FEMEN AND ASSEMBLAGE POLITICS OF PROTEST IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA by Mariam Betlemidze A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication The University of Utah August 2016 Copyright © Mariam Betlemidze 2016 All Rights Reserved The University of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL The dissertation of Mariam Betlemidze has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: Kevin DeLuca , Chair 05/31/2016 Date Approved Marouf Hasian , Member 05/31/2016 Date Approved Leonard Hawes , Member 05/31/2016 Date Approved Sean Lawson , Member Date Approved Lien Shen , Member 05/31/2016 Date Approved and by Kent Ono , Chair of the Department of Communication and byDavid B. Kieda, Dean of The Graduate School. ABSTRACT Transgressing norms and barriers of mundane digital spaces to seize spotlight in the name of social change is breathtaking. Such are modern-day protest groups as they utilize a special mix of skills, tactics, and resourcefulness to become forces of disruptive tensions in the spectacular seas of image-whirls, sound-waves, and incredible storyscapes in which we live. “Femen and Assemblage Politics of Protest in the Age of Social Media” examines these disruptive tensions as created by the topless female activist group Femen. Specifically, I am interested in how human and nonhuman elements in Femen activism create lasting impressions in the fleeting everyday life of the millions of internet- connected individuals around the globe. I conceptualize these processes under the name of media-activism assemblage and illustrate the work of Femen protest politics through three different case studies. In Chapters 2, 3, and 4, we see the dynamics of the Kiev 2012 cutting down of the crucifix by Femen, Facebook censorship of Femen in 2013 and 2014, and the Copenhagen 2015 terrorist shooting at a free speech event featuring a Femen speaker. Because of the primarily digital nature of media-activism assemblages of Femen, I provide close-textual audio-visual analysis of multimodal artifacts such as images, videos, user comments, social media posts, and traditional media stories. I argue that processes of media-activism networks of Femen unveil emerging horizons of transformative activism that simultaneously bridge the divides and create new divisions. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………………..iii Chapters 1 INTRODUCTION: ASSEMBLAGE POLITICS OF PROTEST…………………...… 1 Catching a Glimpse …………………………………………..……………..……….. 1 Foundational Assemblages …………………………………..……………..……….. 3 Methodology: Ways, Modes, and Styles of Seeing ………………..…….………….25 Overview of Chapters ………….…………………..……..……..………….……….28 2 SCREAMING NODES OF FEMEN: ENTANGLING IN VISUALLY AFFECTIVE MEDIA-ACTIVISM NETWORKS ASSEMBLAGES ….…………………………...…34 ANT and Multimedia Activism ……………………………………………..………37 Controversies and Networks…………………………………………………..……..42 Rupture ……………………………………….………………………………..…….45 Connection ……………………………………….……………………………..…...49 Translation/Transformation ……………………………………………………..…..53 Implications ………………………………………….…………………………..….58 3 SPECTACULAR CENSORSHIP: FLEETING TRACES AT THE INTERSECTIONS OF ABJECT, AFFECT, AND ACTIVISM ……………………………………………..61 Affect and Censorship Online …………………………………………………….....65 What Do Activists and Jeans Have in Common? ………………………………..….70 4 LAYERS OF EVENTAL ACTIVISM OF @FEMENINNA: WITNESSING, SOUNDS, TWEETS, AND SOLIDARITIES……………………….…………………..87 The Theoretical Framework of Event and Its Multiple Layers …….……………….92 Tracing Sounds and Movements ……………………………………………...…....104 Tracing Tweets, Fears, and Solidarities ………………………………………...….110 Tracking Traces of Nomadic Ripples ………………………………………..…….120 5 THE ROAD SIGN “KEEP ON GOING”: DIGITAL WAYS OF PROTEST..……...125 Femenizing Networks ………………………………….…………………..………126 Evolving Avenues and Desired Destination……………………………….……….130 Feminine Ways of Conceptualizing a Multisensorial Future ………………..…….135 REFERENCES ………………………………………………………..…………….....141 v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: ASSEMBLAGE1 POLITICS OF PROTEST Catching a Glimpse “No religion!” “Naked freedom!”“Topless jihad!” No matter what language you use to search “Femen” on the internet, in seconds, you will be flooded by links to images and videos depicting young, attractive female activists with similarly aggressive slogans on their bare breasts, flower-crowns on their heads, some iconic urban spaces in the background, and policemen trying to subdue them in the foreground. In their protests against “the fundamental institutes of patriarchy – dictatorship, sex-industry, and church” (Femen, n.d.), Femen activists subversively utilize their bodies, iconic urban spaces, and multimedia to create unexpected and highly affective events. A group founded by a few teenage girls from small Western Ukrainian provinces grew into a popular and controversial activist organization, and it still continues to expand from its headquarters in Paris to northern Africa, Latin America, and Canada. Over the past few years, several full-length documentary films, books, and scholarly 1Assemblage is an interconnected decentering system—which proceeds in a nonlinear fashion and “ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relevant to the arts, sciences, and social struggles” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 7). This linking of mediatized assemblages to various entities does not demonstrate spontaneity as much as contingent affirmation of particular flows vis-à-vis an interrelation of times, spaces, and processes. These parts of assemblages are wholes characterized by relations of exteriority and interiority (DeLanda, 2006). Parts of the whole, unlike seamless totalities, are detachable from the assemblage and pluggable into a different assemblage (DeLanda, 2006). 2 articles have been written to explain the Femen phenomenon from cultural, moral, religious, ethical, and activist points of views, but most of them, unlike this project, end up taking for or against stances. I see Femen as a part of a larger trend of social movements around the globe, which are moving from rational, physical, prolonged, concentrated actions, toward transgressive bursts of protest made eternal through dispersed images, social media interactions, and affective drives. The goal of this dissertation is not to provide an exhaustive study of every aspect of the Femen activism and its entwinement with media, but to shed light on intricate catalytic moments that illustrate the work of images, sounds, technologies, objects, and digital crowds of activism-networks in action. Each chapter, except the concluding one, provides specific background information about Femen that supplements the particular case study at hand. The scope of this project does not tether Femen to the issues of morality, identity, and linear progress. On the contrary, the goal is to look beyond rationality and often binary-driven ideas to examine the transgressive tactics of Femen as they transform discourses pertaining to hidden, taboo topics and controversies. The discussion of Femen from this multimedia and posthuman perspective illuminates major shifts in new media and societies that become evident in such discussions. In the following sections of this chapter, I overview the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the project and then provide summaries for the remaining chapters. 3 Foundational Assemblages The entwinement of media and activism in the communication field resonates with the intersection of rhetorical and cultural studies with French poststructuralist philosophy, which share perspectives on image, affect, movement, and transformation. Before delving into the discussion of the main arena of this project—digital networks and activism--I overview the key strands in the literature on rhetoric of social protest. Since the 1950s, social movement scholarship within the field of rhetorical studies has developed in tandem with technological and cultural changes, but it still maintains some of the initial ways of thinking about protest, people, and change. For instance, Griffin (1952) saw public address at the center of the studies of the rhetoric of social movements, which, according to him, were sprawling around its orator. Per Griffin (1952), such studies should have clear temporal demarcations, and should be guided by consistency, patterns, and intervals. Such a framework, quite logical for the time when it was published, addressed the rhythm of 50s society, which was punctuated by sharply delineated spaces and times of media broadcasting, newspaper publishing, and the nuclear family. Later, as the protests rose in the U.S. and acquired radical character, scholars (Haiman, 1967; Scott & Smith (1969) of social movements started examining nonrational tactics of activism. While doing so, they acknowledged disruptive potentials of radical protest, but maintained their strong beliefs in the power of rational dialogue and communication. Haiman (1967) wrote about “uncivil disobedience” of street protests of Vietnam War and students in the U.S., but when discussing those forms of protests, he used the word “rhetoric” in quotation marks explaining that what those radical protests do 4 is well beyond traditional, civil, and rational rhetoric. As a solution for de-escalating such protests, Haiman (1967) suggested that society should help create conditions for everyone to participate in the deliberative process,