Reversing The Weapons: Recuperating the marginalised body with performative photography

This thesis investigates the practice-based research connected with three photographic series produced over twelve years. Wait Watchers, The Bully Pulpit, and Buoyant Force have been exhibited in multiple solo and group exhibitions internationally and have been the subject of viral media activity and two monographs. The practice contributes to the discussions of performance, collaboration, and transgressive humour in photography. Supporting research involves theoretical discourses around the gaze, the invisibility of marginalised bodies, and social media as the 21st century panopticon. The work activates the disobedient female body defined as “grotesque” through wilful transgressions of the rules that try to control it. Performative self-portrait photography is employed to show the evolution of a marginalised body, first operating as the site of public attack, then as a figure with agency to enact revenge on Internet trolls and finally acting as a body empowered through performance.

This thesis analyses the three photographic series in relation to the following research questions: How can performative photographic methods be used to challenge Western society’s standards of beauty that regulate the idealised shape of the female body? How can photography bring into visibility Western society’s use of the gaze and humour as devices to maintain patriarchal female body standards? How can collaborative photographic methods be used to empower marginalised bodies and bring them into visibility in previously unimagined ways?

These questions are addressed in relation to these photographic series over six sections examining art historical, photographic, feminist, and sociological frameworks. Section 1 establishes the framework that positions my body as marginalised within society’s Western standards of idealised female beauty. Section 2 employs the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin and Mary Russo to figure and celebrate my body that is the subject of this practice-based research as grotesque. Section 3 asserts a definition of performative photography within the practicebased research as a methodology based on the scholarship of Amelia Jones, Michel Poivert, and Philip Auslander. Section 4 employs the writings of Michel Foucault and Jeannine A. Gailey to examine the marginalised female body as a site for social attack through the gaze as evidenced in Wait Watchers and bullying comments received through social media. Section 5 examines The Bully Pulpit in relation to theories of public shaming and the use of humour as a device for social control. Section 6 concludes this thesis by analysing Buoyant Force’s contribution to collaborative photography, tracing the development of performances and costumes produced in dialogue with collaborators who were inspired by Wait Watchers.