University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 1-1-2017 Protest Beyond Representation: The Vitalism of Digital Protest Art's Political Aesthetics Kate Drazner Hoyt University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Hoyt, Kate Drazner, "Protest Beyond Representation: The Vitalism of Digital Protest Art's Political Aesthetics" (2017). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1319. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1319 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. Protest Beyond Representation: The Vitalism of Digital Protest Art’s Political Aesthetics ________________ A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of Arts and Humanities University of Denver ________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy ________________ by Kate Drazner Hoyt August 2017 Advisor: Dr. Darrin K. Hicks ©Copyright by Kate Drazner Hoyt 2017 All Rights Reserved Author: Kate Drazner Hoyt Title: Protest Beyond Representation: The Vitalism of Digital Protest Art’s Political Aesthetics Advisor: Dr. Darrin K. Hicks Degree Date: August 2017 ABSTRACT The complexities of post-modernity tend to dissolve any facile model of direct cause-and-effect in politics, and yet as a democratic polity, we look for the comfort in knowing that political expression can enact change. Protest art, or acts of creative expression intended to resist dominant powers, forces, and structures, models the potential for political expression to create change that is not immediate, direct, or obvious, but rather “moves the social” through expressivity and aesthetics. While these features lend themselves to an analysis guided by affect theory, this sub-discipline within communication studies has tended to lack the methodological specificity to reproduce or expand applications. Daniel Stern’s vitality pentad acts as a heuristic by which to study rhetorical objects; these objects are studied due to their expressivity, rather than their appeal to reason. Stern excludes “still” media forms such as photographs and illustrations; however, by looking at the way in which digital artifacts are imbued with movement in its networked path, we can understand that all digital media are time-based. The objects of study speak to the temporal, vital dimensions of digital protest art: Turkey’s Vandalina art collective, which places protest stickers on transit cars, demonstrates how force and scale engender feeling of intimacy in public spaces. Iran’s Zahra’s Paradise, a webcomic-turned-graphic novel, offers differing temporal environments for the reader and weaves its aesthetics into the narrative to create a sense of space and place. Finally, the images of #HandsUpDontShoot, through their directional ii pull across digital networks, illustrates social media’s tendency to remix aesthetic features of older media forms. Major insights drawn from this research speak to the political importance of subject formation — or interventions therein — and vitality forms as a method for rhetorical criticism, which allows the rhetorical critic to be more specific and methodical in applying affect theory to rhetoric. It also challenges the positivist notion that political expression must result in measurable change in order to be validated. Finally, this project addresses the virtual potentiality of digital data and offers a perspective that sees all digital media as time-based. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to Dr. Darrin Hicks, who not only directed this dissertation, giving me invaluable (and sometimes cringe-inducing) revisions that infinitely improved this project, but also acted as a sounding board, friend, and a pretty good tenant. Additional thanks must be given to Dr. Christina Foust for seeing promise in my research and for helping me navigate the dissertation process, the world of academia, and life in general. I am indebted to your mentorship. Thanks to my dissertation committee, including Dr. Joshua Hanan, Dr. Kate Willink, and Dr. Trace Reddell, all of whom saw the import and promise of this dissertation. Thank you to Dr. Armond Towns, who suggested that the case study of #HandsUpDontShoot be expanded to focus on the aesthetic parallels to anti-lynching photography, thus immensely improving that chapter. I am grateful to Dr. Justin Eckstein, who stuck his neck out for me on multiple occasions, which opened up many doors for me. Thanks also for your support and encouragement. Thank you to Dr. Lindsey Thomas, who reviewed Chapter Four and helped with the additionally tedious task of formatting for submission. Thanks to my parents for believing in me and encouraging me to pursue two terminal degrees and not judging me for the pay cut that came with that. Thanks to Eric and Keith, who show me that families don’t have to fit into a mold to be loving and full. Finally, all of my love and gratitude to Woody Hoyt for making it all work with 1.5 incomes for three years, for doing basically all of the household chores for a year, for moving with me, and for encouraging, supporting, and loving me even when I was cranky and sleep-deprived. I couldn’t have done this without you. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................................. v CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICS OF SUBJECTIVE TRANSFORMATION ........................... 1 Theoretical Interventionns: Enactment, Affect and the Remediation of the Virtual ........... 8 The Political Productiveness of Feeling ................................................................. 8 Problematizing the “Hegemony of Hegemony” ................................................................ 10 The Aesthetic: a “Grafting Point” between the Affective and the Symbolic ....... 13 Media and Vitality Forms ..................................................................................... 13 Digital Protest Art and Intensive Impacts.......................................................................... 14 The Spatial Politics of Vandalina ......................................................................... 14 Zahra’s Paradise: The Orientation of the Collective Political Subject ................. 16 #HandsUpDontShoot & Collective Witnessing: A Politics of Enactment ........... 17 Conclusion: Toward an Aesthetic Politics......................................................................... 18 CHAPTER TWO THEORETICAL ALTERNATIVES TO FRAMING POLITICS: ENACTMENT, AFFECT, AND THE AESTHETIC ................................................................................................................ 21 Social Movement Rhetoric and the Constitutive Turn ...................................................... 23 The Materiality of Constitutive Rhetoric ............................................................. 28 The Affective Turn and the Domain of Excess ................................................................. 32 Affect versus Feeling and Emotion ...................................................................... 33 What Else can a Body Be? ................................................................................... 35 Affective Terrains ................................................................................................. 37 The Aesthetic Gap ............................................................................................................. 38 Conclusion: Modeling Vitality .......................................................................................... 43 CHAPTER THREE MEDIA AND HUMAN SUBJECTIVITY AS CO-CONSTITUTIVE FORCES.......................... 46 The Vitalism of Art and Media.......................................................................................... 49 The Vitality of (Re)Mediation .............................................................................. 56 Vitality Forms of Digital Protest Art .................................................................... 64 The Rhetoricity of the Virtual .............................................................................. 73 Conclusion: Protest Dynamics their Political Possibilities................................................ 75 CHAPTER FOUR “HONOR IS NOT BETWEEN OUR LEGS”: VANDALINA’S RESISTANCE TO TURKISH SPATIAL POLITICS ..................................................................................................................... 79 The Defense of Honor and Violence Against Women ...................................................... 82 Terrains of Environmentality: Spatial Politics, Social Space, and Women’s Bodies ....... 90 v The Vitality of Intimacy in Vandalina’s Street Art ........................................................... 96 Conclusion: Uncovering “What We Have Come to Ignore” ........................................... 109 CHAPTER FIVE ZAHARA’S PARADISE: FRAMING BEHESHT E-ZAHRA CEMETERY AS A CONVERGENCE OF PLURALITY ........................................................................................... 111 The Green Movement: Echoes of the 1979 Iranian Revolution ...................................... 114 The “Persian Awakening” Under the Western Gaze .........................................