Abstract
This article analyzes the construction of female subjectivity in the specific context of audiovisual cyberspaces in Spain dedicated to the struggle against violence against women. Looking at the YouTube channels of two virtual feminist communities that deal with violence against women, the authors analyze how the victim-subject is configured in terms of agency and activism. The authors adopt a multimodal model of studying the sign complexes of the videos as semiotic artifacts that produce meaning. Sign complexes are always engaged because representation is never neutral because what is represented in sign is meant to realize the values and positions of those who make the sign. In this article, the authors understand feminist activism in the fight against violence targeting women as constructing in its discourse not only the activist process, but also the subject of this activism: the victim-subject of gender-based violence. The analysis engages in the discussion about the various ways in which this subject is interpellated by the audiovisual texts in terms of agency. As a result, this study proposes the necessity to devise new ways of articulating this subject as a political and agential one.
Introduction
This article examines representation of the female subject through the constitution of a subject interpellated by the language of violence (Butler, 1997). As well as studying the interpellation of the victim-subject in audiovisual YouTube texts of two virtual feminist communities that fight against gender-based violence in Spain, we also address different semiotic artifacts in these texts (Halliday, 2004; Kress and Van Leewen, 2006; Moya, 2011), which result in a significant sum of sign complexes modalities constructed in a multimodal system of production (Lewis, 2001; Martin, 2008, cited in Moya, 2011; Nodelman, 1998).
In addition to undertaking a semiotic analysis of the meaning produced by the sign complexes of these audiovisual texts, we also make use of the concepts of agency and interpellation in relation to the construction of the victim-subject of violence. We use the conceptualization of the victim-subject to highlight how the current multimedia sphere demands a broader understanding of activism in the face of more rigid stances. We defend, therefore, a broad and loose vision of the multimedia sphere, valorizing activist acts online without necessarily taking into account who the recipients of these acts are, or if they have an effective response or not (Van Zoonen, 2010).
The thematic activist YouTube channels aimed against gender-based violence of two of Spain’s most important feminist virtual communities (Núñez and García, 2009), Fundación Mujeres (Women Foundation) and Ciudad de Mujeres (City of Women), serve as our point of departure. The website of Fundación Mujeres (www.fundacionmujeres.es) is one of the spaces of feminist praxis online that emerged alongside the first initiatives in the sphere of Internet activism in Spain.
In addition to the activist proposals carried out on the websites of these two feminist virtual communities, as well as in other spaces online, the presence of thematic channels on YouTube suggests that these spaces have become an important terrain for political activity and communicative practices in Spain. In these channels’ videos, we are interested in analyzing the configuration of the victim-subject of violence in terms of agency and activism. To this end, we adopt a multimodal analysis, in which various sign complexes of the audiovisual texts are observed as semiotic artifacts for the production of meanings in the process of configuring the victim-subject of gender-based violence. The multimodal semiotic analysis of the selected videos is carried out with a consideration of interpellation and agency as defining practices in the configuration of the victim-subject (Butler, 1997). Along with Austin’s classic theory of speech acts, which questions what is achieved by saying something, feminist activism in the struggle against violence against women can be understood as a performative act, displacing the focus of attention toward the speech act itself (Isin and Nielsen, 2008; Van Zoonen 2010).
It must be noted as well that these performative acts construct not only the activist process but the subject of that activism as well – that is, the victim-subject of gender-based violence. In our examination of the processes through which this subject is constituted, we make use of Butler’s theory of interpellation. Butler reworks Althusser’s framework, which centered around the production of subjects who fit themselves into an ideological articulation of the social order. With the aim of discovering this victim-subject’s process of subject formation through mechanisms of discourse reproduction, we find useful Butler’s reworking of Althusser’s concept of interpellation into a tool for radical politics. According to Butler, Althusser unintentionally and unfortunately ‘restrict[s] the notion of interpellation [and thus, by extension, the constitutive effects of naming] to the action of a voice … that recalls and reconsolidates the figure of the divine voice in its ability to bring about what it names’ (Butler, 1997: 32). Butler’s theory transforms Althusser’s concept of interpellation, which is quite useful for articulating claims about meaning, especially if we focus on processes of representation and textual analysis. In this sense, Butler’s framework of interpellation is less limiting than Althusser’s. She proposes that ‘the act (of interpellation) works in part because of the citational dimension of the speech act, the historicity of convention that exceeds and enables the moment of its enunciation’ (Butler, 1997: 33). In this sense, Butler offers a very different account from other critics who allege that ‘injurious terms’ can potentially restrict subjects into predetermined identities and are by extension incapacitating. Butler, on the contrary, claims that a subject interpellated by such terms might in fact cling to them, given their fundamental social role in forming the subject. At the same time, the subject’s potential to define herself against this term only arises from an initial definition. This resistant position to normative practices seeking to restrict the subject emerges as an ideological tool, and is at the same time based on resisting the very authority that on some level configures the subject’s potential agency. Nonetheless, the concept of interpellation itself raises many questions that are explored in this article.
Butler problematizes the concept of agency, resisting the idea to understand it as an attempt to accomplish a particular goal. For Butler, agency is a much more nuanced concept, emerging from the subject’s subversive deformation or mutation of agency, which in and of itself lays bare the construction of agency itself. As Butler puts it: ‘ “agency” … is to be located within the possibility of a variation on that repetition’ (1990: 185). In this sense, we might consider that any notion of agency, following Butler, becomes identified with a subversive process that necessarily has to take place within the bounds of an already extant discourse. Thus our textual analysis of activist production on YouTube is carried out based on the assertion that discourse inevitably conditions and determines both agency and subversion. Agency, understood in Butler’s framework, directly relates to the concept of subversion that the present article links to ideas of active and passive stances. The victim-subject of gender-based violence, constructed through discourse, in our opinion, finds new avenues for exploring a subversive and active use of agency, if we consider agency as a variation on the term ‘victim’ within imposed discursive limits.
We must, however, also consider problematic aspects of agency in Butler’s formulation. Butler fails to clarify how the iterative dimension of agency holds the potential for transformative political practice in an intentional way that might have an effect on dominant discourse (Seidman and Alexander, 2001).
In Spanish scholarship we find examples of critical studies that reflect on how the representations of women victims of gender-based violence do not transform either the practices or the frameworks that sustain this violence, but rather ‘the recognition constructed by means of media narratives reproduces, and supports, these frameworks by means of configurations that articulate a female subject devoid of agency’ (Gámez, 2012: 194). Agency is here understood as activity as opposed to passivity on the part of the represented female subject-victim of gender-based violence. Thus, for example, it is often considered important to show in media representations women in roles other than the (passive) victim, to make visible women’s contributions to society, to demonstrate women’s support networks, to offer images of possible change (and thereby the possibility for action and transformation) (Acurio, 2010: 100–102).
For our discussion of the concept of agency, Jodi Dean’s intervention is also useful (2003, 2005). Using the idea of communicative capitalism Dean posits that ‘networked communication technologies are profoundly depoliticizing’ (Dean, 2005: 51). Dean stresses that we need to consider the implication of the fantasies that underlie particular aspects of communicative capitalism. More specifically, the fantasy of active participation, which is instrumental to our discussion, ends up animated through the fetishizing of technology. Regardless of the message that circulates, it may inevitably be reduced to the medium in which it does so. Dean adds to this argument the fact that online micropolitics do not allow for dissent but only for consensus. If we follow Dean’s proposal, the efficacy of citational subversion in discourse that Butler theorizes can get lost. This raises several questions, such as: what is the efficacy of the concept of agency, understood as subversion connected to activity, in the discursive interpellation processes of the victim-subject of violence, if these discourses lose their status as message and become part of a process of commodifying communication?
We find ourselves faced with different modes of constructing the victim-subject of gender-based violence in discourses on Spanish activist YouTube channels. This multiplicity of modes indicates that online agency and activism cannot be considered as immediate responses to the problems of restrictive configurations of the victim-subject as a passive one.
Multimodal analysis and performativity in the construction of the victim-subject in YouTube videos
As we have previously mentioned, in this article we analyze YouTube videos on thematic channels of two feminist organizations in Spain that fight against gender-based violence: Ciudad de Mujeres (www.youtube.com/user/CiudadDeMujeres) and Fundación Mujeres (www.youtube.com/user/fundacionmujeres).
From Halliday (2004), we take three modal structures, three syntactic modes that codify the basic elocutionary forces (statement, offer, question and directive): the Declarative, Imperative, and Interrogative/Reflexive. As Vera (2010: 185–192) explains in relation to the Spanish language, assertive sentences generally correspond to declarations that ostensibly use some degree of neutrality in speech. This author also points out that exhortations, exclamations, and even appellative sentences can be found in the imperative mood in Spanish, but also in the subjunctive, as a reflection of desire. Andrés Bello (1847) remarked something similar, stating that the imperative as well as subjunctive moods in Spanish strongly depend on the communicative context and the speech situation, in addition to the linguistic material itself.
Thus, we analyze whether in the selected feminist websites’ videos related to the fight against gender-based violence, the sign complexes respond more to an aseptic structure, in the declarative mode; to an imperative modality, demanding actions from the audience; or if they call for a critical response from the viewers by making recourse to interrogative and reflexive modalities.
Kress and Van Leeuwen’s proposal (2006) asserts that the interactive function of audiovisual language shows itself through multimodalities in which one attempts to attract the audience’s attention. In any audiovisual text, a relationship is established between its creators, the readers of the images, and the subjects represented. The authors find that in visual compositions there are four types of signs that interact with the audience: the image act and gaze; social distance and intimacy; the horizontal angle and involvement; the vertical angle and power (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006: 148–149).
The relationship between the represented subjects and the recipients of the videos is established through movement vectors or gazes. Kress and Van Leeuwen differentiate, in the choice of the image and the gaze, between offers, which are images that only present information and lack schemes of visual contact between the represented subjects and the audiences, and demands, wherein the participation or active implication of the recipients is sought through the use of movement vectors and gazes that ask for the audiovisual readers’ accompaniment or commitment.
The level of intimacy established between the audiences and characters in the audiovisual composition is highlighted through social distance, which is determined by how close or far away the subjects represented in the shots appear. A greater social closeness as well as a greater sense of intimacy on the part of the viewers can be achieved through visual close-ups. The impression that this technique attempts to achieve – that the depicted characters appear to be within the audience’s reach – is lost in medium shots, and even more in long shots. Both the viewers and the represented subjects are located in relation to horizontal and vertical planes (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006). Undoubtedly, these modalities condition the way the represented situation is understood. The horizontal angle determines the emotional implication or distance of the audience in relation to the represented subjects: if a frontal angle is used, a direct contact with the audience is sought; if a profile is used, an oblique connection is established with the audience.
The vertical angle points to different power relationships between participants and recipients and between the subjects represented in the images: the high-angle shot expresses a relationship of control and subjugation; the neutral shot (at eye-level) indicates a relationship of closeness and equality; and the low-angle shot shows a relationship of dependence and submission.
Following Kress and Van Leeuwen’s definition of a modality as a tool for creating meaning in cultural forms of representation we introduce the active/passive modes in order to approach the analysis of representation of the victim-subject of gender-based violence in the studied YouTube channels.
According to Spanish studies of sexual violence and its representation in the press, women victims tend to represent themselves as ‘vulnerable to violence, as passive and weak beings and who, in consequence, need protection from those who could perpetrate [violence] against them, that is, men’ (Fernández, 2003: 144ff.). The figure of the abused woman, certain studies hold, previously confined to the private sphere, has become a well-defined public figure in scientific, institutional, legal, and media discourses, with a determined profile that presents a ‘specific and precise behavior [requiring] specialized intervention’ (Marugán and Vega, 2002: 417–419). The fact that these representations focus particularly on women who have been killed rather than those who have managed to leave their abusers and start their lives anew, makes it impossible, according to these analyses, to compose an imaginary of victims as those who actively intervene. On the contrary, these representations reinforce the idea that women who are victims of violence are ‘passive and radically other subjects’ (Marugán and Vega, 2002: 417–419).
For the purposes of this study, we consider the videos as single units of Kress and Van Leeuwen’s multimodal analysis, valorizing the ideo-aesthetic construction of the videos’ message, taking into account the predominance of the (quantity of) shots that hold the greatest meaningful weight, i.e. more than 50% of shots in a single audiovisual piece. We relate the multimodal analysis to the processes of interpellation and agency connected to the construction of the victim-subject.
YouTube as activist practice: Ciudad de Mujeres and Fundación Mujeres
YouTube is one of the spaces that feminist organizations privilege in order to amplify their message in this information era (Van Zoonen, 2011). It has become the most important Internet video platform, with a clear emphasis on communicative exchange and user-generated content. The site’s official figures are significant. It has more than 1 billion unique users each month across the globe, 4 billion hours of videos seen every 30 days, with 70% of site traffic located outside the United States (YouTube, 2013).
The conjunction of image, text, and sound generates a true network of multimodal communication with a strong potential for civic participation, not only through the comments and responses to the uploaded videos, but also by means of the multidirectional capacity of the service and the hypertextuality that permits co-authorship on the audiovisual channels (Juhasz, 2009; Kellner and Kim, 2009; Van Dijk, 2009).
In the Spanish context, the feminist entities with the greatest presence on YouTube correlate directly to those that are most active in other online spaces. Ciudad de Mujeres, Fundación Mujeres, and E-mujeres, among others, have live channels on the audiovisual site, which above all serve to complement these organizations’ institutional communication processes, which use websites as the base of operations for their actions on the Internet, and more recently, Facebook and Twitter.
Specifically, the two organizations that serve as case studies for the purposes of this investigation, Ciudad de Mujeres and Fundación Mujeres, constitute two of the most dynamic associations in the Spanish feminist movement fighting against gender-based violence (Núñez et al., 2012). They were also the first to establish themselves on YouTube, Ciudad de Mujeres in 2007 and Fundación Mujeres in 2010, privileging it as a space for activism for gender equality and against violence against women.
Ciudad de Mujeres’ YouTube channel
Ciudad de Mujeres (www.ciudaddemujeres.com/) is a feminist website, self-funded and not-for-profit, which was launched in 2004. One of its objectives is to make visible those women whose creations, thinking, and successes leave their mark on culture and history, as well as those who continue working for the equality of rights and opportunities. Ciudad de Mujeres understands online feminist praxis as a platform for the visibilization, recognition, and defense of women’s rights.
Its channel has 128 subscribers, and has had more than 24,000 views since it uploaded its first video on 16 March 2008 (Ciudad de Mujeres, 2013). Its audiovisual offering is mostly made up of external productions and various playlists that cover several thematic areas of interest to the organization.
For this study, we have first considered the videos which respond to the organization’s own communication initiative – those they have uploaded. The count of such videos through 31 July 2012 was 98. Five were removed either by the organization itself or by YouTube directly due to copyright violations. We analyzed, thus, 93 videos.
On the playlist ‘Gender-based violence,’ we found 28 videos, seven of which we could not analyze: three have been taken down by YouTube for not meeting copyright laws; another three no longer appear because they have been removed by the users who posted them, and one is a repeat. Taking all this into account, we have 21 videos for analysis. None of the videos on this playlist have been incorporated directly by Ciudad de Mujeres.
Following the categories proposed by Halliday (2004), we observed that more than 90% (84 videos) of the videos on Cuidad de Mujeres’ YouTube channel exhibit predominantly declarative modal structures. The imperative modal structures constitute only 2.15% (2 videos) of the total number of cases, and interrogative structures – which invite reflection on the configuration of the subject who is a victim of violence, and how this subject should be represented – make up 7.53% (7 videos) of the total of analyzed categories (see Table 1).
Ciudad de Mujeres on YouTube. Videos recorded and made by Ciudad de Mujeres: modal structures.
Academic talks, conferences, and panels constitute the basis of many of these videos, with predominantly instructive discourse. The audiovisual narratives of these videos transmit content that situates women as the objects of all types of repression. There are practically no representations of women who, as victim-subjects of violence, successfully break with the univocal interpellation of the language of violence. On the other hand, it is worth noting that Ciudad de Mujeres’ audiovisual presentations are intensely informative; they offer a great deal of content to the viewer, but require of him or her very little effort in interpreting this content. In the audiovisual material this is translated into a pre-eminence of close-ups, but very little visual contact is established with the audience. Thus, we observe that demands constitute only 10.75% of discursive content, while offers compose 89.25% of the content. It is significant as well that in the category of horizontal angle and implication, most of the videos – 67.74% – present the victim-subject in profile, with frontal shot in 32.36% of the cases (see Table 2). This emphasizes categorization of the victim-subject constructed through the offer, in a non-central position.
Ciudad de Mujeres on YouTube. Videos recorded and made by Ciudad de Mujeres: interactive visual aspects (N = 93).
As we have noted, the fact that most of the videos are from lectures, conferences, and roundtables means that they are fundamentally informative. Marked by a certain didacticism, they distance their potential audience from acts of mobilization. We can see this in the video Redes contra la violencia de género (‘Networks against gender-based violence’), which attempts to raise awareness about Internet resources available in fighting gender-based violence. In her introduction, one of the panelists conceives of the problem as a ‘social ulcer.’ Following Navarro and Vega (2007: 9), we hold that interpellating violence in this way associates it with a traditional cultural inheritance that still persists, without interrogating this traditional legacy’s effect on equality. Such a position resists recognition of the modified contemporary nature of this violence. Following Jodi Dean’s framework we find that in such videos there is an illusion of participation, given that the mere fact of constructing critical discourses online does not constitute political activism.
Some of the discourses analyzed are located in a space of power and name victims from an assistance-based stance, referring them to medical and legal services. In this way, the victims are defined, though discourse, as passive subjects. We find that academic discourse, in its assistance-based stance, tends to supplant the discourse of the women victims themselves. In many videos the women victims of violence are spoken of, but they do not directly speak.
But there are different representations as well. The video Actuamos contra la violencia machista (‘Let’s act against sexist violence’) shows the performance of a play starring five women who give testimonies either based on their own lived experiences of violence or based on a guidebook for abused women. Both the title and the performance itself, in which the women speak looking directly at the audience, interpellate active women who, in Butler’s conceptualization of agency, reappropriate discourse. ‘Let’s move forward, we have to walk, life will smile on us and people will support us’ (a slogan which rhymes in Spanish) is one of the statements in this video, where a female victim opens a space for herself within the limits of victimizing discourse, appearing active and calling for action.
On the Ciudad de Mujeres YouTube channel’s ‘Gender-based violence’ playlist, we find mostly declarative videos, which offer information about topics such as attacks on women, different forms of gender discrimination, and actions and campaigns for increasing civic awareness. As we can see in Table 3, a smaller number of the cases fall into either imperative (28.57% of the total) or reflexive or interrogative modal structures (14.29%).
Ciudad de Mujeres on YouTube. ‘Gender-based violence’ playlist: modal structures.
In these videos, shared by Ciudad de Mujeres but made by others, we find a balance between offers (52.38%) and demands (47.62%). In our analysis, we detect similar percentages in terms of the horizontal angle (implication): 47.62% frontal and 52.38% in profile (see Table 4). The recurring use of the close-up and normal angle in the videos’ construction shows us the effects of violence against women directly, in several cases even using detailed shots to illustrate and emphasize the physical blows.
Ciudad de Mujeres on YouTube. ‘Gender-based violence’ playlist: visual interactive aspects (N = 21).
As noted, although the videos in this case are predominantly declarative, we find some examples of markedly imperative videos, especially those with persuasive messages, like in the 2008 Spanish government campaign ‘For the abuser, zero tolerance.’ One of these videos depicts men rejecting the abusers and rebuking them that every time they abuse a woman they stop being men. The video culminates with this slogan which encourages society not to tolerate aggressors in any way, and thus calls for action.
With respect to social distance and the videos’ generation of intimacy through types of shots between the viewer and the subjects represented, it is striking that 71.43% of the cases are close-ups. This occurs, for example, in the video Violencia contra la mujer. No te traiciones a ti misma (‘Violence against women. Don’t betray yourself’), directed by Alexander Gutiérrez in 2007, in which the camera focuses on various bruises on a woman’s body. Certain phrases are printed on the images, supposedly showing how a woman would explain the blows to which she has been subjected.
In the video showing the poem of journalist and writer Edith Checa, A las mujeres maltratadas (‘To abused women,’ 2007), there is an explicit appeal to women who suffer violence to act. The accompanying images abound with semi-hidden faces and absent gazes, except for one clear close-up of a woman looking directly at the camera. And while some verses encourage the victim to act, society is blamed for its absence and washing its hands of the problem of violence (Checa, 2007).
In another ad by the Spanish government, we find multimodal appeals that contribute to constructing an active subject, in the sense proposed by Butler. Several women who have successfully left situations of violence appeal to other victims who have not yet been able to do so. They point out that, removed from the influence of their abusers, they are no longer afraid, they feel alive, and they know their rights. On the one hand, there arises a variation of the term ‘victim’ within the limits of discourse, through the exploration of a discourse linked to activity. On the other hand, the close-ups establish intimacy in an attempt to connect with women viewers who suffer violence, and a desire to move them and get them to react.
We find a similar message in the playlist’s video ‘We have to start again,’ which picks up the song promoted by the Women Artists’ Platform against gender-based violence in 2007. Through its lyrics, the song attempts to persuade women to leave their situation and not be afraid of starting a new life. However, in this video, women known for their public artistic, political, or journalistic activities are those who address the ‘others’ who endure violence. Thus, we again find an interpellation based on a position of assistance and protection that does not give victims a voice and thereby places them in a passive position.
Analysis based on multimodal categories leads us to conclude that the videos on the Ciudad de Mujeres YouTube channel suggest a complex and multivocal model of the victim-subject of gender-based violence. The analysis has allowed us to observe the ways in which the victim-subject appears, through an assistance-based discourse, as a passive being requiring a specialized intervention. We therefore propose, following Jodi Dean, that Internet activism in these cases can generate media noise, but that participation does not always translate into political activism that leads to transformation.
On several occasions, especially on the ‘Gender-based violence’ playlist, we see that some of the videos make use of a language appealing to an active subject. The use of the close-up and especially the first-person narrative of an experience of violence contribute to connecting with a woman who is not that ‘other’ victim without agency who is depicted in several videos. The protagonists of some ads are women who have successfully broken away from their abuser and who are in the process of tackling the problem and reconstructing their identity. As a result, they are active victims who make an appeal to other women to act, as they themselves have already done. In this way, we consider that they reappropriate a discourse that had oppressed them, subverting it, in Butlerian terms.
The Fundación Mujeres channel
The Fundación Mujeres virtual platform serves as the megaphone for the NGO of the same name, which works to strengthen equality of opportunities in civil society and the not-for-profit sector. One of its foundational objectives is intervening in favor of the prevention and eradication of gender-based violence (Núñez et al., 2012: 66–67).
Fundación Mujeres uploaded the first video to their YouTube channel on 20 April 2010. Currently, it has 42 subscribers and more than 11,000 total views (Fundación Mujeres, 2013). The channel keeps a playlist of videos called ‘Uploaded videos,’ which includes 18 videos uploaded by the organization. The offering continues to be mostly videos from outside the Foundation, as is the case in Ciudad de Mujeres. Our analysis, also conducted on 31 July 2012, included all 18 videos.
Following Halliday (2004), most of the videos on this single playlist are reflexive, with interrogative modal structures constituting 50% of all cases, and 33.33% of the cases showing imperative structure (see Table 5). Thus the videos on Fundación Mujeres’ thematic channel are very different from those analyzed on Ciudad de Mujeres’ channel.
Fundación Mujeres on YouTube: modal structures.
In the videos on Fundación Mujeres’ channel we observe a near balance between offers and demands, although offers of information slightly predominate (55.56%) over calls for activist participation (44.44%).
The close-ups predominate, although again visual contact with spectators appears noticeably reduced. Compared with Ciudad de Mujeres, in Fundación Mujeres’ videos, for the most part, horizontal power relations prevail, situating the receptor of the image at the same level of the audiovisual discourse. This can be seen in the constant interpellations, which serve as attempts to shorten the social distance between the audiovisual discourse and the audience and can also be seen in the predominance of normal angle shots and close-ups, which in this case reaches 66.67% (see Table 6).
Fundación Mujeres on YouTube: visual interactive aspects (N = 18).
We find that some of the videos analyzed interpellate the victim-subject in discourse as facing a situation of violence in a defensive position or suffering the consequences of abuse as a passive subject, and not as a subject capable of actively generating change. One example along these lines is the video produced free of charge for Fundación Mujeres by the Armando Testa ad agency. The representation of the woman occurs from her grave, through a voice-over, shaping the narrative how she accepted the flowers that, for the first time, her abuser has brought to the grave in an attempt to ask for forgiveness. Only when the camera, which had been focusing in a close-up on the bouquet, pans out to show the woman’s tomb, do we understand that this is where her voice is coming from (Figure 1). Her acceptance of the roses is an attempt at redemption on the part of her killer. The slogan ‘Don’t give abuse a second chance,’ calls to action other women who, unlike the video’s protagonist, might act in time and not be killed .
No des una segunda oportunidad (‘Don’t give abuse a second chance’) (Fundación Mujeres, 2013).
The same thing happens in the video Subir y bajar (‘Going up and coming down,’ Fundación Mujeres, 2013), a short film by the director and writer David Planell that was produced for Fundación Mujeres. In this video we can see how the woman’s willpower, by which she has successfully separated herself physically from her abuser through a restraining order, breaks down little by little during a conversation with him. The abuser insists on going up into the woman’s home, and the woman ends up by giving in, despite the fact that the situation makes her genuinely panicked. The video thus presents a kind of preventive strategy, showing the abuser’s manipulative strategies to which the victim eventually gives in (Figure 2). In this way, the video interpellates a victim-subject who does not manage to resist her aggressor’s attacks, who lets herself be tricked and does not have enough strength to say ‘no.’
Subir y bajar (‘Going up and coming down’) (Fundación Mujeres, 2013), a short film by the director and writer David Planell, for Fundación Mujeres.
It is not only the videos on Fundación Mujeres’ YouTube channel (made by them) that interpellate the victim of gender-based violence as a passive subject; this is also observed in their campaigns, like the initiative ‘Ante la violencia de género, no te cortes, haz tu corto’ (‘In the face of gender-based violence, don’t be shy, make a short film’). The discourse produced in many of this campaign’s videos revolves around the idea of calling on young people to reflect on violence and gender inequality through audiovisual production in an attempt to increase civic participation in the association and, above all, to have an impact on communicative interactivity. Nonetheless, in this discourse, the focus of attention is the problem itself – violence – and not the victim-subject of violence, who is re-situated and re-subordinated by being interpellated almost exclusively as a passive victim.
However, in these videos we find a predominance of positive messages: you can escape from violence. At times, like in the video A twentieth-century woman, it is the victim who tells the first-person narrative about her problem and how she managed to overcome it. The autobiographical narration shows the different phases of abuse and the moment in which the narrator was able to gather strength and ask for help. The woman says to the camera that she is happy to have asked for help, and to be able to say that it’s all over. We thus confront a discourse protagonized by a woman who has seized power and speaks based on her experience of a story of humiliation, but also of recuperation of autonomy, and thereby, agency.
Nonetheless, we can conclude that in most of the videos analyzed, the subject who suffers violence appears almost exclusively in an interpellation as a passive victim. There are some videos that interpellate victims – sometimes a woman, other young people – who suffer abuse, and who manage to speak from a position of overcoming violence and recovering power. In these examples we see that the victim-subject can re-signify herself in discourse adding a new semantic charge that contributes to recognizing the victim’s suffering and at the same time favors overcoming it in an active way.
Conclusions
Our analysis of the most active Spanish feminist online communities’ YouTube channels fighting gender-based violence, using multimodal analysis based on Halliday (2004) and Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006), and considering the concepts of agency and interpellation as defining practices in the configuration of the victim-subject following Butler (1997), allows us to conclude that their representation of the victim-subject of gender-based violence is not homogeneous. On both channels we find videos that interpellate a passive victim who is vulnerable to violence, who requires specialized intervention. Along these lines, we observe the construction of an imaginary in which the victims are passive subjects, ‘radically other’ in relation to those who cite them and construct them in a discourse of assistance or aid. However, there are also videos in which an active woman is interpellated, in the sense of Butler’s concept of agency, by means of the very victim’s subversion of discourse. In these cases, where the subject transforms and reappropriates discourse, we find that the victim can open a space within the limits of victimizing discourse, appearing active and even calling for action.
Neither do we find a homogeneous discourse in terms of the relation established by the videos between the represented subjects and their audiences. In some videos declarative, or more informative, structures predominate, while in others, we find an appeal to the spectator based on interrogative or imperative structures. The same happens in terms of power relations and social distance and intimacy, which are generated though the proximity of the shot, the level of implication, and horizontal and vertical angles. In some videos, we observe a clear predominance of offers as opposed to demands, whereas in others, there is an equality of shots.
Thus we can argue that the different modes of relationships and different processes of constructing the victim-subject of gender-based violence respond to different logics and models of understanding agency and activism in virtual spaces. This leads us to question certain forms of political activism in digital and technological contexts like YouTube. As Jodi Dean asserts, when the victim-subject is represented in a passive way or when an appeal is scarcely made to mobilize audiences, a fantasy is created of animated participation based on technological fetishism. It is not the case that the message does not circulate, but rather that it could already be part of the commodification of communication and the medium, which brings us to Butler’s idea of the efficacy of subversion. This would be an example of the complexity of constructing agency through interpellation, which can become diluted if we contemplate Jodi Dean’s discussion of agency in terms of one of the fantasies that constitute communicative capitalism. To this end, it might be necessary to look for new forms of activism that avoid the commodification of Internet messages and seek a subversive dissent beyond technological fetishism and the fantasy of participation and activism in the digital public sphere.
Footnotes
Funding
Sonia Núñez Puente received funding from the Dirección General de Investigación del Plan Nacional de I+D+i. Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.