Reading in „Broken Accents“ – the Cyber Stroller through Mediascape –
Abstract
This paper deals with gender performativity in media practices, with interweaving realms of flâneur figure and scopophilia phenomenon seen through cyborgian mythology. Not so much a research on media representations of women, this paper is an attempt to investigate the (im)possibility of women gazing back, transforming the mediascape into imaginary of the flâneuse, the female stroller. Paradoxical figure of the flâneur becomes the aporetic figure of the flâneuse, measured not by the aesthetic distance between the subject and the object of the gaze, but by proximity, dangerous connectivness and disruptive kinships that escape the „regulated scopophilia“ of falogocentric male gaze. Female gaze has too often been associated with consumerist voyeurism, on the one side, or with public invisibility, on the other. The pervert gaze of the flâneuse, feminine gaze, can be looked upon from a critical viewpoint and from semiotic „stitches“ in Shelley Jackson’s hypertext Patchwork Girl, or the Modern Monster (1995). Patchwork Girl utilizes the collage technique in creating the flâneuse gaze that destabilizes depictions of the female body as a commodity, domestic figure and patriarchal projections of desire. This feminine gaze is strolling on the boundary of the imaginable, patchworking the plural body, cut through by intertextual practices. The assembled stitched female body as the hypertext-body (Shelley Jackson's hypertext) creates a challenging mediascapes for questioning dominant gender discourses.References
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[2] Emmanuel Levinas, “Language and Proximity,” in Collected Philosophical Papers , trans. Alphonso Lingis, Dordrecht: Marinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987.
[3] Ann-Marie Tully, „The haunted stitch: Pointure practices in ’material’ contemporary art“, „Pointure“ Exibition, University of Johanesburg Art Gallery, Individual Artists, pp. 9-13, 2012. Available: http://issuu.com/ann-marie.tully/docs/view_only_pointure_3_final_version_
[4] Shelley Jackson, “Stitch Bitch: The Hypertext Author as Cyborg-Femme Narrator”, Amerika On-Line # 7. 15 Mar. 1998a.
[5] Astrid Ensslin, “Women in Wasteland – Gendered Deserts in T. S. Eliot and Shelley Jackson”, Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 14, No 3, November 2005, pp. 205-216.
[6] Shelley Jackson, Patchwork Girl; or, A Modern Monster by Mary/Shelley, & Herself, hypertext, Eastgate Systems, Storyspace, 1995
[7] George Landow, Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology, London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1997.
[8] N. Katherine Hayles, “Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis”, My Mother was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005.
[9] Shelley Jackson, "Stitch Bitch: The Patchwork Girl," in Paradoxa 4 , 1998b, 526-38.
[10] Mark Taylor and Esa Saarinen, “Telewriting” , Imagologies: Media Philosophy, London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
[11] Mark C. Taylor, “Rhizomic Folds of Interstanding”, in Tekhnema: Journal for Philosophy and Techology, no. 2, spring 1995. Available: http://tekhnema.free.fr/2Taylor.htm
[12] Carolyn Guertin, “Wanderlust: The Kinesthetic Browser in Cyberfeminist Space”, in Extensions: The Online Journal of Embodiment & Technology, vol. 3, January 2007. Available: http://www.performancestudies.ucla.edu/extensionsjournal/guertin.htm
[2] Emmanuel Levinas, “Language and Proximity,” in Collected Philosophical Papers , trans. Alphonso Lingis, Dordrecht: Marinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987.
[3] Ann-Marie Tully, „The haunted stitch: Pointure practices in ’material’ contemporary art“, „Pointure“ Exibition, University of Johanesburg Art Gallery, Individual Artists, pp. 9-13, 2012. Available: http://issuu.com/ann-marie.tully/docs/view_only_pointure_3_final_version_
[4] Shelley Jackson, “Stitch Bitch: The Hypertext Author as Cyborg-Femme Narrator”, Amerika On-Line # 7. 15 Mar. 1998a.
[5] Astrid Ensslin, “Women in Wasteland – Gendered Deserts in T. S. Eliot and Shelley Jackson”, Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 14, No 3, November 2005, pp. 205-216.
[6] Shelley Jackson, Patchwork Girl; or, A Modern Monster by Mary/Shelley, & Herself, hypertext, Eastgate Systems, Storyspace, 1995
[7] George Landow, Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology, London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1997.
[8] N. Katherine Hayles, “Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis”, My Mother was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005.
[9] Shelley Jackson, "Stitch Bitch: The Patchwork Girl," in Paradoxa 4 , 1998b, 526-38.
[10] Mark Taylor and Esa Saarinen, “Telewriting” , Imagologies: Media Philosophy, London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
[11] Mark C. Taylor, “Rhizomic Folds of Interstanding”, in Tekhnema: Journal for Philosophy and Techology, no. 2, spring 1995. Available: http://tekhnema.free.fr/2Taylor.htm
[12] Carolyn Guertin, “Wanderlust: The Kinesthetic Browser in Cyberfeminist Space”, in Extensions: The Online Journal of Embodiment & Technology, vol. 3, January 2007. Available: http://www.performancestudies.ucla.edu/extensionsjournal/guertin.htm
Published
2015-09-15
How to Cite
STOŠIĆ, Mirjana.
Reading in „Broken Accents“ – the Cyber Stroller through Mediascape –.
Култура/Culture, [S.l.], v. 5, n. 11, p. 113-120, sep. 2015.
ISSN 1857-7725.
Available at: <http://journals.cultcenter.net/index.php/culture/article/view/169>. Date accessed: 19 feb. 2025.
Section
English Articles
Keywords
mediascape, cyberspace, flâneuse, hypertext, skin, body

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