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“Otherness” has long been a concern of social scientists. It refers to those who are marked, set-apart, excluded, or included with qualification. Those who fail to fit into normative conceptions of belongingness are treated, unsurprisingly, as though they do not belong. They are a polluting force, an intruder, an outsider. In this post, we discuss the dual nature of Otherness and the Othered subject, as they must navigate a social space in which they are either excluded or fetishized, but never fully integrated. We exemplify this dual nature with a discussion of new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer—a tech industry power player marked with femininity, amplified by pregnancy. We begin with a theoretical discussion of Otherness.

 The Dirty Other

As suggested by Sigmund Freud and Marry Douglas, “Dirt is matter out of place”; it threatens the integrity of boundaries—moral, aesthetic, symbolic, experiential and otherwise.  The removal or neutralization of dirt is not an easy matter for its methods of contamination are many.  The most effective method of contamination occurs within and through fantasy.  Case in point, the non-normative Other acquires her pollution powers from the fantastic projections of “Normals.”  But in analyzing the non-normative Other, we find that not all dirt is abject.  Rather than demonstrating the power of horror, dirt may acquire the quality of seduction, indulgence and exotic profundity.  Of course, Kristeva notes that the abject—while maintaining its horrifying quality—is the sight of fascination.  Although such a stipulation is relevant to the present discussion, we may note that said fascination need not coincide with horror.  For example, the “out of place” position of non-normative others facilitates the fantastic lure of systemic escape, reparation or atonement.  After all, that which is not dirt: the normative, the systemic, the homogenized, carries the weight of morality and social judgment.

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In Part I this essay, I considered the fact that we are always connected to digital social technologies, whether we are connecting through them or not. Because many companies collect what I call second-hand data (data about people other than those from whom the data is collected), whether we leave digital traces is not a decision we can make autonomously. The end result is that we cannot escape being connected to digital social technologies anymore than we can escape society itself.

In Part II, I examined two prevailing privacy discourses to show that, although our connections to digital social technology are out of our hands, we still conceptualize privacy as a matter of individual choice and control. Clinging to the myth of individual autonomy, however, leads us to think about privacy in ways that mask both structural inequalities and larger issues of power.

In this third and final installment, I consider one of the many impacts that follow from being inescapably connected in a society that still masks issues of power and inequality through conceptualizations of ‘privacy’ as an individual choice. I argue that the reality of inescapable connection and the impossible demands of prevailing privacy discourses have together resulted in what I term documentary consciousness, or the abstracted and internalized reproduction of others’ documentary vision. Documentary consciousness demands impossible disciplinary projects, and as such brings with it a gnawing disquietude; it is not uniformly distributed, but rests most heavily on those for whom (in the words of Foucault) “visibility is a trap.” I close by calling for new ways of thinking about both privacy and autonomy that more accurately reflect the ways power and identity intersect in augmented societies. more...

In each of the past two Theorizing the Web conferences, I have been present to see an audience member—concerned about the fleeting popularity of online platforms and rapid technological development— question the pervasive use of Facebook as a study site. This is an important question, and one to which panelists (including myself) have not adequately responded.  Absent the pressure of probing eyes and a ticking clock, I work here to craft the kind of response that the question deserves.

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A small symbol, but a big deal. Last weekend, Facebook Inc. updated its architecture to better represent users who marry same-sex partners. Until this point, a relationship status of “married” was ubiquitously accompanied by a cake-topper-like icon of a man and a woman.

Now, users can select a male-female, female-female, or male-male icon to digitally represent their matrimony. I want to take this occasion to briefly discuss what it means to construct a self via template, and question the extent to which the binds of templated identity construction are more (or less) severe than general practices of categorization. more...

This is part of a series of posts highlighting the Theorizing the Web conference, April 14th, 2012 at the University of Maryland (inside the D.C. beltway). It was originally posted on 4.6.12 and was updated to include video on 6.22.12. See the conference website for additional information.

The issue of self documentation is increasingly fertile ground for theorizing the intersection of the digital and the material, illustrating how our identities are increasingly mediated by new technologies and “digital” forms of sociality. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest (as relatively new forms of sociality) produce requisite changes in our self concepts. In the digital era, identity becomes a project of coordinating, collecting, and curating; self presentation becomes a project of self documentation.

Each of these authors acknowledges the paradigmatic changes new technology (especially social networking sites like Facebook) has introduced into our self concepts. For example, Aimée Morrison looks at how norms are created, encouraged, and enforced in the digital realm of Facebook. The Facebook status update field has gone through several permutations, reflecting changing expectations and norms regarding self presentation and self documentation on this popular social networking site. Somewhat differently, Rob Horning addresses issues of power and control in the promulgation of new forms of sociality. More specifically, Horning discusses Facebook’s role in socializing users into the “digital self,” or the self as curated project. Self documentation is integral to the rise of the digital self and the destruction of the inner/private self. In addition, Jordan Frith reflects on how social media incorporates emerging GPS technology into location based social networks (LBSN) like Foursquare. Drawing from qualitative interviews with over 35 Foursquare users, Frith analyzes the impact of this LBSN on both self-presentation and self-documentation practices.

Finally, social media and the ability to self-document also changes our conception of time. As Nathan has argued, “Social media increasingly force us to view our present as always a potential documented past” (Jurgenson, 2011). In this vein, Sam Ladner addresses the proliferation of digital calendaring (MS Outlook, Google Calendar) and resultant changes such technology engenders to our conceptions and use of time. Digital calendars create new affordances but also new risks in time management.

[Paper titles and abstracts after the jump.]

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Several weeks ago, I wrote a post about how we not only manage our image (outgoing) but also curate our view (incoming). As a very brief summary, I argued, based upon data from my own ongoing social media study, that despite the potential for social media to expose us to a variety of perspectives and opinions (creating a public sphere, or at least a public space), we discriminately select which perspectives and opinions to let in, and which to exclude. In doing so, we curate reality. Though this manifests in a variety of ways, a prevalent manifestation is the management of one’s Facebook News Feed.

A new push for the (apparently long present) feature on Facebook, in which users are asked to “star” the Friends whose content they want to make more visible, further supports this trend. More importantly, however, it demonstrates the mutually influential relationship between physical architectures, normative social structures, and personal practices.

The physical architecture of a space (online or offline) simultaneously shapes, and is shaped by, those who use it. For instance, the typical classroom is set up with an instructor who stands at a high desk in the front of a room, facing students, who sit in low desks, with their bodies and eyes oriented forwards and upwards towards the teacher. This both creates and reflects a particular power dynamic, and guides how participants in the interaction think about and act towards themselves and one another. Similarly, architectures of online spaces reflect and guide who we are and what we do in those spaces.

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