MAKING PRETTY: EXAMINING CONTEMPORARY IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION THROUGH INSTAGRAM

A s A thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University 3 ^ In partial fulfillment of

Master of Arts In Communication Studies

by

Megan Marie Calkin

San Francisco, California

Fall 2015 Copyright by Megan Marie Calkin 2015 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read Making Pretty: Examining Identity Contemporary Identity

Construction Through Instagram by Megan Marie Calkin, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree: Master of Arts in Communication Studies at San Francisco

State University.

Dr. Samuel McCormick Associate Professor of Communication Studies MAKING PRETTY: EXAMINING CONTEMPORARY IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION THROUGH INSTAGRAM

Megan Marie Calkin San Francisco, California 2015 Instagram has become a centralized platform for a contemporary construction of self. Through a Lacanian-psychoanalytical feminist lens and autoethnographic accounts, I investigate Instagram as a virtual space to seemingly reconstruct identities or induce a retroactive identity development. This thesis is a rhetorical inquiry of Instagram topologies and participator engagement. Foucauldian discourse analysis, visual interrogation, and textual criticism tease out cultural implications, directing scholarly attention to the ways in which Instagram can serve as many things: a catalyst for self­ doubt, a catalyst for self-suppression, a catalyst for self-discovery, or even a catalyst for change.

Key Words: Instagram, Lacanian-psychoanalysis, identity-construction, agency

I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis.

Chair, Thesis Committee Date ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The path toward this thesis has been circuitous. The process was long and arduous — and it was certainly not accomplished singlehandedly. I first thank all of the previous feminist scholars who have come before me, inspiring this thesis, expanding my world, empowering my drive, and filling me with ideas and dreams beyond what I ever thought possible. I thank my loving and supportive parents who have always believed in me and encourage me to keep reaching. I thank my dear friends Candice Sanchez and Cathryn

Dalton who have both shared in my fears, soothed my anxieties, and reminded me of my greatness. Thank you to my thesis committee, Sam McCormick, Karen Lovaas, and Javon Johnson for their constant guidance and reassurance through this laborious adventure. To the soul who has carried me through the emotional landmines of my graduate program and ever-transforming world, this thesis would not exist if not for the way you have enriched my life;

Julianne — this thesis is for you. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

List of Figures ...... vii

Chapter 1: Introduction

Orientation...... 1 Rationale ...... 8 The Price of Pretty...... 11 Pretty, D efined...... 16 Preserving Pretty...... 18 Purpose and Objectives...... 21

Chapter 2: Methodology

Theoretical Framework...... 23 Psychoanalytical...... 24 Psychoanalytical, Feminist...... 28 Research Questions...... 30 Methodology...... 33 Foucauldian Discourse Analysis...... 35 Visual Interrogation...... 35 Autoethnography...... 36

Chapter 3: Rhetorical Topologies of Instagram

Relationship to Rhetorical Topologies...... 39 Profile Pictures...... 41 Time-Marker...... 51 Double Tap to L ik e ...... 57 Function of the Heart...... 59 Comment Button...... 63 Captions and Hashtags...... 66 Further Thoughts...... 76

vii Chapter 4: Agency and Autonomy Online

Self-Implication...... 79 Space as a Personal as Political Issue...... 85 Policing of Identities and Claimed Agency...... 90 Agency, Repetition, and Psychoanalytic “Talking Cure” ...... 99 Logging off of Instagram ...... 108 Frames and Limitations of Agency ...... 110

Chapter 5: Conclusion

Self-Reflection...... 114 Research Questions, Discussion, and Implications...... 119 Concluding Thoughts...... 122

References...... 124

vii 1

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Orientation

Forms of social media have tethered our world together. We can reach one another with time of communication imploding and shrinking into the instantaneous. The electronic message, be it text or live-video feed, has moved spacial markers and time differences to the margins, constituting more of the emphasis on space rather than place.

The difference is important to acknowledge, as place refers to stable and configurable elements and positions whereas space is composed of intersections and elements (De

Certeau, 1984). In other words, communication in a world preexistent to technological advances was contingent upon communication occurring with the same place. Today, however, social media platforms have expanded our communicative reach wherever we are, whatever the time, whenever we feel so inclined to use our voice.

More impressive yet, we can be whoever we desire to be in our virtual worlds. We construct our identities from wherever we are and intentionally share specific ideals of ourselves with the click of a few buttons on our smartphones. Initially, this may be experienced as liberating or limitless. Lamentably, I understand the benefits harvested from participation are hardly inconsequential; social media have the development and perception of identity recontextualized.

Our identities lead to the truths of ourselves (Erikson, 1968). We perform our truths through our identities because humans possess a need to fuel control over their 2

images, and the production thereof, as a means of empowerment (Johnson, 2001). The post-modern society, wherein the conceptualized self is socially manufactured through interaction with the social world (Cote, 2006; Kroger, 1989), is a primary space for self- actualization. We are always in the process of constructing and reconstructing our identities, as we are the product of all of our experiences. We select and develop ways of being for an amassment of reasons, but largely because they make sense for our individual experiences. Our identities are politically chosen (Weeks, 1985).

Instagram provides us with space to seemingly reconstruct our histories and lived experiences. More, it allows us to proclaim our future agendas and identities through pictures and rhetorical commentary. Our identities function as necessary fictions, selected and abandoned to fulfill political objectives (Weeks, 1995). It is a consensus across communication fields and allied disciplines that individuals become and develop due to human interaction and the lived experiences that derive (Blumer, 1969,1980; Goffman,

1959; Mead, 1934). Contemporary modes of communicating often default to online mediums, and communication scholarship is only starting to explore the ways Instagram is complicating the process of constructing and becoming.

Thus far, I have used the collective pronouns of “we” and “our” to encompass all who participate on social media. At this point, I wish to establish to whom these pronouns refer in this thesis about Instagram. When I first conceptualized this project, I understood my initial thoughts, feelings, and observations to be limited to a very confined exposure 3

and personal experience on Instagram. I come from a small suburb in the San Francisco

Bay Area. My best friend lived up the street from my house all throughout high school. I was a cheerleader and a writer for the school newspaper in a town where I knew most of the students at both rival high schools. I have made additional friends from college and various jobs and have expanded further into the SF Bay Area as I’ve gotten older. Most of the people I follow and who follow me on Instagram come from this world.

It can sometimes be fascinating to peek into the current lives of people I’ve grown up with and glance at how things have turned out for them. Often, I’m touched to see so many of those people doing important work in their respective career fields. I see the families they’ve started to build and the politics that they’ve adopted from their parents I grew up knowing, too. Sometimes I couldn’t care less about what people from my hometown are doing because I no longer know them in the same way. Sometimes I couldn’t care less about people from my hometown because their representations of selfhood on Instagram feel forced or overly-sensationalized. Perhaps these feelings depend on the day of the week or the hour of the day. In any case, I recognized early on that my scope of conceptualization for this project was inherently narrowed to the life I just described. What prompted more consideration of this pool of people however, was a combination of three things.

The first thing that probed the conceptualization of this project was my own personal feelings about Instagram. I began recognize the subtle ways I was using 4

Instagram. I started to keep mental note of how Instagram made me feel when I would either experience immense validation on one of my pictures, or the low of invalidation when I couldn’t understand why not enough of my followers Liked a different picture.

These mental notes eventually found their way onto paper when I began documenting them for this thesis, but the bottom line was consistent: My experience on Instagram never felt neutral because I was always experiencing the extremes.

The second leg of inspiration came from the amount of gone-viral articles, blogs, and commentary stemming from the mass media claiming Instagram to be a place of faulty representation or producing self-doubt, many of which will be presented at various points in this thesis. Every time I came across any of these artifacts, I felt validated in my invalidation: I wasn’t alone in feeling undesirable at times and I certainly wasn’t alone in feeling like I was being praised for my filter rather than the person I see in the mirror. It was a complex intersection of feelings that I could never decipher as valid or invalid or as my own or universal.

The third and arguably most salient reason the Instagram phenomenon began to feel more relevant was due to my best friend-turned-roommate who uses Instagram religiously. Her and I have been rather inseparable since we were 13. Today, we share the same apartment located 5 minutes away from the city in which we grew up. As we share the same couch every night, I sometimes glance down at her phone, finding her almost always scrolling through Instagram. She posts often, racking in Likes on the beautiful 5

representations of her life. It has always been interesting to see the glossed depictions on

Instagram yet know the reality behind those pictures; I would sit beside her listening to her complaints or insecurities directly correlated to the pictures despite the fact they were never captured on Instagram. Similarly, I have done the same. It felt like a game we were both playing while never discussing the effects Instagram participation had on either of us.

I often came to the same conclusion that I was thinking critically about Instagram in a way that was generally unappealing to her — the instant gratification she received was worth more to her than deconstructing any of her conditioned-reliance on the

Instagram community. Her filter, Photoshop, and witty as-all-hell captions and hashtags crafted her identity to be desirable, at least by my standards and the standards of her followers. However, the obsession over checking her feed, her Like count, caring about

Like count, or any other measurements of desirability or connectivity went undiscussed.

It was the compilation of these three things that inspired me to craft this thesis.

Returning to my acknowledgement of collective pronouns, it is important to pinpoint who exactly this project is speaking about. With over 200 million users exceeding over 20 billion shared photos as of May 2015 (Instagram, 2015), I argue this world-wide application has become a centralized platform for a contemporary construction of self. Who, though, aside from my small community of followers, am I including in this analysis? 6

Instagram has surpassed both Facebook and Twitter as the most popular network among young users (Patterson, 2015). A plethora of Instagram demographic statistics come from the Pew Research Center (2015): 53% of 18-29 year olds use Instagram in comparison to 25% among 30-49 year olds, 11% of 50-64 year olds, and 6% of 65+ aged users. 29% of users on Instagram are identified as female and 22% are identified as male.

I take it upon myself to acknowledge the difficulty in discerning which profiles belong to which identities when not every profile fits cis-normative or intelligible molds. More, some users might not shares pictures of themselves specifically, but instead pictures of other things or people.

About 28% of users live in urban areas, 26% live in suburban areas, and 19% life in rural. Further, 31% of users have college experience, 24% are college graduates, and

23% are in, or have recently graduated from high school. Additionally, Instagram seems to be more popular among Black and Hispanic participants than among White users.

About one-third (34%) of online Hispanics use Instagram, as do 38% of Black users. By comparison, only 21 % of White users engage on Instagram (Krogsdad, 2015).

Considering these statistics and my personal community on Instagram, it appears the “we” and “our” speaks to a rather narrow demographic of users. Without necessarily centering race, ethnicity, nationality, or gender, this project will most broadly refer to young-adult users between the ages of 18-30 who have college experience, are currently enrolled, or have graduated from college. That said, this thesis is not limited to this

fL 7

demographic or even the statistics provided, but rather serve as a lens through which to contextualize who is predominantly accessing Instagram on a consistent basis.

Unfortunately, while the connective enrichment Instagram provides us is rather exceptional in our rapidly growing tech-savvy society, it is not free of cost (Unger, 2013)

The photos we post to Instagram transform our identities into a capitalistic commodity which allows our social media following to pass up or buy in with a swift “double tap to like” main feature. Simply, the dichotomized election given to a built audience is one of validation or invalidation on who we purport to be. The aim of this research project is to understand the ontological effects on identity construction via Instagram and illuminate the potential ways in which this global phenomenon of contemporary identity construction is affecting self-concept. In essence, it is a retroactive identity construction, a self-willed subjectivity manifesting through the enactment of social conventions

(Butler, 1990). In other words, we first select and share our identities with our followers and then internalize and embody their feedback. We cannot become without their input.

This introductory chapter is organized to build up to the overarching purpose for this study. A rationale positions this thesis as necessary research missing from communication scholarship. A review of literature is further organized into three sections

The first of which, The Price of Pretty investigates prior research regarding social media effects on emotional and mental well-being. Pretty, Defined, identifies the ways Western beauty ideals are reinforced and subsequently validated on Instagram. Next, Preserving 8

Pretty discusses how Instagram functionality permanently preserves static representations of selfhood through intentionally crafted images. Following this review of literature I explain my purpose and objectives for writing this thesis. This chapter concludes with an overview of the remaining chapters to come.

Rationale

Our understanding of identity construction may be antiquated as it predates the boom of social media. A deficiency in current research perpetuates misunderstandings of what appears to be a harmless phone application. Responsively, the New York Times has declared we are finally deep enough into our social-media addicted era that we can begin to tease out patterns among high-functioning participants (Feiler, 2013). The pattern I wish to illuminate is one that has been trying to tell us our dependency on Instagram approval is internally injurious.

While there are benefits to Instagram participation such as self-esteem boosts or connectivity with friends and family, I wish to complicate our understanding of prospective harm. Instagram membership may be affecting our more internal constructs, such as the way we perceive and understand our identity and the identities of other. I do not mean to be interpreted as one who believes there is a lack of authenticity (however loosely defined) to our Instagram participation, because that is not the black and white case I am arguing for. I know that having my social media followers tell me I am pretty or 9

that they are jealous of my vacation pictures is not inherently problematic; it makes me feel validated in a variety of ways. These ways are not limited to, but include, the nerve- wracking choice I made to cut my hair short or the financial plunge I took to buy a plane ticket to New Orleans. My guilt or insecurity is met with support for my choices and desire for what I have or want. I know that utilizing a flattering filter on a selfie, a self­ taken profile picture, does not mean my selfie does not express validity. To negate all legitimacy would echo a monolithic universalism. Avoiding the invitation of a wild misinterpretation of the selfie phenomenon (Shera, 2003), I recognize my selfie is still a picture of myself. However, there is a dialectic middle ground to question.

It is necessary to consider our Instagram usage through a critical lens rather than blindly consuming its production. I encourage myself to consider how I qualify a picture to be “like-worthy” before posting it. Although Instagram is never framed as a social medium wherein users are proving their identities, I often wonder about why I feel compelled to convince others I am who I post that I am. How are any of us obsessively measuring? Before I started to implement self-reflexivity during my Instagram engagement, I avoided these considerations or associated questions. Eventually, I had to face the reality that Instagram posts, both my own and those I follow, are deliberately taken and often undergo filter or Photoshop. Pictures are complemented with rhetorically infused captions, shared publicly, and await feedback from social media followers, despite any potential deceit, even when it is never intended as such. 10

Ultimately, it is our desire to be wanted by our social media following, or the big

Other, that motivates our addiction to Instagram. The big Other is Lacanian terminology for larger society and will be referenced frequently throughout the entirety of this thesis.

While this thesis is primarily centered around the identity construction of human beings, desire in not limited to human subjects who wish to be “pretty” in whatever ways they envision. A company branding itself through pictures of their products is still rooted in a desire to be wanted by following consumers. A social activist group on Instagram is still rallying to be heard and their social justice objects to be validated by their social media following. Desire is an incredibly important component to Lacanian thought because it is what drives motivation to post. One of Lacan’s (2002) better-known maxims proclaimed in his seminar is, “man’s desire is the desire of the Other” (p. 235). What we actually desire is recognition from the big Other. Lacan (1977) tells us frankly:

The necessary and sufficient reason for the repetitive insistence of these desire in

the transference and their permanent remembrance in a signifier that repression

has appropriated — that is, in which the repressed returns — is found if one

accepts the idea that in these determinations the desire for recognition dominates

the desire that is to be recognized preserving it as such until it is recognized, (p.

431)

Simply, desire aches for recognition. It is much less a question of the things and people we desire than it is that we ourselves are recognized and desired by our followers. We 11

desire what we believe the big Other desire of us. If we believe we are more beautiful or worthy by embodying particular attributes and characteristics that larger society might desire for their own, we desire to possess said attributes and characteristics. Lacan (1993) asserts, “Desire, in which it is literally verified that man’s desire is alienated in the other’s desire, in effect structures the drives discovered in analysis, in accordance with all the vicissitudes of the logical substitutions in their source, aim, and object” (p. 343). What we can conclude from Lacan’s writing is that what we desire is always going to be, in a way, the desire of the big O. It is evident by the rising number of active users on

Instagram that a large portion of society is willing to pay with varying degrees of emotional labor to be desired by Others.

The Price of Pretty

We may believe we are the shapers of our own identity on social media, channeling self-control as needed, and in many ways that is true. We decide when and what we want to post. We tailor our marked and unmarked identities to fit social scripts we desire for ourselves. We showcase how we understand our identity by posting representations of our ourselves to Instagram. We come to trust these identities perform relatively intelligible to those who see them on social media because they are validated when they are acknowledged or liked. When our pictures do not receive our defined- acceptable amount of feedback, or in other words, lack of validation, our identities may 12

read back to us as unintelligible, unworthy, and inoperative (Nakamura, 2013). The adage we have come to know speaks to how we are usually our own worst critic. I argue

Instagram has now flipped this proverb to profess that the judgment we receive from another can have more influence on our self-concept than the judgment we impose on ourselves (Walther, 2009).

The constitution of identities through interactions with our social media following by means of identification and differentiation from others (Buckingham, 2008; Corsaro &

Eder, 1990), is now teetering a line of a self-analysis birthed out of social media induced insecurity and self-surveillance. I say this to mean social media, and Instagram in particular, encompass both wildly important and significant advances in communication and connectivity, but often coming at a price: We care deeply about how we are perceived by others on our virtual platforms and police our participation.

This speaks to Michel Foucault’s (1979) concept of the panopticon, wherein those incarcerated are conditioned to believe they are always being watched. This prompts self­ policing through fear of being caught disobeying rules or protocol, lending further power to the prison system in which prisoners are housed. The degree of self-monitoring that occurs within the realm of Instagram culture echos the functionality of such disciplinary power. It may appear far fetched to insinuate Instagram users are prisoners in Instagram profiles, but the resemblance of self-surveillance between the two cultures is too uncanny to dismiss. 13

Today, we are reluctant to appear as anything less than what our uniquely contrived and filtered representations of self exemplify. We may be publicly dissolving segments of our realities and truths. I agree with Foucault (1982) who sharply points out,

“Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are” (p.

785). This sentiment is key to the contemporary construction of self. Foucault implies

i contemporary society may be less concerned with exploring personal purpose on both micro and macro scales. He suggests rather than digging to the root of authentic identities and accepting them, suppressing realities provide instant gratification. In other words, it takes effort, energy, and time to develop and come to terms with the life I may lead and the person I am when no one is looking. The quick way to circumvent this work is to shelf it all together and post a desirable picture of myself to Instagram that I know will be

Liked by my social media followers, free of blemish, insecurity, or further context. I believe it is imperative to explore how this validation-heavy reliance, birthed out of the age of social media platforms and thrown into a world of virtual self-policing and policing done unto us, complicates development of identity.

Humans are multifaceted. The ways in which Instagram users present their identities illustrate this intricacy. I understand that faults and imperfections of humans are copious and even the most irreproachable representations on Instagram can never articulate a fully authentic version of self. I am not arguing that the pre-Instagram society was not other-oriented, independent of response and validation from external figures. 14

However, today’s enormous and rapidly growing Instagram community is now constantly facing their constructed identities and those of their followers on a public platform.

Instagram is addictively accessible in the palm of our hands. Dr. David

Greenfield, founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction, speaks to our fixation when he states, “it’s very neurologically addicting — when you get a hit, finding something or hearing from someone, you get an elevation of dopamine, and it compels us to keep checking” (as cited in Murdock, 2015). According to a 2014 report published to

Business Insider, we spend an average of 21 minutes per day on Instagram (Shontell,

2014). If we are allocating close to 2.5 hours a week on scrolling through the highlight reels of everyone else’s lives, we begin to question our own, desiring the polished identities of others. Humans have never lived outside of language before social media, but now we are living in a society where we cannot escape the voices of the big O screaming through our smartphones. More, we are now experiencing varying levels of addiction to this specific identity construction process.

While it is important for separate scholarship to unearth how society benefits from social media and the world of Instagram, such research needs to be met with exploration from a different side: What are the costs? Most transparently, the phenomenon of social media identity development through the publication of Instagram pictures has managed to skew our perceptions of identity. It is important to recognize in the process of completing this thesis that the effects from Instagram participation are done onto us; we are complicit 15

in a system that contributes the same effects onto our followers. In essence, we are part of a cycle. When we post our pictures, our followers judge them and make assumptions about us which affect their self-concept and perception of identity, too. We are simultaneously consuming and producing this complication.

The purposeful and rhetorical use of “addictive” should incite a concern among users, because imbedded in the infrastructure of Instagram culture is a delusion of control and power (Parks, 1977). In this thesis, I contend that the scale of equal co-creation between ourselves and those for whom we perform our identities on Instagram is now tipping; we are willingly gifting a heavier hand to our social media following in the construction of who we are. As such, I inquire: to what extent is our power is relinquished? What are the effects, both socially and internally? What are the cultural implications? While the foremost question may be difficult to quantify, all questions have yet to be explored. This gap in literature becomes wider with the rapid growth of social media interface options and complementary Photoshop applications. Over 50 million users have joined Instagram in the last 6 months (Instagram, 2015). It is mid-June, 2015, and by the time I have successfully completed this project in December of 2015, the amount of Instagram users will have multiplied yet again. 16

Pretty, Defined

Many people acknowledge and adhere to the beauty norms intrinsic to Western society because there is an earned validation from others when done so appropriately.

There is a bombardment of representation of acceptable beauty through magazines, billboards, television, fashion blogs, and various media-related outlets. The message is deafening: be thin, free of acne, flash a Colgate smile when people tell you to smile, and shave societally-undesired body hair even if you want to keep it because hey, it’s “gross.”

The list of suggestions that function more as rules is perpetual, never dictated by individual agency.

The various implications communicated through these mediums loom over society, dictating the ways we can look the most desirable for larger society. Most broadly, the psychology behind a majority of invasive cosmetic procedures, or even a minimalist self-help beauty fix, echos the stigma that White people are the most beautiful and desirable (Dakanalis, 2014). Light skin, svelte frames, curvy in the “right” places, muscles in the “expected” places, are only some of the characteristics we attempt to embody in order to mirror the white-washed archetype the media relentlessly informs

U.S. society is best.

The lack of diversity and myopic scope of acceptability when it comes to representation of beauty have a deep impact on whether or not we find ourselves desirable or worthy (Fish, 2015), This notion embodies a project which could stand on its 17

own, but its relevance to this project marks how the Westernized style of beauty is spanned across the globe, much like the recent Instagram boom. Instagram fosters and maintains a community of people who chase after the conditioned belief of what constitutes ultimate desirability — wanting to be wanted by the big Other. In other words, once we think have attained what has been societally defined for us as the ideal, we run to

Instagram to prove it. A user will post, (un)patiently await feedback, and addictively seek out the next opportunity to experience the high of validation (Roberts, 2014).

Our followers assign us a numerical grade in the form of “Likes.” Festinger’s

(1954) Social Comparison theory asserts individuals often feel insecure about the applicability, validity, or relevance of their knowledge or opinions, and that informational social influence, or “social validation” in groups (in this case, Instagram) actually helps to alleviate insecurity or lack of personal conviction. This is sufficiently analogous to the consumption and production of self via Instagram as our posting embodies a rather universal question to the big Other: Am I who I say I am? The validation earned from adhering to specific beauty ideals, confident about personal applicability, relevance, and clear understanding of what is socially desirable in the form of an Instagram post, shapes the way the big Other perceives who we are, and thus, influences the way we see ourselves. If the feedback we earn is based on semi-fictitious portrayals of who we are, our indiscretions may subsequently materialize as something other than validation: guilt, self-doubt, loneliness, self-depreciation, insecurity, and so forth (Sifferlin, 2014; 18

Wortham, 2011). The overarching and unnerving component to this entire operation is the fact that we are unable to estimate which effect will present itself, to what degree, for how long, and to whom.

Preserving Pretty

We may believe a successful Instagram post, one potentially achieved through

Photoshop and filter tools, is not so far from an authentic truth. Since I know I can achieve a physical pinnacle of myself because it is evident in the frozen picture in front of me in my phone, I can justify my participation. As such, I recognize an Instagram profile is not a binary of I am or am not, but more precisely, a version of self: an ego to be fixed and maintained, achieved through the endorsement of the big Other.

Our posts versions of ourselves that never change, never falter, and are never interrupted, attributes uncharacteristic of what fundamentally aggregates “human.” These representations masquerade as a self-utopia, encouraging us to disbelieve that our

Shangri-La autonomy could in fact double as a self-dystopia. This postulation, framed as what may read as doom, never applies to all participants at all times. It does not mean we all experience the same effects to the same degree. It does not mean we all Photoshop or filter to the point of obviousness. It does not mean we become incapable of navigating interpersonal relationships or inner dialogs when we sign-up on our smartphones. 19

However, something internally unsound is manifesting consequential to Instagram participation (Winter, 2013).

I suggest this phenomenon exists at multiple points of contention: We do not know where to draw lines when it comes to self-preservation. Self-preservation may be defined as an attempt to historically situate ourselves in pictures that theoretically live forever. Lacan (1997, 1988) might describe the repetition of posting our Instagram photos as a way to avoid a symbolic form of death. Parker (2011) explains:

Repetition as the insistence of speech can now be employed to grasp two clinical

phenomena. First, how the analysand organises their life around something self­

destructive, but from which they are unwilling to break, that which is crystallised

in the clinic as a symptom. Second, how the analysand organizes their life in the

clinic around the analyst as an object through which they repeat relations to

significant others, that which manifests itself as transference. Now every drive is a

death drive and impulse to gratification always contains within it a secret — a

repressed, disavowed or foreclosed secret — which that fantasy is haunted by

the intimation that, as Freud put it, the aim of all life is death, (p. 102)

We return over and over again in each post, claiming our identities still exist, even when they are no longer active on the Instagram feeds of our followers. When our posts are no longer relevant due to new posts being shared by others, we realize we need to post again to remind our followers we are still active and we are still desirable. Each Instagram 20

participation ritual is an integral characteristic in our perdurable quest for desirable identity.

Our repressed selfhood perpetually seeks itself through social and cultural expression, such as the way we represent various components of our identities on our

Instagram profiles. Through repeating our burst into language through posting an assortment of pictures over and over again, we attempt to avoid a symbolic death we know is imminent. The notion of the Lacanian death drive is further deconstructed in the third chapter of this thesis, but its current introduction helps to lay foundation for its impending exploration.

It is important to understand that we come to know ourselves as “whole” through the reflection of a mirror, or the big Other who tell us who we are. It is here we split our egos, confining one to the secrecy of our homes and another to our social media profiles; we seek to both preserve and destroy. Once accomplished, we are able to view ourselves as what we most want to be: a desirable object for others. We engage Instagram moment to moment, post to post, evading an end of our desired identities.

Perhaps self-preservation should be considered as a precautionary measure taken to protect ourselves from the ranging potential effects Instagram culture emanates.

Emotional and mental self-care carries a stigma of irrelevance and shame, generally unsupported or ignored by larger society in opposition to physical self-care. As research indicates, there are a multitude of harmful effects birthed from Instagram culture; perhaps 21

we should consider self-preservation in this context to also include what it means to protect ourselves from what may be considered to be a toxic identity construction process.

Purpose and Objectives

As I have argued, our society’s addiction to social media, and particularly the booming popularity of Instagram in specific, has altered a contemporary development of self. This phenomenon cannot be reductively explained as a simple photo-sharing phone application. As I have introduced and will explain further in the following chapters of this project, there is much more to this incredibly complex societal shift that has yet to be interrogated. This hole in literature only widens with the growth of Instagram participation and unhurried research of this communicative medium. The development of

Instagram is faster than scholarship’s ability to catch up and explore its functionality

(Shaffer, 2015).

This visual and textual criticism further serves to tease forth the societal discourse and cultural assumptions that are consequently created or reinforced through Instagram.

Both linguistic and visual discourses and rhetorical devices are primary objects of my inquiry with Instagram being the overarching field of study. This research study will analyze the functions of Instagram topologies and participator engagement as foundation to contemporary identity construction. This research is not to be confused for an 22

interpersonal investigation of non-verbal communication of our identities. Rather, it is a rhetorical inquiry of Instagram as contemporary space to construct and present facets of identity and eventuating consequences.

We do not yet have definitive findings of what actually occurs when we become so accustomed, reliant, or addicted to using Instagram. Nor am I assuming that is what this research will discover. However, I hope to illuminate the driving forces of our global participation and the effects placed on our innermost psyches as we develop our identities on Instagram. More, this project situates the use of my personal narratives to further inform and contextualize this study. Additionally, I will address the potential limitations of this critical-cultural research.

Chapter 2 describes the methodology used to navigate the data and analysis of this thesis. Chapter 3 is a focused interrogation of Instagram topologies. Chapter 4 explores agency and autonomy online as it is often difficult to discern when our decision to post to this platform is done so through an act of agency or an act birthed out of a conditioned reliance on feedback, largely for the purpose of reminding ourselves we are still desirable. Chapter 5 concludes the project with limitations of this study and further thoughts for consideration. 23

CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY

Theoretical Framework

This chapter outlines the lens I use will be using to interrogate the phenomenon of

Instagram identity construction. Specifically the functionality of Instagram as a rhetorical social-media interface, the explanations for our willing engagement in Instagram culture,

m and what the implications for our participation tell us about contemporary identity construction process. While a traditional Lacanian approach to Instagram text and image analysis may be sufficient for marking the modern shift in psyche identity development, I believe the complexity of this phenomenon cannot be explained adequately in essentialist terms. Thus, I adopt a nuanced lens to my framework. Feminist is that lens.

To clarify the desire for a psychoanalytical feminist lens as opposed to one that is simply psychoanalytical, I claim this research is better accomplished through a psychoanalytical lens that seeks to challenge normative notions of identity. Traditional psychoanalysis, birthed from the work of Sigmund Freud, follows an internal, endogenous justification for identities. We know that scholars of grand narratives such as caveman masculinity or survival of the fittest revel in the infamous research of Freud

(McCaughey, 2012; Reeser, 2011), but their problematic misstep is the assumption that human identities exist outside of language. As they do not (Castro, 2015), feminist psychoanalysis will argue that we build and develop our identities upon multiple relationships and interpretations of lived experience, as our Instagram accounts illustrate. 24

Lacanian theory without the interest of feminist approach squares us in a position lacking in fluidity, salience, or context of hierarchal relations (Rhode, 1992). The intertwining of the two will provide the structure to explore the aforementioned inquires.

More, as an intersectional scholar, I wish to bring recognition to the multiplication of identities every person carries, rather than assuming identity construction is a one-size fits all process resulting in the same outcomes or consequences. This chapter will describe the Lacanian and feminist theories that establish relativity and applicability to this project.

In no particular order of usage, I will apply the various Lacanian frames: Lacan’s work of the Mirror Stage, the big Other, Desire, and the borromean-linked conceptualizations of the Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary. We are now in a society where

Lacan’s ego-relation formulas conceived post-Freud, but pre-internet and smart phones, apply to the ways in which we intentionally and discursively construct ourselves on

Instagram.

Psychoanalytical

I believe our fascination with Instagram reflects one of Lacan’s most famous theoretical contributions, the Mirror Stage. Concisely, it is when infants first see their reflective image. This produces a cognizant response within the infant that awakens the 25

mental representation of an “I”. It is a rather obvious parallel to our participation in

Instagram when we post reflective images of our identities (selfies, for prime example).

The big Other is Lacan’s reference to larger society, and the role of said society plays a part in the ways we see ourselves and others. The big Other provides us with feedback on who we are, what we believe, and what we want. This flows smoothly into

Lacan’s scholarship on Desire. Desire is a critical component to Lacan’s work as it explains that there is an aspect to our identities that reside in a perpetual wanting. This may be a wanting of material possessions and/ or particular physical attributes, but nonetheless, it is through our engagement with the big Other that we come to want particular things for ourselves. Lacan’s understanding of ego-relations tells us our desire is at the heart of the ego-constructing process.

From Lacan’s wheelhouse of society and desire, we see the emergence of the

Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary. Unlike the ego-scholarship of Freud, in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, our psyche does not consist of the ego, id, and superego. Instead it is defined by The Real, the realm of the unconscious; the Symbolic, the realm of language; the Imaginary, the realm of images (jagodzinski, 2004). The real appears when we are not expecting its emergence. It comes when we wish it would stay at bay, but as it is quite literally, “the real,” it is also inescapable.

The Symbolic is laden with language and narrative, playing a role in the process of human desire. The big Other in the world of Lacan’s Symbolic Order is more or less 26

the realm where determined relationships between all signifiers are set in place the moment the subject enters into language (Lacan, 1993). Through this conveyance, the subject enters into a relationship of dependency vis-a-vis the big Other. We are seeing this operation quite clearly in our obsessive compulsion to engage in Instagram rituals

(entering into language), the addiction to validation (dependency on the big Other), and chasing after our desire (to look or be perceived a particular way). This is where the big

Other resides, beckoning our desire forward.

The Imaginary is particularly interesting because it is the register of fixity and frozen: our Instagram profile. We capture ourselves in pictures. These posts are mere resemblances and self-replications of how we either perceive ourselves to be, how we want ourselves to be perceived by our Instagram following, or both. The fact that we are very clearly picking and choosing what we want to post as representation of ourselves and our lives, illustrates the parts of ourselves we want to highlight for others. Lacan claims our sense of self is split between the ego and the subject (as cited in Moore, 2007), and in order for us to plug that into the equation of Instagram, our ego is the pictures we manipulate and post, while our subject is us in real time, deciding which post is the most desirable. We hide away the pictures that we do not believe others will validate or desire to own, pretending to not be that person in the eyes of the Big O. 27

Through these three registers, we see the intersection of the Mirror stage (the lens of our Instagram camera), the big Other (our Instagram followers), and Desire (our selectivity for personal embodiment of what we deem worthy for self-identification and subsequent validation). I have expressed my concern for using these mechanisms as sole framework for this study because of the phallocentric aims of Lacan’s work (Bagnal,

2014). For example, what may determine a subject and assign it an identity and subjectivity is the identity of the phallic signifier wherein exchange is no longer possible.

Lacan (2006) asserts that the phallus instates the signifier into the subject despite any

“anatomical distinction between the sexes” (p. 576). Lacan maintains the association between human experience and the phallus, supporting association with masculinity as a focal point for identity.

Female identity has been consistently theorized within masculine parameters

(Irigaray, 1980). I am not vindicating Lacan’s selection of concepts, but my objection to phallogencetric language as I produce scholarship on the construction of identity is warranted (Culler, 1983). This project does not aspire to center on supposed reductionistic differences between the phallus and lack thereof. However, I recognize the limitations and implications of engaging scholarship that does. As such (and previously announced), this project applies further feminist intersections. Particularly, the work of 28

feminist scholars Julia Kristeva (1997; 1983; 1894; 1991) and Judith Butler (1990; 1993;

2003; 2005).

Psychoanalytical, Feminist

Kristeva (1973; 1983) contributes a number of characteristics which recast the valences of Lacan’s concepts. In my brief mention of Lacan’s Mirror stage, I identify the process as the operation whereby an infant recognizes their “I.” Lacan (1991) avers that consciousness of being occurs “each time there a surface that can produce what is called an image” (p. 49). Upon the commencement of this process, an infant is able to identify with their whole image, rather than their fragmented existence that maintains when they are without a reflective surface. However, through this identification, an infant is also subject to misrecognition, alienation, exclusion and self-division (Zakin, 2011). Similar to our Instagram posts, representing ourselves in a perfect image also brings a split of self.

Kristeva’s dialectics offer a space for the maternal and the feminine in identity development. Kristeva believes the linguistic order is dominated by a prelinguistic order, or the Real (Sjoholm, 2005). Ultimately, Kristeva asserts that text does not simply represent our society, but transforms it. Kristeva rejects a comprehension of identity in a structuralist sense and instead favors the subject as a process (as cited in McAffee, 2004), 29

as do I. While I lean towards what Kristeva offers to psychoanalytic thought and intend to utilize her analysis to contextualize the psychoanalytic frame for this project, I also remain self-reflexive of her work, recognizing the heterogeneity of her Symbolic register assumptions.

Judith Butler’s relationship to psychoanalysis, like Kristeva, is twofold. While

Butler is critical of Lacanian thought and complementing patriarchal gender positions, she nonetheless aims to engage psychoanalytic discussions. Similar to much of her own work, Butler outlines the ways subjects are initiated into being and are consequently regulated by cultural normalities. She too claims there is an impossibility of knowing oneself without discourse; we are never able to self-narrate identity without the influence of the big Other. (Butler, 2005). Language, then, is accompanied by a world of meaning and subsequently alienates us as a subject (Fink, 1995). In other words, our Instagram photo is only a portion of who we know we are.

There is no objective reality in Lacanian theory. Fantasy is a term of Lacanian lexicon used to define the individualized realities each one of us constructs to maintain an illusion that we are whole subjects (Hetrick, 2010). Our fantasies [or Instagram profiles] are then utilized to protect ourselves from the fact that we are not whole in the way we profess [through the embodiment of a Instagram post] (Evans, 1996). What we understand as “reality” is ignited by our unconscious desires, just as many components of 30

our Instagram participation can be framed as fabrications of truth because we desire our

intentionally constructed identities so robustly.

Psychoanalytic framework echoes the very process and functionality of Instagram participation. The additive of feminist thought, which is much less an additive as it is a necessity to suitably produce this study, tailors this project to include scholarship and analysis that disrupt patriarchal conceptions and conclusions of identity. Further, the socially-just extension of feminist inquiry illuminates the power structures that characterize our society and presence in Instagram culture. Thus, a feminist psychoanalytical lens considers the relevant research s appropriately and allows space for thoughtful exploration of them.

Research Questions

Ql: How do individuals construct and perform identity through the social media platform

Instagram?

Q2: What are the personal and cultural implications of participation in Instagram?

Methodology

The study of virtual worlds and the identities constructed within them is an increasingly broad field that has been approached by scholars from all kinds of backgrounds with all manner of intention. America Online, or AOL, burst onto the scene 31

in the early 1990s and changed the way our society communicates. More, to whomever

social media is available, there are a variety of mediums and options within those

mediums available to users in their construction of online identities. What started as a

brief “about me” section on an arguably simple AOL interface, has eventually turned into

a world where many of these polished versions of identity live within extensive

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram profiles, among other mediums.

Some scholars have found these online platforms to be helpful for connectivity or

increasing a feeling of belonging (Zhang, 2011), whereas others scholars have found them to be a catalyst for feelings of isolation or inadequacy (Shaw, 2002). Regardless of where scholars find residence on the spectrum, there is rapid growth of online networking options and methods available to society which play a part in a development and

perception of self.

The continued development of the social networking industry provides

increasingly new and inventive ways through which many of us can construct ourselves online. Instagram is now the 4th most utilized social-media platform in the world. A 2014 survey completed by the Pew Research Center concluded Instagram not only increased its overall user figure by nine percent points, but also saw significant growth in almost every demographic group (Duggan, 2015). It is here I want to reiterate the demographic I am referring to in this project: I am broadly centering current and post-college age (18-30) 32

Instagram users. Instagram’s fast-growing global popularity among this demographic

renders its influence vastly meaningful.

Recognizing Instagram as a medium for communication prompts me to

understand there is an inherently bred power dynamic in motion, as is with all

communication. As such, I use a Foucauldian discourse analysis to look at the power

dynamics present between us as users and Instagram as a virtual world through which we construct idealistic embodiments of who we think we are or who we wish to be. We accomplish this on Instagram through the pictures we post and the captions we write

beneath them. More, we are confined to specific user options, such as liking a photo, commenting on a photo, tagging followers in photos, and direct messaging others. It is a community we strategically learn to communicatively maneuver. Michel Foucault (1979) describes confinement in relation to our prison system, as it is a controlled circulation (as cited in Deleuze, 2006). Instagram as a community, like prisons, are contained and

regulated in specific ways.

I employ the word “strategically” because there are a variety of ways to play on

Instagram. Some of us may use Instagram to follow social-justice oriented profile accounts, some may share pictures of only plants and birds and could care very little if they ever earn a “like.” Some of us post pictures from the highlights of our busy

weekend, eager to showcase our successful vacations, relationships, or popularity. The 33

ways we can participate are hundredfold, and they provide us with different communicative results and internal effects.

We opt to utilize Instagram in ways that benefit us individually. Ergo, we strategically post certain types of photos, at certain times of day, with certain photo filters, with certain types of photo captions (and the list of individual specifications per user goes on), to construct the identity we aim to project to the big Other. I aim to explore these regulations, both imposed upon us through interface confinements and social-rules that dictate appropriate participation. These discourses and rhetorical devices are rampant through this particular communicative medium and are very telling about what our society values. Thus, exploring them through the following mechanisms are central to this project.

Foucauldian Discourse Analysis

Engaging Foucauldian discourse analysis begs the various questions to situate my own research questions: What is being represented here as a truth or as a norm? How is this constructed? What is made problematic and what is not? What is disallowed? What alternative meanings and explanations go ignored? What interests are being mobilized and served by this and what are not? What is kept apart and what is joined together?

What identities, actions, practices are made possible or desirable? What is normalized and what is pathologized? How does power function in society? (Foucault, 1972; 34

Hartsock, 1990; Hoy, 1998; Patton, 1994). This methodological form of inquiry helps to answer my posed research questions because discourse constructs knowledge and subsequently governs society and culture, the same society and culture in which

Instagram resides, islt important to this project to include Foucauldian thought because of the specific acknowledgement of power-dynamics present in a a surveillance-heavy society. I will be using Foucault (1977) to further explain the functionality and effects of

Instagram as a virtual space to surveil and police identities in later chapters.

Foucauldian discourse is conceptualized as a super-individual reality, as a kind of practice that belongs to collectives rather than individuals (Diaz-Bone, 2008). The collectives are reference to the big Other. However, as the later work of Foucault (1988,

1990,2005) illustrates, discourses have an impact on individuals as they are discursively constructed, constituted, and maintained. Calling for analysis and interpretation of image, in this case both the literal image posted and the image of the Instagram interface, it is not solely the reflection of participants in the Instagram community that provide valuable insight to this area of study, but rather, a researcher’s ability to see patters and theorize from the data collected. When it comes to visual methodologies, the researcher is key

(Guillemin, 2010). As the researcher for this study, I will be looking at visual components to understand the rhetorical functions of Instagram. 35

Visual Interrogation

The interface of Instagram is not the only aspect to visually analyze. I will explore the types of pictures we submit to our profiles is another, undoubtedly rich with cultural implication. In the words of Fyfe and Law (1988), “A depiction is never just an illustration... it is the site for the construction and depiction of social difference” (p. 1).

We cannot reductively claim that our Instagram posts are pictures without meaning or purpose. Further, I am not exclusively concerned with how the images look, but how images are looked at (Sturken & Cartwritght, 2001). It cannot be that we as participants only look at one picture at a time, but more, we are always in the process of looking at said picture in relation to other things, other people, and ourselves (Berger, 1972). This is the case for Instagram. This speaks to the connection between spectator and image

(subject and big Other), wherein images produce effect each and every time they are viewed. This is a foundational component to visual interrogation.

Visual culture argues specific audiences or recipients bring their own interpretations to decipher image meaning. I concur, knowing my own lived experiences with Instagram are deeply embedded in this research project, diverging and converging with the lived experiences of those of my social-media followers, most of whom are my friends and family. Moreover, images themselves do habor their own agency, as does the person posting the image to Instagram. According to Carol Armstrong (1996), “An image 36

is a least potentially a site of resistance and recalcitrance” (p. 28). I will further explore the notion of agency and autonomy in later chapters.

Ultimately, our Instagram galleries may take a variety of aesthetic. Yet, like

Lacanian understanding of the identities that we desire to highlight or hide away, visual representations depend on and produce social inclusions and exclusions. A plethora of critical-visual scholars agree: it is necessary to reflect on the images we consume and produce (Bal, 1996,2003; Bal and Bryson,2001; Haraway, 1991).

Autoethnography

I select to include an autoethnographic account of my own experience with

Instagram. All autoethnographic entries shared in this thesis are in italics. I have chosen to incorporate this methodology because dissimilar to mainstream research methodologies, autoethnography considers what Ellis & Bochner (2000) describe as

“multiple layers of consciousness” (p. 739). More specifically, autoethnography considers emotional landscapes, corporal reactions, and the extensive range of human experience that compose our perception of the world around us. The self-reflexive data recorded in a personal journal of my own helps me to explore how my own lived experiences as an

Instagram participant in a social-media obsessed culture affirm or deny the various desires and fantasies Lacan and related scholars discuss. Psychoanalytic theory presumes that our unconscious is accessible to us through the responses we experience through our 37

bodies (Tavin, 2010). As such, it is contextually necessary to utilize autoethnography so this study can best acknowledge forms of human understanding that may otherwise go ignored.

It has been said that autoethnography fails to truly benefit any one person (Ellis,

2004), as it can be thought of as lacking in consideration of cultural restraints and possibilities” (p. 34). However, when accomplished sufficiently and done well, autoethnography explores the reach of the idiosyncratic complexity of human experience that non-qualitative research does not (Ellis & Bochner, 2000). As such, feminist psychoanalytic theory will squarely coincide with autoethnography as I interpret my data.

Both similarly investigate and value the complex and individualized the experience of completing this scholarship from both a researcher and a subject positionality.

We often pretend to be unphased by negative social-media effects.

Autoethnography is an excellent methodology for exploring the instances that people attempt to hide from others (Ellis & Bochner, 1992). Since the autoethnographic researcher is also a subject, they are capable of investigating topics that provide scholarship with insider knowledge, particularly in areas where non-researcher subjects may be embarrassed or unwilling to disclose their personal accounts (Philaretou & Allen,

2006). To produce this study, I have consistently transcribed my own lived experiences with Instagram rituals and participation to then interpret my affective, my thoughts, and my visceral responses that I may likely keep to myself in any other circumstance. Autoethnographic methodology affords me opportunity to interrogate the depth of experience and inquiry through complete and honest means. 39

CHAPTER THREE: RHETORICAL TOPOLOGIES OF INSTAGRAM

Relationship to Rhetorical Topologies

My relationship with Instagram spans over 3 years. The autoethnographic component to this project is birthed from my personal experiences navigating my identity and the identities of my followers. For the past year I have been journaling my thoughts, feelings, and curiosities, uncertain if they were ever going to find their way into this project. I took note of the emotional, mental, and physical responses felt in and through my body. I listened for my emotional responses to any and all of my Instagram engagements in order to catch glimpses of my unconscious fantasies regarding my own identity in relation to the various rhetorical components available to me.

I journaled about various levels anxiety I experienced as I was using Instagram due to its relevance to psychoanalytic theory. Evans (1966) reveals Lacanian description of anxiety as “the point where the subject is suspended between a moment where [he] no longer knows where [he] is and a future where he will never again be able to refind

[himself]” (p. 11). I read this to mean anxiety drastically affects a subject’s understanding of self, caught between the realms of the Symbolic and the Real. Lacan validates my analysis in Seminar X when he (1962) claims “anxiety is an affect” (p . 15). As such, manifestation of anxiety for the purpose of contextualizing this research is worthy of my attention. Lacan (1962) also asserts “anxiety is not the signal of a lack but of something 40

that you must manage to conceive” (p. 46). My potential discomfort or anxiety due to my

Instagram participation is not necessarily a by-product of a lack of Likes on my pictures, but rather, a by-product of my inability to “accurately” claim my identity.

Topologies are not simply a metaphorical way of expressing the concept of structure, but rather, it is structure itself (Lacan, 1973). Instagram topologies are components comprise a unique virtual interface. While there are certain characteristics that mirror other social network sites or phone applications, such as the option to comments on photos, the layout of Instagram functions uniquely and breeds specific participator engagement. There are particular ways to play on Instagram and each option and place the option exists on the Instagram interface is intentional.

The aim of this chapter is to explore prominent features of Instagram. Each rhetorical function affects other functions so this chapter does not attempt to organize the analysis of each in any particular order of importance; they are working in relation to one another. I also want to clarify my use of language as I navigate this chapter. I will apply

“validation” and “desire” interchangeably throughout, connoting a sense of positive assessment or propensity. My use of “feedback” should be considered more inclusively to infer both positive, negative, or indifferent responses, relatively.

I first provide an examination of profile pictures and their overarching purpose on

Instagram. Second, I deconstruct the importance of profile names in contrast to 41

Instagram’s social media counterparts. Third, I work through the implication of a time marker on any Instagram post, identifying when pictures are shared. Fourth, I investigate the function of “Liking” an Instagram post, and fifth, the connotation of a “heart” as a symbol for Liking. Penultimately, I maneuver a breakdown of the comment button.

Finally, I dissect the operation of captions and hashtags as photo contextualizers.

Profile Pictures

The first topology I notice is a profile picture, which is placed universally on all profiles in the top left hand corner. I visually communicate with the homepage interface from the top left comer to the right, echoing the way I am taught to read text. Ironically, one of the first entries I wrote in my journal discussed the profile picture and why I simply couldn’t decide on one I liked. My writing discusses my frustration with not simply picking a photo of myself and being content with the selection.

I don’t really like any pictures. This is annoying. You can hardly see it [the profile picture] because its kind o f small anyway. But my profile is private so if someone is going

to add me, the only thing they ’11 see until I approve them is my profile picture. Maybe I

should pick one I like? What do I like? Do I have an image that “represents ” my entire profile? Do I care? Maybe I care a little ‘cause I ’m thinking about it. Maybe I ’m thinking 42

about it because I ’m journaling for my thesis. Ugh, I ’d probably consider it regardless.

Umm... I like my dogs. Maybe I ’ll just make Callie [my dog] the profile picture., over it.

(September 13th, 2014)

My profile picture o f Callie is perfect. Every time I see it I laugh. Win.

(September 18th, 2014)

The profile picture I use as my overarching identifier, regardless of the individual pictures I post to the profile itself, serves as an embodiment of my entire identity. The reality I must recognize, however, is that identities are is simultaneously messy and tactical. This in mind, picking a photo from my smartphone photo album felt much like changing my outfit 20 times before finally deciding on one.

Sometimes I feel fun, personally defined as out at the beach, at a concert, or at a dive bar with friends. I could use one of “those” pictures. Sometimes I feel like someone who has lived a long, exhausting life, defined as my choosing to stay home (again) on a

Saturday night, ready to take on a movie and be in bed by 930 PM. Other times I consider myself to be a family oriented my free-time is consistently spent with my parents and extended family members, alluding to my well-roundedness and selfless disposition.

Differently, sometimes I’m grading student work for hours on end and I feel academic, productive, and., adult-like? Perhaps I imagine myself as cultured, defined by my traveling, wine tasting adventures, or browsing through a local book store because Barnes 43

and Nobel is an epitome of neoliberalism and my identity is built on the fact that structures of capitalism is are oppressive! Sometimes, clearly, I’m passionate. The ways in which I think of myself are infinite, rubbing up against the way I am perceived by the big Other and whether or not I care deeply enough about said perception to alter the representation of who I am.

There are times when I struggle with deciding which version of myself I like best.

Other times I wonder if its possible to embody all the best parts of myself in one fell swoop of an Instagram post. Sometimes I’ll sit on my couch next to my roommate, both of us chatting casually about our day, current events, the latest small-town gossip, but with smart phones in hand. More often than not while our dialog circulates, I’m haphazardly reading an online article that speaks to my politics. More often than not, she’s scrolling through Instagram. I wonder if she’s presenting her identity in a way that’s more desirable than I do and that’s why she has more to look at or interact with. I wonder what should could possibly be looking at for so long. It seems she had just scrolled through her feed no more than 15 minutes ago. I toss the idea around that perhaps its just a reflex: unlock phone, click the Instagram application.

Should I be more concerned with Instagram? I honestly don't think so., so why do I feel this way? She s on it [Instagram] all the time. Maybe she has more to look at? Maybe she

has more people to interact with? Maybe I don’t have enough people to interact with. 44

Nope. I definitely have too many people to interact with. I don’t even care about what I ’m

looking at as I scroll. Maybe Ijust want to be up on what everyone else is doing... even

when I know I don’t actually care what everyone else is doing. Sitting next to her [my

roommate] makes me ask myself these questions way too often. I rather read the articles anyway.

(19 March, 2015)

When I select a profile picture to Instagram, I wonder if the way the picture articulates my identity is misrecongized by the big Other. Speaking to this very thought,

Lacan (1977) states:

It is this moment that decisively tips the whole of human knowledge into

meditation through the desire of the other, constitutes its objects in an abstract

equivalence by the co-operation of others, and turns the I into that apparatus for

which every instinctual thrust constitutes a danger, even though it should

correspond to a natural maturation, (p. 5)

According to Lacan, this thought process is my attempt to solder the discordance I have created attempting to develop an identity on Instagram converse to the one bursting through the Real. It is a chronic cycle of misrecognition of self (Glendinning, 1999).

None of these examples individually comprise my identity. Each of these things reflect the messy and numerous ways I think about who I am. My profile picture either 45

needs to capture the various intersections of self or potentially privilege one identity over the other. Even when electing to use a picture of my dog as a profile picture (which was later changed a few months after), I symbolically imagined my room littered with clothing, never settling on one presentation of self.

Research suggests profile pictures are a critical tool for self-representation and is utilized for social capital and gratification (Joinson, 2008). The choice of a profile picture that is different from the real physical appearance of a person can be used to infer that some form of discrepancy permeates Instagram culture. With the advent of social media,

Instagram participants are now endowed with the capability to assume control over their self-presentation and express what they understand to be the most salient aspects of their identity. This opens up avenues for a user’s followers to identify them as a political identity (Sanders & Smith, 2015). The virtual profile picture does not adequately represent our full subjectivity.

I consider this as I look at my current Instagram profile picture in comparison to the image of me in my matching cupcake pajama set staring back through my reflection in the mirror. Bruce Fink (1995) echoes my example when he claims, “The subject is nothing but this very split” (p. 45). I am a subject selecting a particular image to stand in as virtual representation of who I want to be in the eyes of my Instagram followers, often separate from who I am when the big Other isn’t present to give feedback. In Lacan’s 46

(1977) words, this is “a function of the cut” (p. 206). Lacan emphasizes that topologies, in this case as a profile picture, privileges the function of the cut, since the cut is what distinguishes a discontinuous identity (momentary profile picture) from a continuous one

(my always fluid identity outside of a frozen profile picture).

Similar to other sites, users are allowed to change their profile picture whenever they like. I would argue the profile picture on Instagram is potentially less significant than the additional topologies that make up Instagram culture. Our profile name or user

ID is another curious component. Where Facebook or Twitter users generally use their real name to post and share content, many Instagram users are left with responsibility of choosing their own unique user name.

Profile Names

A name, similar to a profile picture, is a master signifier for the signified. Upon linking the two, a symbol is created for a proper name. Our Instagram user ID, deconstructed only at the price of canceling a person’s qua identity (Bracher & Ragllan-

Sullivan, 1991). Qua identity, a relatively novel concentration of macrosociology

(Berezin, 2001), refers to inchoate dimensions that characterize identity. In other words, I am innately more complex than what my signifier (profile name) signifies (who I think I am). While my personal Instagram profile is rich with pictures of who I am or believe 47

myself to be, I am more intricately comprised than what my Instagram profile exhibits to

Others. According to Bracher and Ragllan-Sullivan (1991):

The signifier positions a subject in a culture insofar as [he or she] assimilates an

imaginarized symbolic defined by a differential: the law of gendered limits. So,

the function of the ‘at least one’ repeatable symbol is paradoxical here. It both

starts the count of culture and quickly becomes its own limit, (p. 72)

At the center of Instagram topologies is one that is largely invisible — repetition. While a profile picture or a ‘Like button’ is easily seen and frequently utilized, Lacan’s concept of repetition parallels the paradox of the repeatable symbol.

My profile picture is a repeatable signifier for the signified. The signifier manifests every time I open the Instagram application ourselves or anytime I post to

Instagram for my followers. Repetition, at its most fundamental level, is the insistent of speech (Lacan, 1993). I scroll through my Instagram feed of pictures to see the repeating existence of a friend or follower who has posted a new picture. I witness the repeated nature of my own pictures posted hours prior when I scroll down to the end of my feed.

The cycle maintains similarly for most users, insisting though their publication of identity that their speech is heard.

To deduce that the repeated symbol is paradoxical is nothing short of accurate for both Lacan and for Instagram participants. I partake in a culture established on instant 48

gratification, validation, and desire. What I have found in much of my research is that this can be good. For example, I can assume a sense of community and believe my picture

sharing will be met by someone who likes me, or desires to have or be what I have posted. Some research has concluded preoccupation with Instagram is often used as a means to evade stressful life occurrences and maintain distraction from personal problems (Andreassen et al., 2012; Koc & Gulyagci, 2013). This also might be a positive alternative to dealing with situations that maintain anxiety or stress. This same research argues that addiction can be mediated by mindfulness.

According to Baer (2006), mindfulness is understood as “bring[ing] one’s complete attention to the experiences occurring in the present moment, in a non- judgmental or accepting way” (p. 27). Instagram users with higher levels of mindfulness often seem to participate less in stagnant deliberation, outcome fantasy, or unhealthy aspirations to escape or bypass thoughts or emotions (Gordon, 2014). Yes, Instagram has at various points served as a sidestep into the lives of those I follow in a temporary effort to avoid my own. However, I quarrel with the limitation of this finding.

The blanket definition of mindfulness as it is assumed here implies mindfulness functions in a vacuum. In other words, so long as I am aware of how I participate on

Instagram, I won’t be as affected. This logic isolates mindfulness from further context, ridding me of lived experiences that substantially and inherently affect how I view and 49

navigate the world. It also implies there is a level of self-actualization I can reach where my mindfulness will prevent my feeling of judgement towards either of myself or others, which is rather narrow suggestion. Attribution theory reminds me that an individual’s understanding of a person or situation isn’t complete once there has been discovery of causes or events, but more, it leads to a set of reactions that include emotions, inferences, and behaviors (Weiner, 2014). Further, I am concerned with how “participating less” is quantified or how “unhealthy” is qualified.

I self-identify as a self-actualized person and “mindful” of the ways in which I use Instagram. However, my mindfulness does not absolve me from emotional exhaustion or self-doubt no matter how cognizant I am of my engagement. Social-media has been found to be a central component to emotional exhaustion in today’s society

(Sirwilai, 2015). There is seemingly limitless and controllable opportunity to immerse ourselves into a world of polish and filter, but the reality and research insists that our occupancy on Instagram begets a rather comatose addiction (Huntsdale, Michael, &

Thrift, 2015; Akter, 2014).

While current research on social media addiction is in its infancy, a large body of research explores social media addiction as an urge-driven disorder with a strong compulsive component (Karaiskos et al., 2010). The compulsive nature of those consistently using Instagram parrots Lacanian repetition. Repetition is no more visually 50

apparent as is a profile name that exists momentarily, quickly to be erased from the

Instagram homepage feed. After about 24 hours, my posted photo will only be active if a follower intentionally searches my profile name and visits my profile to view my pictures. If my picture and name are not newly to the feed, my picture’s vitality dematerializes.

I do not exist ontologically prior to recognition from other speaking beings.

Likewise with Instagram, my existence in the community is contingent upon my follower’s recognition of my name and posts. Once my posts fall too far to the bottom of my follower’s newsfeeds my existence becomes a past that I necessarily lose (Baer,

2001). It is a symbolic death of sorts. I may Like a follower’s picture, in which case my existence becomes apparent to them, but once the photo I have Liked falls to the bottom of my newsfeed, their name and post dematerializes, too.

I am able to constitute my "origin" and revive a death through repetition. So long as my profile name reappears, either through the posting of my own photos or the Liking of Other’s posts, my entrance into language persists even post death. The logic of this lost origin is illustrated by Lacan's belief there is a forced choice that a subject must submit to in order to exist in the Symbolic, a linguistic dimension in which both the big Other and the death drive is situated. The origin that the subject supposedly loses never precedes entry into the Symbolic. Lacan (1988) asserts, “The death instinct is only the mask of the 51

Symbolic order” (p. 326). A subject’s origin is produced by the very symbolic it supposedly generates, thus making identity retroactively posited in repetition.

Time Marker

There are a plethora of articles active in the online stratosphere advising

Instagram users of the best time to post to their profile in order to gamer the most amount of Likes on their picture. The consensus for most of this research indicates I should post on Wednesdays around 5pm (Benna 2015; Beres, 2015, Keating, 2015). According to these sources, Instagram users are procrastinating their final projects and assignments of the work day and are distracting themselves with Instagram content. This may similarly reflect the research that asserted Instagram as a popular go-to in the wake of avoiding life stressors, but there is no research that explains why Wednesday is a more favorable day to participate as opposed to, say, Tuesday or Thursday.

While it may make logical sense why Friday night at 9 PM isn’t as popular a time to be on Instagram as many people are out and about with friends and family celebrating the weekend, this research only provides me the numbers that market research can crunch out and quantify. Wondering when I should to post to Instagram is a conversation that is constantly discussed in my social circle and evidently many others if the interweb is plentiful with suggestions on how to maximize validation. This area of inquiry is relevant 52

and interesting to the Instagram phenomenon and should serve as further research in pursuit of better understanding today’s social media usage. However, my focus for this project is concerned with time a bit differently.

In the right most corner of the Instagram home page, there is a time marker that reveals when I have posted a picture. If I have just posted, it may read as 14 seconds ago.

Likewise, if someone were to go through my profile and click on random pictures, the posts will indicate three weeks ago, 15 weeks ago, 24 weeks ago, and so forth.

Rhetorically, this infers quite a bit to both myself and to my followers, specifically in relation to how many Likes I have received and how many followers I have. The intersection of these three considerations, time, Likes, and follower count, illuminate how the topologies of Instagram affect one another.

It is not meaningful enough that I posted a picture 15 minutes ago. Rather, it is meaningful that I have posted a picture 15 minutes ago, have roughly over 400 followers, and have received only 13 Likes in the total time the picture has been active. According to my personal history on Instagram, I can roughly project to receive a certain amount of

Likes per minute, based on how many people are following my profile. There are additional factors that further complicate my projection, such as my use of filters or hashtags, which will be discussed further into this chapter. Generally speaking, I have an idea of the what feedback I’m going to receive from the big Other based on what I elect 53

to share. Deconstructing the negative implication of earning 13 Likes in 15 minutes is relevant to this thesis. Lacan would tell me the negative implication is rooted in desire.

I want to believe that what I have posted will be validated by the big Other. To post a picture and earn a small fraction when I expect to receive more divulges there is something potentially unworthy about my sharing the picture in the opinion of the big

Other. I know it is not that my followers haven’t seen my post, because indeed they have.

I know the big Other has viewed my post and scrolled past it without desire to want or be what they see in front of them. This realization strikes me and I am prompted to wonder why I am not desired. Even while identifying as a confident and self-actualized woman, no matter my level of “mindfulness,” I still fall victim to notions of desire. I can read any article about why users are less active on Instagram at certain times of day or days of the week. These articles will speak to my constructed reality that my followers actually do desire what they see in my posts but have succumbed to contextual factors that have prevented their declarations of desire. These articles help me craft my own fantasy that I am desirable in any and all representations I chose to share despite the feedback I receive.

The illusion that the majority of my followers have some unrelated-to-me reason for their absent feedback is prompted by my fantasy to be a desired individual. The illusion enables and reveals me to be whole, omnipotent, and most importantly, in control despite what and when I post (Evans, 1996). Jagodzinski (2004) predicates even though 54

fantasy “stages the scene of desire in the imaginary” (p. 143) wherein fantasies are composed of images, much like my Instagram profile, fantasies are structured by the

Symbolic realm due to the fantasy frame defined by signifiers (Evans, 1996). We operate from our own idiosyncratic fantasies in which we play the starring role. Zizek (2001) elaborates on Lacan’s concept of fantasy:

In the network of intersubjective relations, every one of us is identified with, [or]

pinned down to, a certain fantasy place in the other’s symbolic structure.

Psychoanalysis sustains here the exact opposite of the usual, commonsense

opinion according to which fantasy figures are nothing but distorted, combined, or

otherwise concocted figures of their “real” models, people of flesh and

blood who we’ve met in our experience. We can relate to these ‘people of flesh

and blood’ only insofar as we are able to identify them with a certain place in our

symbolic fantasy space, or to put it in another more pathetic way, only insofar as

they fill out a place preestablished in our dream (p. 2).

Fantasy, as defined by Zizek’s reading of Lacan, functions in a similar way I do on

Instagram, wherein I assume a ‘pre-established’ identity. To be clear, yes, I have been bom into a society where other speaking beings have helped me to shape my identity long before Instagram came to exist. However, the years prior to Instagram invention does not absolve me from needing the big Other to understand who I am today. As such, 55

when I can clearly see the time marker on my Instagram profile indicate how many of my followers have elected to validate or ignore in a given time frame, I am reminded that my fantasy to be desired is in fact, a fantasy.

The rhetorical function of the time clock is curious, as it doesn’t provide an exact date of when the picture was posted. Instead, indefinite time markers reference time in terms of week and provide vague reference to a calendar year. I wonder about the likelihood that someone would calculate how far back 47 weeks actually goes and then attempt to situate that date in a larger context. Does any one person care to decipher what month or year it was when the picture was posted? Does any one person care to contextualize the post with was happening in history or what their relationship to this person consisted of 47 weeks ago? I assume the time marker becomes more and more irrelevant to the big Other the longer a picture sits static in a profile. Yet, the arguably functionless time marker for the first 24 hours a picture is circulating in relation to how many likes a post has received reflects a consensus of the big Other.

When I open the Instagram application on my smartphone I am immediately directed to the homepage where all of my new posts and the posts of my followers are in que ready to be viewed and (hopefully) liked. If I see someone’s picture has roughly 18

Likes and its been 5 hours since it was initially posted, the implication may be that the content of their picture is not universally desired. To then Like the photo would go 56

against the silent but apparent consensus. This falls somewhere in the realm of groupthink, where the application of critical thinking or decision making as a group discourages individual responsibility or input. The group in this case, the big Other, may collectively see a post struggling for validation after an hour of its emergence or succeeding in its attempt after 10 minutes. Consequently, the big Other is prompted to consider whether or not it is actually like-worthy based on their own desires and the desires of other people who are Liking or not Liking the photo. Instagram is not a one-to- one communicative ratio, but instead, a galaxy of interaction with multiple users potentially looking at the same post at the same time, all with their own agency to Like, comment, or keep scrolling.

The time indication is a faint, grey colored font at the top left hand side of the screen. Compared to the darker colored text of other Instagram topologies, such as the profile name, caption, or follower comments, the time marker isn't as visibly prominent as some of the other Instagram components. It may not be the first characteristic a user notices, but it is an intersectional factor in deciphering desirability before a post is Liked.

I’ve referred to the action of Liking a picture quite extensively thus far but have yet to flesh it out as a rhetorical device. The Like feature is not unique to Instagram, but it plays a central role in positioning Instagram to be unique from other social media platforms. 57

Double Tap to Like

Where other networks breed content needing context, its emphasis is primarily on text first, then photo-sharing second. Instagram, however, operates in the opposite direction. Instagram places emphasis on photo-sharing first and text second. The boom in

Instagram popularity is in part due to its user-friendly interface (Herman, 2014). There’s no Edgerank or algorithm to determine what users will see. If I follow someone, I will see their posts sans filtered results, unlike Twitter or Facebook. For Instagram, visual marketing drives engagement; I am not just sharing content, I am creating it. The quickest way to have users create consistent content is to make engaging with the platform effort- free. Ergo, the Like button known to Facebook users everywhere is reenvisioned for

Instagram.

If I want to Like a post on Facebook, I have to go out of my way to click the

“Like” hyper-link. It is not that it takes any significant amount of energy to click the Like link on Facebook, because it is actually a very easy and popular feature. However, I have to move my hand to position my browser on the link, whereas Instagram has a double-tap to Like feature anywhere on an image, where my hand already happens to rest. While I am scrolling through my feed and I decide to Like a picture, I don’t actually need to shift the position of my hand that is wrapped around my phone in a way that it is currently comfortable. I don’t need to navigate or maneuver to access the Like button because I can 58

double-click almost anywhere on the screen to indicate my approval. It is a user-friendly platform because I don’t have to put much effort into maintaining my existence on

Instagram through repetition.

I do not need to post pictures in order to be considered present in my Instagram community. All I need to do to ensure that Others are aware that I am a member of the culture is to validate or invalidate their choice to post to their profile. One may inquire as to how followers are reminded of my existence if I don’t post or Like their photos.

Lacan's (1977) answer about the spoken word or lack thereof would be rather enigmatic:

“Through the word, which is already a presence made of absence, absence itself comes to be named” (p. 65). In other words, signifiers only exist insofar as they are in opposition to other signifiers. My lack of Like is accounted for because I came into language when I signed up with my own profile and started following the profiles of other people. I become even more apparent when I post regularly on my own profile but fail to effortlessly double tap on any given post. The intentional use of “effortlessly” acts as a reminder of knowing how truly easy it is for someone to double-tap to Like a post, but for whatever reason, still elects to give silent feedback of ill-desire through a lack of Like.

To Like harbors a brilliant rhetorical function. Denotatively, it means to approve or assume similarity. What it may connote on Instagram, however, is a very specific idea of validation: desire. Since there is no “half-Like” or “really-Like” button, the standard 59

button does not function around context. If I Like a picture or if someone elects to Like one of mine, it embodies a stamp of approval. “Stamp of approval” is an appropriate metaphor; when someone likes a post through a double-tap, a large red heart explodes on the picture. It is a visual declaration of love, or desire (Fetterman, 2013).

Function of the Heart

As explained thus far, to Like a photo, I need to double-tap the picture on my smartphone screen. Upon tapping, a red heart bursts onto the center of a smartphone screen and announces approval and validation of identity. The heart as a symbol of love has attracted artists, writers, composers and the larger public (Baudelarie, 2008). The heart is believed across cultures and time to be a central organ, physically, mentally, and emotionally. (Marinkovic, 2014, Kovecses, 2000). The centrality of the heart remains true today. Reichard (2014) attests, “The hand on heart is a mythical and perhaps ritualistic way of accepting an offering” (p. 560). As I scroll through posts on my Instagram feed, my phone is in the palm of my hand ready to accept (or deny) my follower’s representations of themselves. Instagram could undoubtably operate similarly without the booming heart as a metaphor for love or desire, but rhetorical implication of the heart’s eruption is critical to this thesis. 60

Social judgments are rapidly influenced by metaphor-consistent manipulations

(Williams & Bargh, 2008). Hegemonically, the mind is believed to be the source of logic and intelligence whereas the heart is understood as a place of emotion and passion, often separate from sound reasoning. Societal rhetoric implies subjects make decisions based on either the former or the latter (Swan, 2009; Plato, 1987). If I maintain the dichotomy wherein the heart acts in opposition to the mind as an organ of passion, the heart combustion consequent of Liking a post embodies desire. As I have acknowledged previously in this chapter, desire coexists with the death-drive. The rhetorical implication of the heart correlates to the non-mutual exclusivity of desire and death.

Historically, the crucial heart was the only organ to left inside the mummies of the pharaohs in order to enable them entrance to an afterlife; a world where they continue to live on. This is arguably congruent to Instagram user’s desire to live on forever in stagnant pictures despite a continual Lacanian-death. As previously voiced, my Instagram posts become versions of self that I as a subject lose. My entrance back into life, or language, is achieved through the repetitive nature of continuing to post, Liking the posts of my followers, or receiving Likes on my own posts. My desire to be recognized may be akin to the pharaoh’s desire to appear again in another life; it is a repeat of existence.

At the “heart” of desire is a misrecognition of self-completeness. In this misrecognition resides a veneer for my own narcissistic projections. The lack of a heart 61

(or lack of Like) on my Instagram posts perpetuate my desire to be desired, so I continue to engage. I may post something that represents a polished or filtered fragment of my identity, but I am soon reminded of my own lacking when I only receive a fraction of likes in relation to how many followers I actually have. Why are only 60 out of 400 followers liking my post? Asked more transparently, why are only 60 out of 400 followers liking me?

The Symbolic order is separated by a fracturable border from the materiality of the Real. Lacan (1977) maintains, the “floating object (my Instagram representation of self) reflects [my] nothingness, in the figure of the death's head" (p. 92). There is a realization that behind my desire is nothing but a lack of the two things I most desire: recognition and to be desired by Others for my seemingly authentic and effortless being.

In other words, the person I see staring back at me in the mirror is not the filtered or incomplex representation of self I have posted to my Instagram profile in order to gamer both recognition and desire from the big Other. Reeser (2010) purports Butler’s position to be one that assumes we have no nature underneath our identity. As such, repetition illuminates our existence in particular ways to Others in the face of emptiness or death (p.

82).

While there is always a degree of validity to my posts, it is nonetheless important to acknowledge the repetitive and claimed realities and fantasies I project or the realities 62

and fantasies projected to me. They both illustrate a picture-perfect Instagram identity despite the less than perfect world outside of the frame (Zhang, 2015). The identity I lack is apparent in the world outside of the frame and filter, but no one would know this by the aesthetic appeal of my Instagram profile. My lacking is a materiality of the Real always reflecting back to me, but easily hidden among my posts.

This affects my self concept because my representation is partially fragmented from the person I see in the mirror. Perception of identity in any given body is always fragmented and partial. This builds my anxiety of wanting to be desired by Others. Evans

(1996) claims “Lacan stresses the relationship of anxiety to desire; anxiety is a way of sustaining desire when the object is missing and, conversely, desire is a remedy for anxiety, something easier to bear than anxiety itself’ (p. 11). It is much easier to combat anxiety (fear of Lacanian death) with desire (more Instagram engagement, or, repetition).

My followers are shown representations of myself I deem like-worthy based on what I see Other people post and I know to be hegemonically desirable. Consequently, I elicit their variations of desire for me, too. The revolving door persists and we are all implicated. 63

Comment Button

The comment button is a useful and intentional rhetorical mechanism on

Instagram. It certainly is enough to only double-tap my screen if I want to announce my validation of someone’s picture. Indeed, I have the option to rely solely on the implication of a booming heart, but alternatively, I have the choice to type and submit my exact thoughts underneath a picture. I have the opportunity to respond to someone’s entrance into language, furthering my own existence in language. The opportunity to use my voice in a much more explicit way affords me the space to be more specific with my feedback.

Denotatively, “comment” refers to a statement expressing fact or opinion about someone or something. Rhetorically, the option to “comment” implies that voices are valuable, expected, and should be heard more emphatically. The comment button conveys a more intentional message for feedback: If I go out of my way to click to the comment button and proceed to type out a thought or opinion, there is an implied level of interest or investment in whatever has been posted. I have friends who follow me on Instagram who have gone out of their way to tell me they think “my dress is beautiful” or “my hair looks great” or “my dog is the cutest dog ever.” In short, these quippy comments feel good and many of my friends like to validate who I am through what I post because it is an easy way to maintain (surface-level) friendships (Konnikova, 2014). I do not mean to 64

infer compliments are no longer genuine or well-meaning, but I do mean to recognize the over-simplicity of maintenance social media affords interpersonal relationships, particularly on a medium that requires very little effort to engage.

In a similar but different vein, one of my followers may comment on my picture of a landscape scene claiming they too have been there! This type of reaction to an

Instagram post is particularly interesting because it feeds their own proclaimed identity, as their comment can be seen by anyone looking at my picture.1 It would be quite the comment trope for me to comment on someone else’s picture only to refer to how I am positively implicated. Likewise, a follower of mine may react harshly to a post that reflects my political identity, A f arguing their political identity is on the # 26 hkm right side of justice. Instagram affords users — 't H eking? #k*nda a space to be vulnerable in how they claim !!: , $ My m H f S mm from tfwo! their identity no matter the repercussion. It

Figure A 1 Figure A 65

may be tempting to identify Instagram as a catalyst for such a communicative practice, but incendiary rhetoric has long been a mainstay of public discourse; today it may simply be disguised as connectivity.

The option to comment on a picture affects the potential reading of the photo itself. Motivation to engage with a person or profile more deeply, either through positive or negative feedback, can be achieved through the choice to comment on seemingly fixed identities. Latching onto static identities in an attempt to master an impending decentering of who I think I am is logical. Yet, this mastery is ineffectual and unreachable. Lacan (1977) insists, “analysts have to deal with slaves who think they are masters, and who find in a language whose mission is universal the support of their servitude, and the bonds of its ambiguity" (p. 81). In other words, I am a slave to certain significations. Freud has written that pleasure often derives from participating in the dominance of the signifier over the weightiest of significations (Lacan, 1966). If I believe

I have dominance or control over the comment button as a signifier for the concept it represents, I believe I have control over my identity.

Instagram is a space of shared reality and lived experiences. These things are exemplified in the content of pictures I share. This space is affected by how it is consumed by Others, such as comment button. Without the choice to comment, I may be stripped of a shared reality, which is often why people want to share or comment in the 66

first place (Konnikova, 2013). How users of Instagram choose which posts they will comment on and which they will only Like (or both) calls for extended qualitative research of the Instagram phenomenon.

If my desire is for Others to view and react to my identity positively, I will chase after a Like-worthy existence through repetition on my terms. McCaughey (2008) contends, “Identity may be better understood as a reflectively organized project, not [an] authentic essence” (p. 135). This is precisely why Instagram is such a promising and popular communicative medium; I can post what I believe is the closest representation of my Truth. The option to comment as a choice, is relevant to each user’s organizational process as they develop their identity. We are always in the process of development

(Kristeva, 1984). Choices are calculated and intentional. It is the belief of choice that implies my control over personal behavior and entrance into language. I associate choice with a representation or sense of agency. Accordingly, further exploration of agency and autonomy on Instagram will be discussed in the following chapter of this text.

Captions and Hashtags

Sharing identities via Instagram has been marketed as seemingly easy: upload a picture from your phone to the application, pick a filter to optimize attractiveness, sign it with a caption and hashtag, and voila! Ready for post. This linear flow may operate 67

without effect if desire was less of a determining factor in how Instagram is used.

However, the purpose of this chapter is to deconstruct the ways in which the community of Instagram cannot be reduced to such incomplexity. Similar to the comment button option that opens the flood gates for more explicit entrance into language, the caption and hashtag topologies on Instagram are additional methods of coming into a relationship with oneself and Others in a more visible fashion.

I assume a level of control over my language on Instagram through captions and hashtags. Captions are used to define, explain, and complement posts of all type. The notion that a picture may not be worth a million words is interesting to think about, as they certainly do not generate a million Likes, unless a user has earned celebrity status.

Captions and hashtags serve to hopefully increase chances of earning positive recognition from the big Other. Numerous websites and blogs online instruct users on the dos and don’ts of cultivating a personal brand, or in other words, popularity, in their Instagram community. If I add the “right” captions to my pictures, they will become gold (Barton,

2015).

Unlike the straight forward nature of a caption, hashtags are buzzwords or phrases preceded by a pound sign. Hashtags refer to particular messages about specific cultural topics. On social media, they are made into a hyperlinks. Clicking on the hashtags takes users to other online platforms where other people are discussing the same topic using the 68

same hashtag. It connects the world using the convenience of shortened catchphrases.

People come to rhetorically recognize hashtags as significant, packing quite a punch in as few words as possible. At its historical root, hashtags are clearly intentional metadata, directing users to information about news, events and wider cultural interests:

#CalifomiaFires, #VMAs, #BlackLivesMatter #Presidency2016 and so on. Today, we are seeing a reappropriation of hashtag use for humor, wordplay, and poetry (Turner, 2012).

The world of hashtags continue to grow, lending more room for intentional and specific construction of identity.

According to Lacan, my coming into language demands a radical break from any sense of materiality, such as my identity within the Real, which resides outside of my

Instagram profile. The continued development of myself as a subject is made viable by infinite misrecognition of the Real, working in tandem with the Symbolic. My need to construct my sense of reality is accomplished through entrance into language of many designs, be it through implication, recognition, or verbal speech itself. Crafting a caption or adding hashtags don't provide me a louder voice, but instead, the opportunity to employ specific voice. The difference is important to note.

Communication as a synergetic model explains there will always be interpretation of language dependent on message, culture, and context (Martin & Nakayma, 2008).

Instagram posts without captions or hashtags allow for interpretation of intent and 69

significance of pictures. Visual

images are rendered uniquely

meaningful by the subjective gaze of

the viewer, Each individual produces

meanings by relating the image to

their lived experiences, achieved

knowledge, and cultural discourses

(Pink, 2007). This positions

followers to make any necessary

assumptions based on the context of

their viewing which are often

contingent upon wider cultural

153 likes discourses. Once I post a picture, it is n my main man. »always . . , . . . , , . indeed an entrance into language, but

if I accompany said picture with a Figure B caption or a variety of hashtags, I am afforded the opportunity to tailor that language further.

It is with the ability to tailor language that Lacan would claim the Unconscious is structured like a language, essentially being the discourse of the Other. However, with 70

contemporary language now laced with semiotic drive force and symbols, such as happy- face emojis, filters, and hashtags, I acknowledge Kristeva’s critque of Lacan’s conception of the Unconscious. Kristeva argues language is not solely comprised of pure signifiers.

Rather, she posits language is made up with heterogeneous elements (Kristeva, 1983).

The big Other is then a space of metaphorical shifting and analyrical interpretation is more a matter of recognizing the unrepresentable within signifiers.

My posts may stand alone without caption and they may evoke a similar shared interpretation by the general population of the big Other. My posts stand detailed and more comprehensive with a specific voice that rhetorically shapes my identity when I use hashtags. For example, I may post a picture of myself with my grandfather2 and it may be well-received by my followers. The complementing caption reads “my main man,

#always” and this helps to construct my identity in a way that may not happen if I didn’t have a caption at all. Implying my grandfather is my “main man” constructs me to be heavily family oriented, complete with a human who loves and cares for me. The content of the picture may also be perceived as desirable in other ways if we were to tease out classist and sexist implications.

2 Figure B 71

I like this picture! My grandfather and I are standing in front o f a large, white, glowing

Christmas tree. The flocked trees always look so pretty. I wish they weren’t so expensive so I could get one for my apartment, too. It s my parents tree, though, so it’s still kinda my

tree. At least that’s the implication on my Insta. I t’s a good picture, too! There’s a warm,

orange fire contained within a white detailed fireplace and black laced screen. My hair looks great. I actually wore makeup to Christmas dinner so my face looks fresh, which is

so not what I look like generally coming off of another ridiculously consuming and

emotionally taxing semester o f grad school. I love how Grandpa looks so cozy in his

sweater. Pretty sure mom will want copies. (December 25, 2014)

Deconstructing my own words, I first notice that I refer to how pretty my parent’s house is, which is still very much my home. I discuss the eliteness of affording not just a

Christmas tree, but one that has been flocked. The fire place connotes a life of luxury and warmth. My comment about makeup reflects westernized beauty ideals that I fall victim to, particularly when I have to “look presentable” for family events. Looking “fresh” entails an internalized sexism that I’ll never actually escape no matter how hard I work to keep it at bay. Ultimately, I am aware as I am taking pictures, viewing pictures, and choosing a winner from the collection of pictures, how my identity is fragmented in my

Instagram profile. 72

The picture of my grandfather and me is a loving picture, embodying a vision for family that I will always desire, but it does not come with an explanation of what measures were taken or what experiences were lived through to make the picture possible. I did not hashtag the frantic preparation of Christmas dinner. I did not caption the picture referring to the defeating and uncomfortable frustrations birthed out political debates around the hors d'oeuvre table. For most, those experiences are largely undesirable. As such, I intentionally avoid mentioning them when I share on Instagram.

Instead, I post what will bait me what the fundamental operation relies on: a desire to be desired. I continue reading into my journal:

Thank God I made him [my grandfather] take multiple pictures because the first 4 his

eyes were closed! We were also standing an awkward distance apart. I had to check my

phone to make sure it was a “good picture. ” Eventually we got it right.

(December 25th 2014)

The picture may be beautiful and accurate in many respects, such as the warm Christmas

I was able to share with my grandfather or the reality that I do love him very, very much, as the picture promises. However, it is a far cry for me to say that it also reflects the context of the picture outside of the Instagram frame. It is important for me to recognize what it does for my construction of identity when I look back at this Instagram post. It is fragmented, living in the Symbolic, while bickering with my grandfather to retake the 73

picture due to our closed eyes and uncoordinated stance next to one another is very much so residing in the Real.

Further deconstructing my words, I quite literally mention within my notes that my mother will want a “copy” of the picture. I’m projecting her desire of my picture and what it represents. Her desire for a “good life” in the way that she would define “good” is captured in this photo, reflecting desires for her own life. I am standing next to her father, her beautiful tree, in her beautiful home. I am dressed modestly in the way she deems appropriate and attractive for a “young woman.” The sexist implications of this are deep and largely invisible, perpetuating the “right” way I should exist in the world in my cisfemale body.

This picture embodies what is desirable in U.S society. Not only does the picture connote a status-quo identity deemed suitable for my body by the big Other, but my caption does as well, illustrating my assumed respect for the elderly and commitment to family relationships. The big Other does not simply desire the content of my pictures, but rather, the content and caption- hashtag intersection and what that intersection implies3.

My posts are fluid in reaction to the ever-changing circumstances and identity of myself as an Instagram poster. The subjective meaning of a picture is variable in response to my followers and what is being done in the interaction between us. (Hodgetts et al., 2007;

3 Figure C 74

Croghan et al., 2008; Lomax and Casey,

mmcalkin 1998). 1 ? : '■ ' V . ; . My friend’s quote (Caption in Figure C)

for the AT&T park post illuminated a

social hierarchy: people who buy STO,

people who buy bleacher tickets, or

people who can afford club level tickets.

They aren’t the best in house, but the

seats are awesome and they are

expensive. Her comment was quick,

• 44 tikes clever, and reflected the notion that we 'Doesn't it feel right to be here? No* tfa * m me, I meant club level * -- were meant to be sitting in expensive

seats — the seats that most people

Figure C would elect to purchase if money

weren’t an object. The picture itself is cool because AT&T is a gorgeous park., it would have earned a ton o f Likes anyway because a large portion o f my IG followers are Giants fans. The caption just added to its potency. Who doesn’t want club level seats? It sounds elitist because it is. Elitism perpetuates a lot o f the shit I think is problematic in society. It 75

was clever at the time, but at least I wasn’t the one who said it, so I still kind o f look

elitist without being the one to call attention to it. I ’m quoting someone else.

(March 30th, 2014)

Elitism makes assumptions that people should act in the ways elites do. Climbing the social and economic ladder is part of the American dream, and a surefire way to mirror the elitism people so often desire is to project elitism even when it isn’t an accurate depiction. Never once in my caption do I mention that the club level seats my friend and I are sitting in have been gifted to us. Neither her or I have the money nor the desire to take the time to save money to purchase club level seats on our own. More, I intentionally fail to mention we were gifted these seats at the end of March, which is preseason for baseball. Regular-season club level seats are much more expensive and perhaps wouldn’t have been offered to us. Instagram afforded us the opportunity to illustrate our assumed to be rigid desirable identities, successfully accomplished through aesthetic appeal (a beautiful, saturated color picture of a famous MLB stadium), community (being a Giants fan among thousands more in the SF Bay Area), and elitism

(sitting in expensive seats) without the stipulation of less than desirable details.

My identity within my pictures is defined by how I compose my representations and supplement captioning (Shipley, 2015). I instigate the circulation of an emotional field emanating from my subjectivity, intensely focused on a single moment frozen in my 76

idea of what is desirable. It evokes a broader social world that I can fantasize as the domain of my truth. The Real is rampant with closed eyes, klutzy pictures, Freudian slips, and what is in the mirror, predominately a realm Instagram never sees.

My Instagram posts exemplify the power of tailoring entrance into language.

However, adding captions to posts does not guarantee increased desirability in the form of Likes. Let me be clear: There are a variety of instances when I have posted a picture without a caption and received plenty of validation by my standards (let us recall the Like count to follower ratio). Likewise, there are instances when I have posted a picture with a caption or hashtag and received less validation than I would have hoped for by those same standards. The analysis of caption functionality is not an established model for guaranteed Instagram engagement; it is a rhetorical examination of the communicative options available to the Instagram community and the subsequent implications that derive.

Further Thoughts

Instagram is a $33 billion dollar company that rhetorically promotes itself as a team that wishes to cultivate a space where creativity and community come together to still-shot the world. “Our passion for capturing and sharing beautiful moments is woven through everything we do. We’re a small team working together to inspire creativity 77

around the world” (Instagram, 2015). This sentiment is pleasant. For many, Instagram does function this way. There are plenty of instances where a picture I have just taken, be it of a landscape, my dog, or myself alongside friends, does indeed capture a beautiful moment, as I have purported throughout this chapter.

Electing to share personal pictures to my Instagram profile does not negate their authenticity or the identity that it retroactively carves out for me. However, Instagram PR platform is different from a reality many users face. It may not be Instagram’s selling point, but the product users receive is a fusing of Lacan’s death drive and desire. The operation of the two come together in the wake of Instagram user’s compulsion to check their feed numerous times a day (Duggan, 2014).

Instagram provides tools and means to transform an average image into an emotional, evocative story in one frame that speaks to very intentional representations of identity. The rhetorical topologies present within the Instagram platform is riddled with option, choice, implication, and limitation. Each component correlates to Lacanian impressions of identity construction. Once profile names, pictures, visible Like-counts, and captions are no longer fresh on the feeds of my followers, Instagram inherently feeds into my retroactive development of identity. It is important for me to understand there are benefits and disadvantages to this. 78

Working through the research I have found my participation with Instagram to be two-fold. I struggle with the idea of losing a community should I disassociate myself from the medium. There are indeed a multitude of ways I can and do benefit from participating and constructing myself in a way that is heavily influenced by the big Other.

I am able look back fondly at much of what I post because there is a validity to it that exists despite the voices of my followers; therein lies the big Other’s limitation.

Nonetheless, these topologies are addictive.

In a society where convenience, connectivity, and instant gratification motivate contemporary forms of communication, Lacan’s notions of the death and desire posits

Instagram to be a space where development of desired identity can’t be necessarily be reached. Instagram’s simplicity makes it difficult not to engage. It is not that we aren’t addicted to social media, we are more precisely, addicted to each other. The following chapter will explore notions of agency and autonomy on Instagram and how they intersect with psychoanalytic theory and identity construction. 79

CHAPTER FOUR: AGENCY AND AUTONOMY ONLINE

Self-Implication

Social media and Instagram in particular are becoming ubiquitous. Integrated into social life to the point where they are frequently referred to in everyday rhetoric, social media are becoming so normalized they are usually invisible in every day talk and engagement. Instagram is now a common component of how millions of people across the world “do” everyday life (Lovheim, 2013). In other words, what we do, where we go, how we conceptualize lived experiences is often shaped by documentation and presentation of our identities on social media. The various characteristics of what the big

Other ascribes to our bodies is done so through positive or negative valence.

Generally speaking, this dichotomous thinking might be achieved through a universal criteria in which categorization is accomplished through universal truisms about

“good” and “bad.” For example, U.S. society applauds humility and compassion and criticizes those who inflict harm onto others, be it physical or psychological. Subjectively and frequently idiosyncratically, humans feel anxiety, shame, or hatred about specific components of their identities. Likewise, humans also feel appreciation and acceptance for other characteristics. As explained in previous chapters, it is the latter Instagram users elect to share with their social media following. The operative word I want to center is 80

“elect.” The topical issue I wish to unpack in this chapter is the ways in which agency and autonomy factor into how participants use Instagram as a means of contemporary communication and how it consequently shapes social lives and cultural values.

First, I want to locate myself positionality in this chapter and examine my personal-as-political politics as an intersectional scholar, what being an intersectional scholar means to me, and how I will use the term “intersectionality” throughout the chapter. Second, I will investigate what it means for Instagram to be a virtual space.

Many spaces do not hold differing bodies the same way, and as an intersectional scholar, it is critical to note how acts of agency and autonomy function differently among

Instagram users and their individual identity politics. Third, I will discuss agency in relation to surveillance, building more off of Foucauldian thought. I contend the dynamic interplay of agency and external/internal surveillance is often achieved through systems of societal-policing, or self-policing in some instances, or through assumed autonomy and rebellion against such forms of policing.

From this point, I investigate the possibilities and implications of assuming agency over Instagram topologies and the big Other who often dictate our retroactive identity development. Second, I introduce the similarities between our entrance into language on Instagram and how it may be akin to a Lacanian “talking cure.” It is here I explore the notion that our engagement with Instagram is used to find solace in a society 81

where confinements and oppressions are countered with proclaimed agency, promoting a sense of individualized self online. Finally, I seek to better understand our agency with and over social media and Instagram when we make the conscious choice to log off.

I wasn’t exposed to any feminist ideology until my second year of undergrad.

Looking back, I am angered that my feminist world didn’t begin to open until early adulthood; angered that the social movement had evaded me so acutely while I unconsciously internalized systemic racism, sexism, elitism, ableism, and any other harmful-isms permeating U.S society. As a White woman, I cringe at the remembrance of any point in time when I contributed unknowingly to the oppression of any person before

I became aware. I am discontented by the fact that there will be times when I still contribute unknowingly to said oppression in the wake of learning and practicing my feminist ideals. This makes me uncomfortable, fearful I might unintentionally cause harm in pursuit of justice, erasing or silencing voices I ultimately hope to speak beside, never over.

I do not say any of this to detract from my oppression as a woman in a patriarchal society, but instead to recognize my unearned privilege as a White woman in a White patriarchal society; as a White woman writing this thesis. At the end of the day, however, my discomfort is irrelevant in the larger scope of marginalization and oppression too many people in America experience every day. My discomfort must fuel my social 82

justice. It fuels my desire to develop into the person I want to be. It most certainly fuels this project.

I realize I cannot blame myself for what I never knew existed because of the patriarchal family-structure, religion, education system, and media outlets with which I was raised. I am grateful the social-justice mission of my university reached me when I could have easily found myself studying in a college, among the conglomerate amount of universities in the U.S, that fails to share a mission for social justice at all. Adopting a framework that is intersectional is not an easy process because it demands of me that I understand things that are sometimes difficult to understand about my own power and privilege. What I speak of, write about, and critically read becomes more complicated to consume and produce as I deeply involve my own self-accountability.

I continue to cringe at the idea I will misstep with my feminism. At the same time,

I’m relieved that when I do misstep with my feminism, I will land back at the table of scholars, mentors, and friends who will always lend a necessary and constructive hand in my learning, unlearning, and relearning. I am appreciative of my thesis committee and their reminders that even amidst my desire to write intersectionally, even with the best intentions, intentions are not enough. I will always need to do more, say more, write more, and give more credit to the intersectional feminists who came before me and those who do intersectional work beyond my current scope of understanding. 83

Having said the aforementioned, I wish to introduce a foundation for

intersectionality to serve as a vehicle as I move through the remainder of this chapter.

Kimberle Crenshaw, a renowned critical race and law scholar conceived the term

‘intersectionality’ in her 1989 paper Demarginalizing the Intersection o f Race and Sex: A

Black Feminist Critique o f Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist

Politics. In essence, intersectionality is a framework that applies to social justice pursuits

which recognize the multiplicative nature of our identities, acknowledging the lived experiences that complicate and compound marginalizations and oppressions, particularly

centered on Black women. Lack of intersectionality contributes to the erasure of particular bodies who are already disenfranchised in U.S. society. Crenshaw (2015)

articulates:

Intersectionality is an analytic sensibility, a way of thinking about identity and its

relationship to power. Originally articulated on behalf of black women, the term

brought to light the invisibility of many constituents within groups that claim

them as members, but often fail to represent them. Intersectional erasures are not

exclusive to black women. People of color within LGBTQ movements; girls of

color in the fight against the school-to-prison pipeline; women within immigration

movements; trans women within feminist movements; and people with disabilities

fighting police abuse — all face vulnerabilities that reflect the intersections of 84

racism, sexism, class oppression, transphobia, able-ism and more.

Intersectionality has given many advocates a way to frame their circumstances

and to fight for their visibility and inclusion.

My feminism never aims to gloss over the issues faced by specific groups of people for

the sake of unity but instead wants to acknowledge the relationship between identity and power. It is thus important to highlight this agenda as I talk about social media spaces that

are assumed to be safe and fun for everyone.

Lumping all Instagram users into one community as if they experience the same

interactions would reflect a lack of intersectionality and consequently erase particular

identities on a social medium where everyone is allegedly permitted to freely exist,

hooks (2000) echos the intersectional objectives ignited by Crenshaw (1989) when she

affirms, “Individuals who fight for the eradication of sexism without supporting

struggles to end racism or classism undermine their own efforts” (p. 40). Similarly, the

Combahee River Collective, a group of Black feminists who have been meeting since

1974 echo the sentiment that one cannot separate race from class from sex oppression

because they are most often experienced simultaneously (Collective, 1982). I never wish

to undermine my efforts, nor the efforts of the intersectional scholars who have guided

and continue to guide my ever-evolving understanding of feminism both in theory and in 85

praxis. Rather, I want to apply my position as a intersectional feminist scholar to the forthcoming analysis of agency and autonomy on Instagram.

Space as a Personal as Political Issue

I want to briefly acknowledge the conceptual perception of space and illuminate how space is always already gendered and open to specific bodies. According to historical cultural narratives, space is politically and culturally identified as either "male" or “female.” The spaces we refer to as public are assumed to be male, and for much of history, men have excluded marked identities from public spaces (Dowler, 2002;

Edgerton,1986; Symth, 2008;). Speaking specifically about the excluded marked identities of women and female-bodied people, public spaces have been home to key decision-making relating to power and privilege are deliberated and implemented primarily by cismale bodies (McFadden, 2012). I complicate this argument further by acknowledging that many women are also implicated in the reification of such oppression due to internalized notions of inferiority.

Spaces that are feminized are considered to be least important to maintain or protect, and still remain as such in U.S. society and many other places across the globe, translating across many cultures and histories. When I explore notions of space and the ways it is utilized, I consider its occupancy in gendered terms. I realize space has been 86

and continues to be defined as a male construct and defaults to a male-oriented location

(Fraser, 2010), unless intentionally carved out differently. Space remains fundamentally fused to archaic ideologies of patriarchal privilege and the ownership of women and those who are feminized on both private and public levels (Gieseking, 2013; Wrede,

2015).

I wonder how might assuming agency and autonomy might be accomplished through online forums of social media like Instagram where self-surveillance, Other- oriented surveillance, policing, and validation is not only common-place, but a center of the medium. Suffice it to say that space has been a largely contested political issue throughout history (Corcoran, 2012). Spaces are never provided or freely handed to all people. Like most opportunities and resources in our societies, be they aesthetic, material, or social spaces, they are fought over. Spaces are struggled within, occupied, and constructed to fit particular bodies, and brightly marked as the symbolic property of specific groups (McFadden, 2012). U.S. patriarchal claims over space are often accomplished through fear and violence to maintain hegemonic ideologies about normative identities.

Posted pictures of identity live within Instagram topological confinements. These pictures attempt to seek out confessional or narcissistic objectives, consciously or unconsciously, in a realm that is not universally accepting. Women are victim to sexism, 87

racism, and elitism intersectionally, and in ways that men are not. I mean this to say that it is imperative to recognize that I experience sexism, but not in the ways women of color do. (McBride, 2015). My cis-gender performance is normative and legible to the big

Other, and that affords me privileges trans-identities have been systemically and historically denied. To assume we all get to play the same way on Instagram with the same consequences or benefits is painfully naive.

It is not necessary for someone of non-normative identity to occupy a professional writing perch at a prominent virtual platform, have celebrity status, or commence an important move in a social justice movement; non-normative identities are often targets of invalidation and violence on Instagram regardless (Hess, 2014). Hashtags such as

#FreeTheNipple call attention to the blatant sexist double standard that tells society men’s nipples are natural and acceptable, whereas women’s are sexualized. Hence, non-female nipples are perpetually censored. Instagram is infamous for deleting the pictures of female-bodied individuals who post images of their top-half with the #FreeTheNipple hashtag underneath. While this sentiment is popularizing and gaining traction due to celebrities such as Chrissy Teigan, Chelsea Handler, and Miley Cyrus speaking out with support, there is still backlash.

Despite celebrity endorsement and feminist advocates on Instagram reaching to rip sexist ideals from the seams (O’Connor, 2015; Sollee, 2015; Warren, 2015) many 88

Instagram users are not on board. Many anti-feminist campaigns lay claim to the fact that the #FreeTheNipple movement is an excuse for women to show off, run topless, and pose seductively (Sanghani, 2014; Shepard, 2011). Misogyny of women’s bodies as response to those reclaiming women’s bodies, sexuality, and safety, both in day-to-day interaction and in virtual spaces such as Instagram is clearly present. Many of of the women who speak out against this violence happen to be White women, never self-implicating their

White privilege; recognizing their level of safety to speak on this issue in a way that many women of color cannot because their bodies are sexualized in ways White women’s bodies are not (Olive, 2012). Freeing the nipple and representation of specific bodies and identities has become a very personal as political pursuit on Instagram.

Instagram’s ambiguous line in the sand when it comes to discerning what constitutes appropriateness is rather concerning. According to Instagram’s community guidelines, “photos of post-mastectomy scarring and women actively breastfeeding are allowed,” but “some photos of female nipples” are not (Gamsworthy, 2015). As this logic purports, once all female are defaulted as sexualized objects. Only once they are stripped of societal expectancy of sexualization, such as through any deformity due to cancer treatment or prevention, are they considered desexualized enough for representation.

Instagram does not censor all female nipples and a man’s nipples are never censored. It is 89

also critical to mark the fact that a trans-person’s breasts are not censored either, rendering transgender identities invalid and invisible.

I take additional issue with Instagram’s claim that the company is accepting of breastfeeding posts. I have had two of my friends personally flagged on Instagram (and

Facebook!) for sharing pictures where they are breastfeeding their children. These women who come from my small town are not alone in this annoyingly “controversial” conversation: There are numerous documentations of deleted accounts and posts of nurturing motherhood (Samakow, 2014).

The Instagram posting guidelines indicate that profiles that share nudity or mature content will be disabled, yet the rules seem to apply to marked identities on Instagram on a case-by-case basis, and disproportionally at that. For Lacanians, signification is the currency of subjectivity (Parker, 2006). Signification of womanhood, humanity, or autonomy in any way appear to be rather transactional in that unless I offer an identity desired by the big Other, I am either invalidated through a lack of Likes, censored, or deleted. While this has never happened to me personally, it is a growing theme within the

Instagram community as a whole.

The representation of a woman’s body implies agency over subjectivity, and in a highly patriarchal world, achieving this, in general, no less than on Instagram, is difficult.

Lacan (2006) names that “culture and group identities are woven into the signifier 90

including in the privileged signifier that is the phallus” (p. 581). Women and non- normative bodies assuming autonomy over their identities is a societal threat to hegemonic masculinity and hegemonic normativities. Such agency is a symbolic

Lacanian act of castration of the phallus. The gaze of the big Other falls onto the signifier bom between two hegemonically identified sexes that happen to determine which spaces are allocated for whom (Kamis, 2015).

Any authority or agency over identity should be considered a participant's political agenda (Norton, 2004). My identity is always an effect of discourse; my agency over entrance into language (vis-a-vis what I post to my Instagram profile) is a continuous negotiation of my relationship and personal as political subjectivity to the

Symbolic order (Lacan, 2004). Part of this negotiation is navigating my agency in relation to my own self-surveillance and the surveillance of my identity by the big Other.

Policing of Identities and Claimed Agency

When I first started brainstorming about this thesis, concerned about my own perception of identity and engagement on Instagram, one of my professors asked me at the end of our seminar if it was feminist to be on a social media platform where I am looking to everyone else for validation. This weighty question has stuck with me for the past year and a half. I would fit the question into conversations with other friends who 91

used Instagram or friends who identified as a feminist. I would promptly receive a “yes!” or “no!” answer to my question from any one of these people, as if their was a definite answer I wasn’t seeing. It was in these moments that I felt silly for asking, as if I should have known better. However, these moments would quickly evaporate into the air and I would be left with follow up questions: “I mean, validation isn’t always a bad thing, right?” Or, “Hold o n... can you repeat the question again?” Or, “Well wait., what do you think?” My professor’s question was one of those questions that reminded me once again that feminism is never one thing, never one answer, and never a single lens.

The question my professor asked me after class that evening haunted and continues to plague my commitment to Instagram participation for the purpose of completing this project. While it sparked the inspiration for this chapter in particular, only recently have I attempted to answer it. My professor’s question felt rather assumptive.

The question seemed to imply that there is a right way to be a feminist or engage feminist ideology or praxis. Not only did it suggest being a “good” feminist to mean I should never permit the validation or invalidation of the big Other to affect my perception of who I am, but more, that I should boycott a communicative medium that positions me to hear the voice of the big Other in its entirety. Let me be clear about my positionality: feminism is plural, not singular; feminism means very different things to different people, stemming from multiple histories. 92

The question my professor asked of me begs a subsequent question that inquires

whether or not social media is a space for feminism. Much of my research and personal

experience navigating feminism and various attempts at agency on social media sites

have proven to be difficult in various ways; it is often exhausting to support feminist pursuits under the threat of invalidation, no less than to proclaim a feminist identity under the threat of violence in a patriarchal society (Hess, 2014). I answer this question after

reading and analyzing my research and coming to a personal-as-political conclusion. My

answer, despite potential harm done to my body or mental well-being has to be yes: it is

indeed feminist to be a participant in a validation-heavy social media community, if that

is my choice.

Incorporating a feminist lens helps achieve a thorough consideration of all the ways feminism helps to create safe spaces to develop, present, and perform identities. I

do often wonder, however, how agency and autonomy are achieved in a society where policing and self-policing are cornerstone mechanisms of control. There is a significant

level of self-policing when we learn to watch ourselves or learn that we are being watched by the big Other (Fink, 2011). As described in the first chapter of this project,

Instagram is a realm of fixity and frozen, forever keeping a representation in one static

form. 93

Simply looking at my Instagram profile raises questions. Do I actually look like

that? Yes, of course. Right? Does that adequately represent my career? Yes, I think so? Is

that the best depiction of my best friend and how much I care about them? Absolutely.

Does the color scheme and filters on pictures blend together coherently? I can’t really

discern. Does my profile tell the story of my identity in the way I would hope it does? I

run my finger over the screen of my phone, slowly scrolling to the bottom of my profile

to see the first picture I ever took.

It’s a picture of my feet up on the dash when I was driving home from my year in

San Diego almost four years ago. I think about how much has changed since that evening

driving back to the Bay Area. Right now, I’m on my 6th cup of coffee at 8pm writing my thesis for my graduate program. I’m tired, and I am nostalgic. I think about the people

from San Diego I no longer talk to, the ones I still do, and why. I think about what I

looked like four years ago and wonder if I really look all that different. Maybe I look a

little bit older and my hair a little bit longer. If anything, I think about how much I’ve

grown in my convictions. I think about how profoundly some of my relationships have

developed. Many things have changed, but this picture of my feet up on the dash is still there. It is in the same space, a few scrolls worth down my profile feed, as seemingly relevant as a picture I posted last week. Unless one of my followers were count the weeks 94

backwards to establish when the picture was first posted, this old picture will blend in perfectly with the most recent.

Since I am posting pictures that supposedly last forever, never concerned with how time changes things, I feel an inclination to choose pictures that best represent who I am. I generally avoid the characteristics and realities of my life I believe won’t be desired by the big Other: My disorganized bedroom, my tangled hair I am too exhausted to brush, piles of student paperwork waiting to be graded that swallow my kitchen table, the fact that I perpetually reek of coffee, my once pristine designer-purse that has been reappropriated to be a diaper bag for a teacher, now thrashed and over-used, the tears

shed ridding myself of once-good friends who refuse to recognize the impact of their harmful language, or the stiffness in my entire body because I am always sitting in a chair at my computer, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing.

Desires and are consigned to the unconscious, yet this unconscious material inevitably intrudes upon conscious life, like the pictures we want to post to our Instagram profiles. In particular, the feared and despised big Other within is projected onto other social groups (Kristeva, 1991). In essence, we project the images of ourselves that won’t be hated or despised, fearful of our undesirability. Alien desires and impulses are consigned to the unconscious, but this unconscious material inevitably intrudes upon conscious life and influences people's attitudes and desires. In particular, the feared and 95

despised Other within is projected onto “other” social groups, and hatred and contempt are redirected at these imagined enemies (Kristeva, 1991;

Lacan understood his account of identity formation as counterposed to the disembodied Cogito of Descartes (1996), a Latin philosophical proposition that translates to “I think, therefore I am”; the agency I enact over the images I intentionally share with my Instagram followers birth their own conclusions because any misrecognition of what I attempt to embody produce their own exclusions (Shildrick, 2011). In other words,

Lacan’s belief, more akin to “you speak, therefore you are” reflects a functionality of

Instagram. That is, if a part of my identity is invalidated through lack of Like or unsupportive commentary on a picture, any desire of the big Other to be me or have what

I have illustrated in said picture is consequently disbarred, despite any agency I assumed to post it.

I always consider what pictures will bait me my positive validation and think carefully about how I frame and filter each post. It is an internalized self-policing mixed with autonomy over my own representation. I suppose one may contend if my autonomy is contingent upon the desire of Other speaking beings, it may not be autonomy at all.

And so, I counter: Privileging societal control of my choices over my own strips me of my agency, regardless of its roots. 96

I would like to think my Instagram gives off a particular aesthetic. A good mix offamily,

friends, fun, and professionalism. Successful, but not too uptight. Busy, but not

overwhelmingly posting to my profile. - April 18th, 2015

The Laeanian model of subjectivity and the platform of Instagram have little room for any representation of identity that is uncontrollable, disavowing vulnerability or any identities residing in the Real as opposed to the Symbolic. It is on Instagram where we see the rapid policing of bodies by the big Other. Lacan (1988) remarks, “There is something originally, inaugurally, profoundly wounded in the human relation to the world” (p. 169). When undesired representations of identity come to the surface, the big

Other resumes its exclusion and policing thereof. One of the ways this is achieved on

Instagram is through fat-shaming and invalidating the body-positive movement under the guise of “health.”

Instagram users are routinely harassed for non-normative bodies. Earlier in this project I briefly referred to Foucault’s (1979) notion of the panopticon, speaking to the notion of surveillance and marking a similarity between the prison system and what is now our virtual online system. Foucault’s scholarship of the prison provides a theoretical understanding of the ways in which there is a rapid policing of the public. The prison normalizes what has been deemed abnormal and a “criminal” becomes a model subject in which to identify delinquent-abnormality in a larger population in order to foster a docile 97

society. Foucault (1979) writes: “Delinquency constitutes a means of perpetual surveillance of the population: an apparatus that makes it possible to supervise, through the delinquents themselves, the whole social field’ (p. 281). Instagram, existing in the world outside of the literal prison walls, may look different than prison, but surveillance and policing is still omnipresent.

An Instagram profile by the name Cashmerette began the hashtag

#CakeWithCashmerette to silence a fat-shaming comment posted on one of her pictures.

Within hours, the hashtag went viral (Cowan, 2015). More upsetting than both the ignorance and violence deeply imbedded in fat-shaming by those who hide behind social media screens is the fat-shaming policing orchestrated by the Instagram corporation.

Body-positive campaigns find refuge on social media platforms because they are able to reach audiences who support and advocate for its goals. Unfortunately, many of these campaigns are shut down when pictures are deleted due to “mature” content: content for living inside a non-normative body. For example, an Ohio teen posted pictures of herself in her sports bra and shorts captioning “I am a big girl, I am proud.”

Instagram swiftly deleted her picture and a few hours later, her account was deactivated

(Mosbergen, 2014). Instagram commented saying the teen had violated posting guidelines (Rose, 2014). Due to the mass amounts of normative bodies proudly and apparently “appropriately” representing their bodies in bathing suits, workout gear, and 98

yes, underwear — it is clear this teen was policed due to sizeism. Sizeism is incredibly prevalent and is one of the most accepted and ruthlessly enforced “isms” in our society.

I can’t believe another Instagram picture was deleted because someone isn’t a size

2 .1 mean, I can believe that, because I see, read, and hear about it all the time. I never

considered thin-privilege to be real because I never had to think about it.... which is also

the qualifier for privilege.

(July 20th, 2015)

Speaking to Lacan’s notion of desire, I argue assumed agency can be considered a repetitious act of rebellion to such policing. Granted, I have yet to be on the end of a severely emotionally or mentally taxing comment on an Instagram post of my own, but I do know that even amidst invalidation on a post, I will repeat my identity in the form of a different picture, hoping to illicit the same or similar identity previously denied. I also know that the young teen, and many teens like her, policed for representations of her non- normative body come back stronger than ever, illustrating their refusal to be silenced, reposting their pictures, or posting new ones all together.

It does not matter deeply to me if I am not validated through enough Likes; I will enter into language through another post at a different time despite what the big Other tells me. Although I recognize the negative effects and traumas induced by this operation, as discussed in previous chapters, my research and personal as political agenda reminds 99

tells me that agency is not a one-stop shop. In other words, agency, even when robbed from us, can be potentially recovered. This makes social media and Instagram in particular, capable of being reappropriated to be a feminist-space. After all, Julia

Kristeva (1973) reminds us that that texts prepare subjects for social change that challenge the foundation of contemporary society; perhaps even the text that accompanies all of our images on Instagram.

Agency, Repetition, and the Psychoanalytic “Talking-Cure”

Language, explicit or implicit, helps to construct the ways both big O and I perceive my identity. Moving through my world, I consider a variety of things: my role as a woman, student, scholar, daughter, sister, and friend, among some of my primary identities. I am constantly evaluating the ways those identities intersect and where they diverge. I am also challenged to navigate both the celebratory and heartbreaking experiences of those I love. Ultimately, I am living a privileged, yet complicated life that prompts me to routinely contemplate who I am both for myself and for others around me.

Instagram offers me a medium to construct and reconstruct my identity when I am navigating the ways I desire to exist in the world.

It is never simply that I am unsure of who I am; I have values, convictions, and a way of communicating with others that illustrate a personality and sense of humor that 100

has remained fairly consistent throughout my personal and intellectual growth. However, such growth has been contingent upon my entrance into language and maneuvering my reconstruction, rewriting social and personal psychologies (Day, 2014). I define reconstruction not to imply a symbolic tearing down of walls to build anew. Instead, I define reconstruction as an act of repetition or reentrance into language every time I engage on Instagram, talking through any and all contemplations of my identity to make it tangible. This may be similar to Judith Butler’s (1999) famous contribution to gender theory:

Gender ought not to be construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from

which various acts follow; rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in

time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts. (p. 179)

While this thesis is not revolved around the construction of gender in particular, gender of

Butler’s design is an appropriate frame through which I can consider how my identity, constituted in time via Instagram pictures, mirrors a repetition of acts: posting, engaging, or Liking, to name a few examples.

I contend this repetition is also rather akin to a Freudian “talking cure,” which

Lacan has probed in his analysis of Freudian theory on identity and psychoanalysis. A talking cure, fundamentally explained, is the space between a psychoanalyst and analysant during a therapy session wherein an analysant is able to talk through their 101

mental or emotional concerns. By facing their repressed thoughts and feelings, there is hope of finding resolution or internal peace.

I do not mean to infer my participation, or the participation of anyone else, in the

Instagram community is directly correlated to a personal search for internal acceptance of my identity. However, I believe Lacan makes a relevant connection when he claims that the more we provide signifiers, the more we chatter, the better our search [for answers or peace] goes (Lacan, 1994). This may be a good thing. Talking through, or entering into language in Symbolic realm, a discussion about who we think we are may assist in the discovery of repressed desires. For example, I wasn’t aware of how resentful I was of a close friend who lives 500 miles from me, but fails to visit or show interest in what is important to me whenever we attempt to catch-up.

It was only when she posted a “throwback” picture of us in college for the sole purpose of painting her own identity in her profile did it occur to me: I had been repressing bitter feelings, letting them affect the ways I felt about our current-state relationship, rather than having a productive conversation with her about my distressed feelings. I stared at her picture for a few moments, wondering why she felt compelled to post about us, when it felt fairly clear we were both struggling to find common ground. I chose to Like the picture of us.

Liking the picture was a form of “talking” to her. Thus, I was prompted to 102

reconsider a part of my identity, that is, my friendship to her.

I know I was harboring some toxic feelings about her. She expects me to be invested in a

friendship when its convenient for her. You would think that as someone getting a

Master’s in Communication that 1 wouldy ’ know, communicate ? I guess I didn’t want to make waves in a friendship that was seemingly fine. I didn’t want to change how either of

us thought o f our friendship. Seeing the picture on IG reminded me how much I care

about our friendship. O f course I Liked it. But it also reminded me that I identify as a

good friend. Goodfriends don’t hold stale feelings without bothering to start a dialog. I

need to call her this week and figure this out instead o f letting it ruin a really important

relationship in my life.

(November 7th, 2014)

I was confronted with my friend’s agency to post a picture of us that implied our friendship still looked a certain way. At first, it felt inauthentic. The picture itself was rich with memory — we were incredibly close during our time in undergrad. However, 2 years later, our friendship operated very differently, yet any anyone else viewing the picture on Instagram would never know that; the big O would simply desire her representation of close friendship. Second, I considered my own agency to Like the picture or invalidate the representation all together with a lack of Like. 103

Let me be clear about what it might imply to receive a single lack of Like. Liking or not Liking a picture and what it infers is contextual; if I don’t Like a picture on the profile of someone who is accustomed to the repetitive nature of my Like, it is noticeable.

Likewise, if I don’t Like a picture of a follower who is more of an acquaintance, it is less so. My friend has noticed when I am absent from our friendship on Instagram. She expects my validation, especially on images of us together. My lack of Like on her picture may not mean her picture is invalidated by the big Other on a macro scale, but it does illuminate the ways I am choosing to come into language with her on one that is micro.

Negotiating my choice to talk to her through a Like or lack of Like was perhaps a type of talking cure; my insecurity regarding my place in her life was repressed until I was confronted with it as it sat embodied in my Instagram feed. The inter subjective logic of the talking cure provides insight both into my psychological difficulties and construction of subjectivity (Murray, 2013).

We look so close because we are. Or were. That’s all any o f her followers will see. We

have a lot o f mutual friends from undergrad so they ’11 see that we ’re still ‘close ’ even

though that picture is from years ago. The picture implies we ’re still close and no one

would guess how distant w e’ve been. My friendship to her still appears to be very much

so apart o f my identity, and likewise, a clear part o f hers if she bothered to post it. 104

(November 7th, 2014)

I considered how my assumed agency over my own feelings and identity as a friend would let the post fall to its own symbolic death if I remained silent. Notwithstanding, silence is never truly silence. Silence acknowledges the unutterable, such as my contempt for a strained, yet never acknowledged as such, friendship. Silence also acknowledges how it is the Symbolic that represses my most fundamental desires (Lacan, 1988, 2006). I felt policed by the fear of forthcoming judgement from the big O if I didn't enter into language on Instagram in a socially desirable way.

Falling victim to the surveillance of her and our mutual friends in order to maintain the guise our friendship was as strongly intact as the post suggested felt childish, but I cared about how I would be perceived. This may be read as insecurity or perhaps a pointless and incomplex social interaction among young friends, but I suggest this situation is much more complicated. I acknowledge this entire circumstance is indicative of what Lacan would recognize as a return of the repressed.

For close to a year I had been reconstructing an identity on Instagram that only seldom included someone I considered to be one of my closest friends. I would post about her rarely, only every so often to remind myself that I am still the person I aimed to always be: a loyal, supportive, forever-friend, through every thin and thick cliche. I 105

attempted to convince myself and the big O that my friend and I were still close. I desired what most desire: to maintain our close friendships for always.

I posted a throwback picture o f us together from when we decorated our dorm hall for

Halloween in 2011. We look so young! It wasn’t even that long ago. I remember that

night, too. There was such a mess to clean up and we stayed up pretty late afterwards

with beer and Halloween movies in her room across the hall from mine. We talked through the entire movie. Now we can’t really talk that way. I can’t get her to listen to me

talk about why I love my grad program. She won’t listen when I talk about feminism or

social justice or a paper I ’m really excited to write. We can talk about who she’s dating

or whatever but I can’t stand these conversations anymore. Maybe one day it’ll turn

around and we ’11 truly find each other again. The picture makes me hopeful.

(October 23rd, 2014)

It is through the reading of this journal entry that I recognize what I desired — to once again have a relationship with a friend that looks like what was represented in the picture of us from almost 5 years ago. For almost two years I had been repressing this desire. It was easier to be resentful or pretend the issues weren’t real. I solely believed in letting our issues work themselves over time, rather than working through them like the adult I alleged myself to be. 106

I understand relationships are contextually based, so it may not have been fair to assume all blame for our slow falling out. Nor would it have been fair to assume “talking it out” was the only reasonable measurement of maturity. There is an expectation of self- care I needed to exercise as I moved through my incredibly emotionally and mentally exhaustive graduate school experience; fixing my relationship with her was not necessarily a priority. Nonetheless, I truly believe some of my justification for my complicity is the relationship on which Instagram afforded me to rely; I believed if I maintained a repressed engagement with my friend through frozen-in-time representations of our relationship, we would never need to acknowledge a tremulous friendship. Lacan (1973) asserts, “I love you, but, because inexplicably I love you something more than you - the object petit a - 1 mutilate you” (p. 263). While Lacan’s words paint a rather gruesome picture, the point stands: I loved the representation of our old relationship more than I loved the reality of our current one. It was not until I engaged in a truth-telling Like or lack of Like that the repressed made its way into the Real, prompting my language, forcing me to acknowledge my desire.

Judith Butler takes issue with the conception of the Lacanian real, in that Lacan

(1988) claims that it is a realm wherein the unconscious “resists symbolization absolutely” (p. 66). This assumes an absolute outside, accepting of any and all potential desire. This is primarily Butler’s problem with the Real. Butler does not believe there is 107

an absolute outside derived from the social, but rather, a constitutive outside that is

contingent upon privilege and exclusion.

Butler (1997) claims there is a “psychic resistance to normalization” (p. 87) which

affords subjective ability to resist compelling powers of cultural and social normativities.

This is important, as I recognize my personal desires to operate within rather hegemonic boundaries. I agree, however, when Butler tells us many desires are exclusions in the perception of the big O. As these exclusions are historical, concrete, and illustrative of existing social norms, there are lives and desires that are consequently rendered unintelligible on both micro and macro scales (Butler, 1993). To assume my desires are always the desires of my friends, or the big Other, is naive and cannot be absolutely confirmed.

At the end of July 2015,1 gently confronted my friend about what I perceived to be a strained relationship. According to her, she didn’t feel as strongly about our

separation as I did. This is not to say she didn’t feel an uncomfortable shift, but she was prepared to accept our relationship for what it had become and love me just the same from any distance. Her stated desire to maintain any connection to me at all, hence her posting about us when I felt it was an inauthentic representation of our current friendship.

I do not mean to infer that her or my desires in this context are unintelligible as Butler describes, but I do mean to make the point that assuming what I desire is not always what 108

the Other might desire. For example, I may like something that isn’t largely desired by my social media following, such as attending large music festival or reality televison. In the case of my frirend however, she might desire to paint our relationship to look a certain way whereas I do not want to embellish a relationship to someone I hardly know anymore. Our desires were different, and thus, the ways we represented our desires were also different. Instagram allows any of us to construct and reconstruct our social media identities with what we consider to be our own accord. This may potentially rid us of important conversations necessary to understand our identities and the identities of others through a repetitive process of repressing and ultimately realizing desire.

Logging Off of Instagram

Many people have decided not to try social media, believing their social worlds are sufficient without such connectivity, entertainment, or to simply learn about what they desire (Hempel, 2015). There are others who have decided that social media are simply not for them after they had tried it. The latter occurs for a variety of reasons. Perhaps it took up too much of their time, time that may be better allocated to different activities or priorities. Maybe, as has been documented, social media engagement felt toxic — prompting negative self-esteem or any of the other harmful effects aforementioned in this thesis. In either case, I want to acknowledge the difficulty of opting-out of Instagram. 109

Abstaining from social media such as Instagram has social costs. This may include a loss of cultural and social capital achieved through existing in high-visibility spaces, not receiving invitations to social events, or the sense of isolation and disconnection from friends, family, and the big O at large (Rey, 2012). I want to consider a more fundamental question about the agency to truly sign out of a social media interface. What if Instagram is a non-optional and inescapable system that shapes our identities, even when we deactivate a personal profile?

In a contemporary era wherein so many of us are glued to our phones and the

Instagram community is expanding by the thousands every single day, it may not be possible to completely avoid Instagram’s second-hand smoke. Even when we do not have an Instagram account, this does not take away the accounts of our friends, families, colleagues, or acquaintances. We live in the age of documentation; often, if someone is not taking a picture of you or with you, they very likely are showing you something on their phone or talking about something they have seen themselves (Day, 2014).

Even if I were to log out of Instagram or delete my profile all together, I would still be living in a society where my roommate scrolls through her Instagram feed on our couch every night, my cousin would still show me the latest cat-meme gone viral on an

Instagram satire profile (I might not actually be mad about this one), or my colleague would still plead for a “group” picture of our graduate cohort. Even if I escaped the 110

common rituals of posting or Liking pictures, I would still be in the pictures somewhere in someone else’s profile. Quite simply, it can be rather inescapable.

Frames and Limitations of Agency

My agency to engage or disengage is limited despite which desires prompt my language. I have to consider what I am truly gaining and what I risk by being participant in Instagram culture. There is plenty of controversy around the severity of obsessive- connectivity, as people are always looking down at their phones. It matters not if I am walking through the halls of my university or sitting quietly on BART awaiting my stop; so many people are tuned into to the world and their identities on their smartphones.

Discerning whether or not our complacency on Instagram is birthed from a place of agency to construct who we believe we are is mentally and emotionally laborious; I understand the attraction in avoiding this conversation. It is much easier to ride the wave that promises all of us that if we only repeat our desires into filtered and frozen still- shots, we’re going to be desired by larger society. I know I can accomplish this feat from the comfort of my bed in the early morning before I’ve even brushed my teeth. When much of the world around me is more concerned with looking down than looking up, I don’t need to look perfect by Other standards in day-to day interaction in order to project a “perfect” image by Other standards on my profile. I ll

I also believe it is critical to observe a different framing of agency. Agency online is not solely narrowed to the choice of crafting a profile or not having one at all. Instead, this dialog needs to include a discussion of what often occurs within many profiles.

Instagram has not only become a platform for social change and protest, but also a safe space for free and open dialogue. Narratives and pain of women, LGBT, POC, and non- normative identities are becoming acknowledged and accepted declarations of discontent.

While the nature of the 60-second sound bite gone viral limits some of these acknowledgements, language is an indisputably powerful embodiment of agency, despite its form. It is powerful even when built atop a validation-reliant social medium.

Social media activism on Instagram has sparked important conversations that have generated tangible results (Chittal, 2015). Social media, as described in the first sentence of the first chapter of this thesis, has truly tethered the world together. Hashtags are going viral, backlash is spreading quicker than ever, and even invalidation on the desires and representations of activism is sparking additional conversations about the deep-seated power and privilege associated with backlash. Dialog over agency, voice, and social justice is bobbing to the surface of our Instagram profiles.

What might separate Instagram from other forms of social media in this case is its inability to open up conversations past a picture. On Facebook or Twitter, for example, one might be more likely to share an article that goes viral from person to person, unlike 112

Instagram where the picture someone is Liking is only just a picture. Our profiles do become self-promoting narratives. Without an article attached to a picture or caption, my social media followers are limited in their ability to contextualize the political identity I claim. Social media platforms transform social issues into cultural capital: issues become labels of political alignment and lend an appearance of social awareness attached to a digitally curated self. They become a means to the end of social gain, rather than of social change (Mazzie, 2014).

It is not that I entirely agree with Mazzie (2014), because many Instagram accounts do leave links to other articles or profiles, extensive captions, or entertain conversations within the comment sections. More, I do not mean to argue that there is a

“right way” to engage in any political activism or any “right way” to claim a personal as political identity — but I do mean to provide insight as to what might differentiate

Instagram from other social mediums. Regardless of the intent behind posting, with

Instagram at our finger tips, these conversations cannot go ignored on Instagram and we are able to move through them through the quick swipe of our finger (Kim, 2013). As aforementioned earlier in this chapter, the personal as political is now mainstream.

Agency to look like however desired, speak however desired, and exist in ways that are authentic to an individual even when rendered unintelligible by Instagram trolls is finally gaining traction. There is still an unforeseen amount of miles ahead in the 113

movement for social justice and social media activism. Although Instagram can’t solve all societal problems, it is important to recognize its power. Instagram is a space to reconstruct agency and identity. Instagram is utilized as a powerful force for those who are trying to fight back against forms of explicit, internalized, and institutional injustices

(Cowan, 2015; France, 2015; O’Hara, 2015; Curato, 2014; Toor, 2014).

While all of this is significant, I also recognize the difference between agency to rally for justice and potential stripped agency to be who we desire in a social world where loyal Instagram participants derive worth from Like count. After all, it is the big Other who takes responsibility for validating signifiers, ideas, and identities during any passage into language (Lacan, 2006). Agency is understood to be many things, and this thesis calls attention to its conflated complication with the ways we construct and reconstruct our personhood. 114

CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION

Self-Reflection

When I first enrolled in the Communication Studies Graduate program at San

Francisco State University, I never imagined how my entire world would change. I never for one moment understood the extent to which I would develop into the person writing the concluding chapter of this thesis. Lately, I have found myself nervous thinking about what my life will consist of post completion of this thesis and graduation from the program. My intellectual and personal growth has driven me closer to some people and so far from others who do not share my same sense of urgency for social justice and communicative scholarship thereof. Completing this project prompts me to reflect on how deeply I have attached myself to my professors turned mentors and colleagues turned friends. I contemplate how terrifying it is that I cannot be sure of what those relationships will look like when I am no longer living in the halls of the Humanities building of SF State.

I scroll through my Instagram profile, examining how I represented myself and my desires back when I first started in grad school. I see a celebration of pictures from when I graduated with my Bachelor of Arts degree and subsequently, a picture of my

SFSU teaching appointment notification for graduate school— both of which were largely Liked representations of my identity. I see a picture of my beautiful mother from 115

when she was 23, as I desire to embody her effortless beauty myself. I see pictures of my best friends, celebrating their birthdays, victories in grad school, and our bonding moments through travel. I see pictures of my larger group of friends from high school, satisfied we have maintained our friendship for well over a decade, reaching towards a desire that so many people desire for themselves as they get older: “friends forever.” I scroll through holiday pictures with my family, desiring even now how warm and loving those evenings were, realizing that much of my family in the past year have moved away and have yet to determine whether or not they will visit this holiday season. There are pictures of me in a bathing suit, trying desperately to unlearn the oppressive ways I’ve been taught to hate my body.

I ’m really happy she forced me to come out on the water this weekend. I really just

wanted to stay home again. I ’m trying to say “yes ” to more opportunities instead o f I

Love Lucy reruns. It was hot out and it was a nice escape from the grad school insanity.

We didn ’t get a lot o f pictures, which I think is okay. The one that was actually kind o f good is o f us in our bikinis on the boat, and its sort o f close up. This is why I feel so much better in a one-piece.. I ’m still working through so much shit. Its awkward for me to post those pictures. But actually it shouldn’t be, right? But people will think I ’m posting it just

to show off. No one really knows that I, like so many other people, have body

dysmorphia. I ’m really trying to make good with my body and how Ifeel about it. I ’ve 116

come a really long way since high school. I want to desire myself and that should matter

more than anyone else who may or may not desire me in return. Stupid Instagram. Maybe

I should post it. ”

(October 6th, 2014)

I remember being so anxious speculating what the big Other would think after I posted the picture. So much skin was visible — fears of undesirability, invalidation, slut- shaming, and misrecognition consumed me for days. At the same time, I knew I was writing this thesis; I made a commitment to myself and to this project to keep the picture, among many others, on my profile. It was then I realized how severely I had internalized the violence done to my body and how much emotional labor it would take to rid myself of that harm. It was through writing this thesis that I started to consider Instagram to be place of public forum wherein claiming my identity could be an act of resistance (de

Certeau, 1984). My obvious critique of Instagram does not aim to erase this idea.

As I continue to scroll, I see pictures from my first National Communication

Association conference with my colleagues. I remember feeling overwhelmed and inexperienced, but never painting myself as such in the pictures I posted. I look accomplished and happy — a rather universal desire. The more I looked at the picture, the more I started to believe that I was as successful as the picture proclaimed me to be, despite a lower number of Likes indicated underneath it. The amount of Likes I received 117

mattered less on pictures of an identity I knew many were unfamiliar with, such as my budding identity as a scholar. Most of my friends and family are unfamiliar with academia as a profession, but they do understand my career as a university instructor to be an accomplishment. I mean this to say that I didn’t need Other validation on these types of pictures. Instead, I just wanted the representation on my profile to contribute to an overarching theme: Megan — intelligent, successful, compassionate, and happy, at peace with her character, her choices, and her body.

As my hand moves through the feed of my pictures on my smartphone, I notice the places where old pictures used to be that I ended up deleting for various reasons. I can faintly see the ghost spaces of where I have erased representations of my identity. I recall the moments when a picture didn’t illustrate who I was any more. Perhaps a picture reflected something I no longer believed in; a picture reminded me of someone I was no longer dating; a picture failed to capture who I desired to be. I erased these static representations, believing if I didn’t desire them, the big Other might not desire them either. I acknowledge how powerful it felt to rewrite the history of my identity in opposition to how dissatisfied I felt when I was inclined to do so.

Ultimately, my profile is intentional. My posts illuminate not only the content of pictures that imply a particular identity, but something arguably more nuanced — my perceived agency or audacity to post. The big O speaks back to my engagement with 118

Instagram, entering into a language of a specific social media community. Understanding

that communication is subjective (Martinez, 2015) prompted my assumption that I would

be perceived as either a woman with agency over her body and choices or a woman who

wasn’t humble enough describing her identity through the pictures she shared. I usually

considered this dichotomy before I even bothered to post a picture to my profile, fully

aware that the moment I chose to post, I would be in conversation with larger society.

Jacques Lacan is quoted in an interview claiming, “The man who is born into

existence deals first with language; this is a given. He is even caught in it before his

birth” (1957). The ritual process of deciding what to post, how to post, and when to post

is my existence before I hit “share.” I reflect back to my journal posts about bikinis and

conferences and I realize my personal relationship with Instagram was not solely

contingent upon on the amount of Likes I earned on whatever I wanted to post; I also

harbored a preoccupation with preconceived notions of hegemonic acceptability and

approval in the processes leading up to the act of posting. What my research has validated

is that both the former and the latter work in tandem and are often conflated.

It is important for me to recognize my struggle to work through the literature on

which this thesis stands. It is equally as important to identify my personal challenge of journaling my insecurities and growing understanding of the Instagram phenomenon.

Without being self-reflexive in the moments of my Instagram participation and reflective 119

as I wrote about those moments, this thesis would fail to contextualize the Lacanian theory that frames the arguments laid out within these pages.

Research Questions, Limitations, and Implication

First, this thesis sought to answer how individuals construct their identities on

Instagram. Instagram presents us with a space where anyone can carve out exactly who they desire to be and cultivate niche audiences to earn validation. These audiences may be friends, or colleagues, or fellow activists. This project has illuminated the ways in which participants polish and claim these specific identities in front of their social media following through repetition — an insistence of speech through posting (Lacan, 1993).

Through a consistent engagement on Instagram, users are able to construct themselves to be whomever they desire. Tools like filtering, captioning, selecting profile pictures and the like contribute to the ways we manufacture ourselves on Instagram.

Through these options, the “how” is easily answered: participants split their subjectivity and are given the opportunity to varnish and veneer the parts of themselves they wish to share with their followers. This again, is not to say spit-shining our identities on a public forum is inherently bad, nor am I arguing we couldn't possibly be what our profiles avow.

As a limitation of study, this thesis acknowledges Instagram and the participants who use it, myself as vulnerable example, are not so reducible. I have presented the 120

various research and data that understand the ways in which Instagram can cut against

Western images of beauty, but future research should explore more finely. I have unveiled through analyzing this research that many of the effects experienced are not necessarily universal, but potential. I have explored the examples of identities who utilize Instagram as a space to be who they are outside of societal norms. Research, across disciplines, acknowledge that identities are vast and complicated. Still, the documentation of negative effects, now framed through Lacanian desire and death-drives but also as a space of freedom or social justice, posits that scholarship with Instagram is truly in its infancy.

This is especially important given the fact that Instagram, as all social media mediums, will continue to evolve both in interface and functionality.

By exploring the complex characteristics of the Instagram interface, I was able to identify how each topology functions. While I made certain to flesh out the ways in which filter and Photoshop are often central to how participants use Instagram, only while sifting through scholarship and research did I begin to look at my first question a bit differently. I started to ask why participants use Instagram to construct their identities.

I found this additional inquiry to be proportionately relevant to this rhetorical scholarship.

Asking “why” is integral to what Lacanian psychoanalysis has framed for this thesis. Yes, Instagram participants tailor their entrance into language, and my examination of topological options available to users explain how this tailoring is 121

achieved. As such, I wanted this thesis to consider more deeply why so many users are addictively using Instagram. This thesis has thoroughly explored how Lacanian notion of desire speaks to a contemporary social capital gained and the instant gratification received from Instagram. All of this is achieved through repetition of our identity representation and emergence into language.

As presented earlier in this thesis, scholarship central to social media usage has point out urge-driven addictions to communicative mediums like Instagram. Instagram participants inherently split their subjectivity when they engage on Instagram, posting and reposting, scrolling through the never-ending feed of pictures on their smartphone.

An Instagram profile is home to very intentional representations of who we claim to be, always in constant pursuit of being desire. Users are in a rather relentless pursuit of the things, people, and identities desired, often suggested by the big Other through hegemonic imagery, discourse, and rhetoric.

If we are privy to what makes us desirable, illuminating those characteristics through filter and caption becomes a ritualistic way of engaging easily with larger society on a consistent basis. We desire intelligibility and we desire the intelligibility of others.

More yet, we are in pursuit of perpetual desire. A desire for a perpetually desired identity is precisely why Instagram is so enticing: Instagram is a virtual social space that affords any user limitless opportunity to be whomever, forever. 122

Secondly, this thesis asks what comprises the cultural implications of Instagram participation. I understand that contemporary society is now in the age of documentation.

It is often custom in many social circles to question someone’s identity with “pics, or it didn’t happen” (Whitehead, 2015). This omnipotent and ubiquitous challenge implies our identities are contingent upon our sharing of them, much to the entitlement of the big

Other. I contend that we if we are faced with proving our identity as part of a new-age cultural obligation of sorts, it only fastens our addiction to Instagram.

Concluding Thoughts

One of the benefits examined in the fourth chapter of this thesis was the ability to reclaim space that non-normative or disadvantaged identities have been historically and systemically denied. Agency and autonomy, as research and history have shown, are not afforded to all people in all spaces. It is significant that identities often seek refuge within their profiles and with their built audiences, as they are as fragmented as the identities on

Instagram rooted in privilege. After all, Lacan’s scholarship on psychoanalysis tell us that all identities are fragmented regardless of the social constructions ascribed to them.

Perhaps one of the most important implications to pull from this research is that our social, political, and economic world still indeed rests on sexist, racist, and elitist ideologies and practices. 123

This thesis did not aim to uncover a resounding answer as to whether or not we should or should not delete our Instagram accounts. I do not believe there is one. I have, however, made it evident that Instagram can serve as many things: a catalyst for self­ doubt, a catalyst for self-suppression, a catalyst for self-discovery, or even a catalyst for change.

“I identify myself in language, but only by losing myself in it like an object. What is realized in my history is not the past definite o f what was, since it is no more, or even the present perfect o f what has been in what I am, but the future anterior o f what I shall have

been for what I am in the process o f becoming ” - Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, 3 124

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