overlap or blend together in ways that
make them almost indistinguishable.
Indeed, this complexity is an important motive for the current work. In comparing multiple
types of creative products (digital and nondigital, professional and vernacular) and considering the
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Figure 1. Marina Abramović, The Artist Is Present, at the Musuem of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, 2010.
Image by Andrew Russeth via Flickr.
Figure 2. Ai Weiwei and Olafur Elliason, Moon (screenshot).
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Figure 3. Pepe the Frog memes. Left to right: Feels Good Man, Smug Pepe, and Well Meme’d.
interrelation between content generation and other cognate processes, this article aims to introduce
a more nuanced framework than earlier theorizations of the impact of the internet on art, such as
Couchot’s (2002) discussion of ‘digital hybridization’. While Couchot did consider the impact of
digital media on multiple processes beyond production, and while the concept of digital hybridization as emerging aesthetic is certainly useful, the present framework allows for a fuller analysis
and a deeper understanding of comparative dynamics. In particular, by comparing the impact on
digital and nondigital works, it extends the discussion to include an examination of how the
conditions of the internet also shape off-line art. Furthermore, by considering both professional and
vernacular art, this framework also addresses gaps in the literature that focus on one or the other;
for example, Huhtamo (2006) and Dyson (2005) focus on new media’s effect on high or professional ‘art’, while Milner (2016), Bruns (2008), or Burgess (2006) focus on new media’s enabling
of vernacular creativity. Crossing over the divides between professional and vernacular and
between digital and nondigital helps reveal not only the artificiality or blurriness of those lines but
also the ways in which the internet is affecting the conditions for creative expression and consumption more broadly.
Production/creation
Whereas artists working in traditional media may upload and share their work online, since the
1990s, a growing number of artists have used the internet as a locus for the creation of their work
(Greene, 2004; Olson, 2008; Tribe et al., 2006). Internet art is named as such because the internet is
the site of its performance (Lin, 2005); code itself may be thought of as the medium. Furthermore,
the impact of new media technologies on the evolution of creative practice is not limited to the
professional art sphere; it has also shaped the field of vernacular online creativity. As online
platforms for making art become increasingly accessible and widely used, online spaces have seen
an explosion of vernacular creative content in the form of memes, YouTube videos, remixes and
mash-ups, fan fiction, and many other creative genres and user-generated content. Noting the role
of new media in facilitating greater grassroots participation, scholars have referred to these vernacular practices of online creativity as ‘vernacular creativity’ (Milner, 2016), ‘peer production’
(Benkler, 2006), or ‘participatory cultures’ (Jenkins et al., 2006) among others. Several descriptors
– such as ‘produsage’ (Bruns, 2008) or ‘prosumption’ (Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010) – emphasize
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the hybrid nature of creative production and the dissolving distinctions between production and
consumption. At the same time, it is, of course, a fallacy to think that the impact of the internet on
creative production can be identified only in regard to online content; rather, it influences off-line
and nondigital creative works as well. In contemporary art criticism, ‘post-internet art’ has
emerged as a vibrant, though contested, category. In this context, ‘post-internet refers not to a time
‘after’ the internet, but rather to an internet state of mind – to think in the fashion of the network’
(Archey and Peckham, 2014: 8).
Marina Abramovic’s performance art project, The Artist Is Present, exemplifies the ethos
of post-internet art. Abramovic explained how her project – which she describes as being
‘about stillness and about literally doing nothing and being in the present’ – is borne from and
a direct response to our contemporary culture of digital hyperconnectivity: ‘we are living in
this culture that is so isolated – everything is on the computer, and Twitter and blogs – so the
people really lost the self a long time ago and they are so desperate to find something else’
(Abramovic, quoted in Stigh and Jackson, 2010, n.p.). Thus, although the internet is not
explicitly part of the work itself, it nonetheless shapes the creative process in very significant
ways. Furthermore, the proliferation of participatory art in the past two decades can be
explained in part as a response to a perceived erosion of social bonds (Bishop, 2006). By
incorporating public participation into the design of the artwork, The Artist Is Present
emphasizes the significance of restoring genuine interpersonal connections in a post-internet
world; in this sense, the technological aspect – while outwardly missing from the work itself –
shapes both the aims and the form of the artwork.
Online art also, often, addresses the human condition of living in a digital culture. Moon depicts
the online space as a potential platform to establish interpersonal bonds. Its landing page invites
participants to:
connect with others through this space of imagination. Look at other people’s drawings and share them
with the world. Be part of the growing community to celebrate how creative expression transcends
external borders and internal constraints. We are in this world together. (Weiwei and Eliasson, 2013)
Moreover, in this case, the internet functions as a connector and enabler not only in the outwardfacing architecture of the project but also behind the scenes. Due to the Chinese government
restricting his international travel, Ai Weiwei could not be physically present to cocreate with his
collaborators; thus, it was online technologies – including Skype, back-and-forth iPhone videos,
and emails to share code and sketches – that connected Weiwei at his studio in Beijing, to artist
Olafur Eliason and curator Marcello Pisu in Berlin, to the team of web developers in New York
City (Creators, 2014).
Memes, ‘an integral part of the netizen vernacular’ (Shifman, 2013: 362), provide an interesting
comparison to online art. Both use digital tools for artistic expression and live online, potentially
reaching similar networked audiences. Yet, such a comparison also illuminates significant differences. For example, in the case of a meme like Pepe the Frog, authors are usually anonymous,
and authorship in this case both contributes to and draws on a collective repository of cultural
resources (Milner, 2016). While Moon is a collaboration as well, the parameters of collaboration
are tightly determined and controlled; in contrast, Pepe is more ad hoc and dynamic. Indeed,
memes like Pepe the Frog speak to the function of creativity as a form of communication, lending
credence to a distributed view of creativity (Glaveanu, 2014), where vernacular creativity becomes
inextricably intertwined with sociality (Milner, 2016).
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In considering how the internet shapes the production context across the three cases, it becomes
apparent that new media significantly affects the aims and authorship of creative works. The Artist
Is Present demonstrates the internet’s influence on the aims of (post-internet) art, even when it
does not explicitly play a role in how the art is made. The implications of new media technologies
in terms of authorship are especially visible in creative products like memes, where authorship is
fundamentally distributed, collective, and most often undetectable, but also in participatory digital
art like Moon, which complicate traditional understandings of creative authorship. In Moon, who is
the author? Is it Weiwei and Eliasson, the initiators of the project (‘alpha artists’; Literat, 2012), or
the contributors who provided the actual content – or perhaps both? This determination is tricky,
yet it is crucial, not only for ethical reasons (Literat, 2012), but also because of the social, cultural,
and financial privileges that society reserves for cultural creators deemed as artists (Becker, 1984).
It is also worth noting that Moon is now closed to further contributions – the home page mentions
that the artists decided to end the project in September 2017 – which further reinforces the ‘alpha
artist’ status of Weiwei and Eliasson and emphasizes the artistic control that they maintain over the
artwork: a type of agency that the contributors do not have.
Exhibition/distribution
For online creative works, the site of production (i.e. the online realm) is also the site of exhibition
and distribution. But new media technologies impact the distribution of off-line and nondigital
creativity as well:
even if the artist doesn’t put it on the internet, the work will be cast into the internet world, and at this
point, contemporary art, as a category, will be forced against its will to deal with this new distribution
context, or at least acknowledge it. (McHugh, 2015: 197)
This is evidenced in the proliferation of ever more detailed reproductions (both digital, like the
Google Art Project, and physical, like the Van Gogh Museum’s Relievo Collection) which go far
beyond what Walter Benjamin could have dreamed of when writing about the mechanical reproduction of art. Furthermore, artwork and artistic experiences are shared widely on online platforms
by both museums and individual users. Indeed, museums, galleries, and other art institutions are
attuned to the role of social media, and even consider the influence of such channels, particularly
Instagram, when making exhibition decisions (Schwab, 2016). In addition, artists’ websites and
new distribution and commercialization platforms (from high-end marketplaces like Artsy to more
craft-oriented ones like Etsy) make art available for browsing, buying, and collecting at the click of
a button. As Joselit (2013: 16) concludes, ‘one could say . . . that it is saturation through mass
circulation – the status of being everywhere at once rather than belonging to a single place – that
now produces value for and through images’. In this sense, the internet – as an ‘other’ social space
that juxtaposes disparate images along multiple spatial and temporal lines – could be considered a
heterotopic space (or, more accurately, a collection of heterotopic spaces; Young, 19982), in the
same way that Foucault (1986) wrote about the museum as heterotopia.
Abramovic’s The Artist Is Present exemplifies this multi-spatiality enabled by the internet –
being simultaneously ‘everywhere’ and in a single place – as well as the idea of saturation via
mediated circulation. The work attracted long lines of visitors hoping to sit with the artist, but the
number of participants pales in comparison to the artwork’s substantial online audience. There was
a live web feed of the performance, and the New York Times reported that close to 800,000 viewers
watched online as the performance unfolded (Cotter, 2010); however, the live stream was critiqued
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by some as a marketing gimmick rather than a meaningful engagement tool (Knight, 2010) and
acknowledged by MoMA staff as a controversial and potentially problematic way to engage with
performance art (Hart, 2010). The Artist Is Present also lives on through online records of its
existence (photos, videos, GIFs, etc.) – both official, as portraits of each participant were
assembled in an online gallery – and unofficial (for instance, Tumblr sites like ‘Marina Abramovic
Made Me Cry’; see Notopoulos, 2010). The centrality of digitally mediated experiences – the
webcast, the photographs, and the user-generated content – in this case is somewhat ironic, given
Abramovic’s intention and the rationale of the project. As discussed previously, Abramovic stated
that her main motivation concerned a perceived disconnectedness fostered by the internet, yet most
people who saw this work did not view it from the participant’s chair in front of Abramovic herself
but rather, they viewed pictures or live videos of the performance online.
Moon, as an internet-native artwork realized through collaboration, depends on the internet for
exhibition, distribution, and collection. This is reflected in its design and presentation: Moon
invites both contributors and viewers to use hashtags for each user-submitted square, and every
contribution has a ‘share’ button (for posting on social media or sending via email) and a ‘collect’
button (for pinning specific squares to the visitor’s personal archives). As a work of online art,
Moon erodes the separation between production and exhibition. The work is shown where it is also
produced, in sharp contrast to the traditional model of the artist working behind closed doors in his
studio (Groys, 2015). Furthermore, because of this conflation of production and exhibition – where
the online medium replaces the traditional role of the museum or gallery as exhibitor and distributor of art – the context of the art world as legitimator is missing (Groys, 2015), although it is
true that the names of the world-renowned artists, Weiwei and Eliasson, are prominently displayed
in several places on the website.
Like Moon, memes are also internet-native works and meant for sharing. By definition, as
spreadable units of culture (Shifman, 2013), memes are, in a sense, pioneers of digitally mediated
circulation and distribution. Here, too, memes stand outside the context of museum or gallery as
legitimator, and consequently occupy a more ambiguous status as ‘art’. In contrast to Moon, which
is arguably a more aesthetically impressive online work of art, heuristically, memes are generally
not considered ‘art’, in large part because of the ‘internet ugly aesthetic’ that they employ to resist
elitist connotations (Douglas, 2014). However, the lack of legitimating context, coupled with the
heuristic status of the meme as online nonart, poses significant questions regarding the boundaries
between art and nonart in the digital age: Specifically, what if an artist had created a meme-like
product (or even a meme itself) with the same aesthetic? As I argue elsewhere (Literat, 2017), the
designation of creative products as ‘art’ relies on several interrelated considerations; among them,
primary are those related to authorship (is it created by an artist, and reflective of an artist’s
aesthetic intentions?) and context (does it exist within an ‘art world’, which functions as legitimator?). Given the fact that memes are a product of vernacular, collective creativity – indeed, in
most cases authorship is unknown – and given the lack of a legitimating context, memes are not
considered art; however, one could imagine that if a professional artist would create a meme or
employ the same mode of expression, their creation would indeed be legitimated as art.
As the prototypical spreadable media, memes also illustrate how distribution (which, in the
dynamic online environment, cannot be controlled or predicted) can critically change the meaning
and valence of creative content. Pepe the Frog is a telling example in this regard, as his adoption by
the alt-right movement – following the sharing of Pepe memes by individuals and organizations
affiliated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign (Malmgren, 2017) – led to a significant shift
in the meanings associations with Pepe memes. Distribution might also change the value of the
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meme for specific audiences, as evidenced by the concept of collecting ‘rare’ Pepes. For these
audiences, the rarity of the meme increases its value (Applegate and Cohen, 2017; Notopoulos,
2015), while also allowing these audiences to extoll their own expertise and cultural capital as
meme connoisseurs (Literat and van den Berg, 2017).
Online art challenges the established exhibition and distribution dynamics of the art market. As
Jeremy Strick, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, notes, new media art
challenges the fundamental assumptions and foundation of museums, throwing into question:
‘What is a work? How do you collect? What is preservation? What is ownership?’ (quoted in Dietz,
2013: 85). The internet, as a channel for displaying and sharing creative content, is less selective
than traditional institutions like museums and galleries (Groys, 2015), but this also becomes a
potential problem, as the lack of ‘aesthetic censorship’ can lead to good art drowning in a sea of
banality. On the other hand, spatial and temporal constraints do not apply in the online environment, which also means the ability to play to the niches, increase diversity, and cater to the long tail
(Leckey, 2015). Jones (2005/2006) argues that web artists pose the greatest challenge to the art
world’s consumerist attitude, but this challenge goes even further to the very notion of what it
means to create and market art. Internet artists often incorporate these concerns – explicitly and
often playfully – into their own art. For instance, just as Moon gives a different (virtualized)
meaning to collecting, Anthony Antonellis’ online art plays with notions of exhibition: in put it on
a pedestal .com, the viewer is invited to arrange digital objects on a selection of pedestals within a
virtual gallery space, while Public Domain presents a random selection of GIFs hung in virtual
gilded frames. As illustrated by the comparison between the exhibition and distribution processes
that shape our encounter with these examples of off-line art, online art, and online vernacular
creativity, there are significant opportunities for the integration of internet art into traditional art
institutions, and experimentation with new modes of curation, exhibition, and engagement. Indeed,
art institutions are increasingly embracing such opportunities; leading organizations like the
MoMA or the Victoria and Albert Museum often commission works of internet art, and the
Whitney has even established an online exhibition space, ArtPort, which is entirely dedicated to
new media exhibitions.
Interpretation/criticism
Given the evolving nature of our encounters with art, it becomes vital to also consider the role of
online networked technologies in shaping how we interpret and talk about art, and whether the
internet has caused fundamental changes in how we respond to art because of its role in mediating
our encounters with it. In other words, if we are talking about ‘post-internet art’ (Archey and
Peckham, 2014), does it also make sense to talk about ‘post-internet interpretation’ or ‘postinternet criticism’? What kinds of reactions, interactions, and modes of interpretation is the
internet facilitating or reinforcing or, conversely, discouraging? In an age when everyone –
knowledgeable or not, credentialed or not, ‘right’ or not – can publicize their views in online
vernacular criticism (Droitcour, 2014), the role of the professional critic is decentered. Variously
termed ‘the people formerly known as the audience’ (Rosen, 2006), the ‘everyday amateur expert’
(Kristensen and From, 2015), and ‘internet’ or ‘peer critic’ (Verboord, 2010), public audiences
employ new media to voice their opinions and ‘talk back’ to the establishment media producers
(van Dijck, 2009), challenging the power dynamic that favored elite or expert critics. As Arora and
Vermeylen (2013: 198) remind us, ‘for centuries, the art world has constructed its identity against
that of the masses’. Traditional art institutions are very much aware of these cultural shifts and
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have been embracing their publics’ impulses toward participation, which often includes practices
of vernacular criticism; indeed, Proctor (2010: 36) identifies this move on the part of galleries and
museums as ‘a transition from Acropolis – that inaccessible treasury on the fortified hill – to
Agora, a marketplace of ideas offering space for conversation, a forum for civic engagement and
debate, and opportunity for a variety of encounters’.
Abramovic’s The Artist Is Present is a good illustration of the impact of online technologies on arts criticism, given the buzz that the performance generated online; the MoMA’s
Flickr account received over 1.7 million views (Museum of Modern Art, 2010), and the live
stream had nearly 800,000 hits (Cotter, 2010). The extensive coverage of this artwork in both
professional and vernacular online spaces speaks to the way in which the internet amplifies
and multiplies all voices: both of professional critics and of everyday people making their
opinions known online (Arora and Vermeylen, 2013). A potential visitor to Abramovic’s
performance might simultaneously encounter the professional review of the show in The New
York Times (which included a critical overview of Abramovic’s body of work and called The
Artist Is Present ‘a 700-hour silent opera’; Cotter, 2010) and the humorous Tumblrs about it
and her friend’s informal review posted on Facebook; indeed, these different sources are
certainly not mutually exclusive, as audience members are exposed to multiple critical perspectives – professional and vernacular – simultaneously. A crucial question that merits
further attention is how this context, consisting of unprecedented access to a diversified range
of critical perspectives, affects or preconditions one’s experience of the artwork itself (or even
the decision of whether to experience it in person or to forego the visit altogether)?
As the collaborative work of two renowned and popular contemporary artists, Ai Weiwei and
Olafur Eliasson, Moon has also benefitted from professional criticism (Cembalest, 2013; Cianciotta, 2014), although not to the same extent that The Artist Is Present has. Its reviews focused, in
often utopian terms, on notions of mediated global connection: Artnews, for instance, referred to it
as ‘the collective work of art in the age of virtual connectivity’ and noted that Moon ‘exists beyond
the art world, beyond borders, beyond traditional ideas of authorship and value’ (Cembalest, 2013).
Compared to off-line art, however, internet-based art is reviewed less, and most often in specialized forums dedicated to digital culture, such as Rhizome – an organization and online platform
focusing on new media art – or, outside the art world, popular tech-focused websites such as
Mashable or TechCrunch. Furthermore, critics writing on internet art need to have not only a
technical understanding of the infrastructure of the piece but also a deep cultural understanding of
new media as both content and context. Many professional critics and curators find this context to
be outside their area of expertise (Graham and Cook, 2010), which might explain the comparative
scarcity of critical voices in online versus off-line art – although this is gradually changing as
internet art is becoming more prominent and increasingly legitimized within the art world.
In the case of memes like Pepe the Frog, the lack of professional criticism does not mean that
these creative products are not discussed, evaluated, and sometimes even appraised. Vernacular
criticism generated by interest-based participatory cultures (Jenkins et al., 2006) performs the
function of professional criticism in the absence of the latter (Literat and van den Berg, 2017), as
illustrated by platforms like Know Your Meme (KYM). Relying on the expertise and collective
intelligence of its participants, the online community of KYM takes its role as meme critic and
researcher seriously. Members devote significant time and energy to documenting internet memes,
and disseminating this knowledge within the larger community in the forum of encyclopedia-style
entries, reviews, rankings, video primers, forums, and so on. The entry for Pepe the Frog, for
instance, includes a well-researched and detailed account – with external references – of the
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meme’s origin, spread, usage, various incarnations, and cultural impact (Know Your Meme, 2017).
Another example is the Reddit community of MemeEconomy, a subreddit devoted to the discussion and appraisal of current memes, which appropriates of stock market jargon to discuss
memes as investment-worthy commodities (see Literat and van den Berg, 2017). Members post
requests for meme ‘appraisals’, and commenters respond by advising on whether it is safe or risky
to ‘invest’ in particular memes – although, unlike the stock market, no real money is involved.
Within this community, Pepe memes are among the most popular commodities, as they are considered to be a ‘safe’ investment due to their versatility and cultural relevance (Literat and van den
Berg, 2017). Participation in such a community requires cultural connoisseurship, not unlike
professional art criticism; furthermore, like in the professional sphere of art criticism, this connoisseurship is considered to translate to accurate appraisals and determinations of value in the
context of creative works.
If, as Sontag (1966: 7) wrote, interpretation had become ‘the revenge of the intellectual upon
art’, the advent of the internet reverses this dynamic by encouraging responses that are not based on
extensive expertise. As vernacular responses that are based on subjectivity and immediacy are
celebrated and amplified (Suhr, 2015), perhaps, in some ways, we are witnessing the internet’s
revenge upon the intellect’s revenge upon art. At the same time, although the multiplication of
platforms for the interpretation and criticism of creative works has the potential to give voice to a
broader and more diverse range of perspectives, it is also important not to overly romanticize or
idealize these shifts. As Arora and Vermeylen (2013: 197) aptly note, there remain many challenges, including but not limited to the following:
(1) virtual amateur participation still adheres to hierarchical structures; (2) it does not necessarily result
in a more equitable say in art valuations; (3) expertise is privileged, not only because of knowledge but
also because of institutional linkages, separating them from the amateurs; and (4) the role of participation itself needs to be extricated from the normative assumptions of it being positive and inherently
democratic.
Consistent with their caveats, there is also the question of whether wider participation results in
better judgments or better understandings of art. Literature in crowdsourcing and online participation has praised the value of collective intelligence in terms of improving quality and accuracy
(e.g. Benkler, 2006; Surowiecki, 2005). One could argue that crowd-friendly tasks like estimating
the number of jelly beans in a jar are very different endeavors than collectively assessing the value
and merit of creative works. However, in a study comparing the decisions of crowds versus experts
in regards to funding creative works (more specifically, a theater production), Mollick and Nanda
(2016: 1551) reached a similar conclusion, finding significant agreement between the two groups;
they conclude that ‘the crowd is more wise than mad, generally agreeing with the experts, and that,
on average, the projects selected by the crowd alone seem to do as well as those selected by
experts’. Further empirical research is needed in this area, with the aim of adding more nuance and
specificity to these initial conclusions.
Remix/appropriation
In the current cultural moment, remix and appropriation practices have gained unprecedented
prominence, as content today (both digital and nondigital) is quintessentially dynamic – open to
being repurposed, reframed, and injected with new meaning. Scholars have used many terms to
describe the movements of creative content across contexts: remix (Jewitt and Yar, 2013; Murray,
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2010), mash-up (Le Cor, 2016; Sinnreich, 2010), (re)appropriation (Frølunde, 2012; Olson, 2008),
digital bricolage (Milner, 2016), to name just a few – each with its own aesthetic tradition and
cultural ethos. Describing the past few deca…