Feb
25
Performative Intimacy on Facebook — Links to the Past?
February 25, 2015 | 1 Comment
(by Kathy Cacace)
While it was only a tangent during last night’s class discussion on Virginia Woolf and the memoir club’s straddling of the public and private spheres, on the way home I really got to thinking about this idea of the performative intimacy on Facebook. Somebody (Sarah, I think? Sorry! Bad with names but I loved your idea!) mentioned how, for example, wishing one’s partner a happy birthday on Facebook is a public proclamation of an action we could (should?) assume would happen in person, offline.
I was thinking–though I’m not sure I’m right, so I’d love to hear other opinions on this–that maybe this sort of performative intimacy is a facet of human interaction that’s been around for a long time, but that the technology of social media allows it to be more visible. And that perhaps it’s this visibility, broadcasting out into the world as opposed to the world interacting with an individual, that pushes it into the territory of oversharing.
I was thinking in particular about mourning attire. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute had a great exhibit about this earlier this year. This seems to me like it’s akin to wishing your partner a happy birthday where everyone can see it. Wearing clothing demonstrative of grief, a process I would argue that we now regard as somewhat private and could be assumed to happen behind closed doors, is the performance of an intimate relationship with the deceased.
Perhaps this is something that next week’s readings and class discussions about Facebook might help us further explore?
Comments
1 Comment so far
Yes–the exhibit on Mourning Attire is a fascinating example…to be discussed further!