“First, Let Me Take a Selfie”: An Exploration of the Selfie as Both Panoptic Schema and Decolonizing Expression of the Self

• In Event: Blood and Selfies. Trans and Triangles: Art as a Method for the Decolonization of Bodies

Abstract

In my art I manipulated my selfies in different media to examine the psychoanalytic concepts of fetishism, scopophilia, voyeurism, narcissism and the concept of the mirror phase (Lacan 442, Mulvey 383). In the practice of selfie, I take on the role of photographer, spectator, and object depicted in the photo. In light of this, I explore the questions: Am I engaged in scopophilic, voyeuristic, and narcissistic gazes? Further, to what extent is this behavior self-fetishizing? Or, in contrast, can this behavior be said to be a decolonization of Western ideas of “beautiful” female bodies. Are these authentic representations of self?

Presenter

• Noura Shuqair, Doctoral student at UNT