The Grotesque Protest in Social Media as Embodied, Political Rhetoric

Abstract

The grotesque protest—emboldened through social media—employs the body’s fluids to push back against attempts to legislate bodies. Although social media use is commonly understood as engaging audience members who share ideological frames, it can instead diversify protest networks and encourage discourse. Social media provides individuals opportunities to resist attempts to control bodies and to reinsert individuals’ voices in political discourse aimed to exclude those bodies. The body functions as the modality in which the communicative act occurs, and the body’s fluids function as the medium for inventing disruptive, grotesque protest strategies. Activists such as Rupi Kaur, The Satanic Temple’s Jex Blackmore, and those using Twitter hashtags #periodsforPence and #PEEOTUS use bodily fluids and tissues to emphasize resistance to political movements attempting to control and legislate bodies. The protest campaigns show that the grotesque can be an effective tool for opening space, transgressing boundaries, demanding attention, and equalizing differential political power relations.

Twitter and Research: A Systematic Literature Review Through Text Mining

“…Activism: This topic illustrates the studies which investigated Twitter activism such as feminism [279], African American activism [280], resistance to political movements [281], indigenous activism [282], and anti-racism [283]. The activism topic has a very significant positive slope indicating high research activities.…”

Communicatively Navigating Identities, Silence, and Social Protest

“…Some of this focus has been on the structure of social protest. For example, the evolving communication platforms available that can help and hinder social organizing have contributed greatly to our understanding of social protest processes (e.g., Bivens & Cole, 2018;Tsukayama, 2017). Other scholarship have drawn attention to the ever-shifting nature of social protest and how people make sense of their relationship to it.…”

Unruly Women and Carnivalesque Countercontrol: Offensive Humor in Mediated Social Protest

“…However, while some scholars in critical humor studies have argued that offensive humor can operate as a powerful social corrective as well as a strategic and effective commentator on political issues (Bivens & Cole, 2018; Thorogood, 2016), others highlight that its uniting-and-dividing function draws a sharp boundary between those who laugh and those who are not “in on the joke” (Kuipers, 2011; Lockyer & Pickering, 2001). From such a perspective, bawdy political humor that predominantly works by deriding and offending those in power is merely:further convincing those who agree with it while alienating those who don’t agree.…”

“…The anus protrudes and leaks filth. The vulgarity of the picture is echoed by the crudeness of the written language: Trump’s debased body contaminates the world with its “shit.” Such rhetorical strategies work “to mock, destabilize, and publicize private parts and activities we are socialized to hide” (Bivens & Cole, 2018, p. 20). Situated within protest culture, the sign employed this carnivalesque language and imagery to contribute an affective critique of Trump to public sphere debates around his presidency.…”

“…However, we would argue that this sign does no t work to position Trump within a human collective but instead positions him as a repulsive other. Its strategy resembles that of the “DACA DACA” sign, as it employs the playground rhetoric of “no, you’re the shithole.” However, drawing on Bivens and Cole, we nonetheless argue that “grotesque protest” can still work as “an effective tool for opening space, transgressing boundaries, and demanding attention.” The excess of protest signs like this one invites us to take gleeful pleasure in offending Trump, reminding him that he is out of place and illegitimate, and demonstrating resistance to his attempts “to control bodies.” In this way, the grotesque is mobilized “to strategically reframe public and political discourse about the body” through street protests and on social media (Bivens & Cole, 2018, p. 7).…”