Kayleigh Timmer

This paper explores the link between social media, the spectacle, and ontological burnout. Specifically, it is argued that social media exacerbates the burnout of the achievement-subject which Byung-Chul Han analyses in _The Burnout Society_, and that this burnout is an ontological burnout, an exhaustion with being. Specifically, it is an exacerbated, particularly self-destructive version of the ontological fatigue Emmanuel Levinas analyses in _Existence and Existents_. Social media creates another sphere in which achievement-subjects feel compelled to perform and in which they engage in auto-exploitative labour. The compulsion to perform on social media arises from social media’s forming part of Guy Debord’s concept of the spectacle, which consistently incorporates spectators into the social media spectacle by allowing them to interact with and contribute to the spectacle. This occurs when social media pushes achievement-subjects to become micro-spectacles, wherein curating a representation of achievement becomes intrinsic to their being, and through the proliferation of media spectacles which social media users feel compelled to react to. This paper thus draws out the relationship between social media and ontological fatigue. It also posits a compatibility between Han and Debord’s accounts of contemporary society and, in arguing that the burnout Han describes is an extension of Levinas’ phenomenological analysis of fatigue, develops a critical-phenomenological account of ontological burnout.

This paper posits a new approach to solidarity against GBV, drawing from phenomenology and critical theory. Pumla Dineo Gqola proposes that directly interfering in acts of gender-based violence (GBV) is necessary to stem the tide of GBV. I argue that a particular type of solidarity is needed for this mode of praxis, termed direct interference, to be effective. This type of solidarity can be found in the works of phenomenologist Max Scheler and critical theorist Erich Fromm, who both argue that true solidarity can only occur when individuals recognise each other and themselves as individuals, while also recognising their shared group identity. True solidarity involves not only a responsibility towards the group, but also self-responsibility and mutual responsibility with other individuals in that group. It is this kind of solidarity which is needed if direct interference is to live up to its potential as an effective mode of praxis against GBV. This is because such a mode of solidarity fosters the recognition of other’s individuality and responsibility towards each other as individuals, while recognising that there is a shared group of women and other potential victims of GBV, who share a co-experience of the threat of GBV.

This paper analyses a social media phenomenon which I term rebellious hyper-femininity, in which a hyper-feminine identity (involving, for example, embracing the colour pink, self-beautification, or other stereotypically feminine traits and characteristics) is adopted in response to the devaluation of femininity by patriarchal culture. Drawing on the trend bimbocore as an example of this phenomenon, I argue that such an adoption of hyper-femininity is rebellious and involves subversive feminist praxis because, by reclaiming a devalued identity, it engages in a critique of gender norms and anti-feminine sentiment. Rebellious hyper-femininity, as an identity largely performed through the sharing of content on social media, also involves a critique of capitalist society and other socio-political issues by these content creators. Rebellious hyper-femininity has the potential to be the kind of femininity which Marcuse (1974) believed was the antithesis to patriarchal and capitalist oppression. However, I argue that rebellious hyper-femineity’s radical potential as mode of subversive praxis is undermined by its being primarily enacted and popularised on social media. I argue that social media exhibits characteristics which Adorno and Horkheimer identify in their analysis of the Culture Industry and which Marcuse identifies in his analysis of one-dimensional society, such as an emphasis on conformity, standardisation, and the subsuming of that which might destabilise the status quo. In particular, social media turns rebellious hyper-femininity into a trend, a purely aesthetic, easily replicable identity stripped of its subversive intentions. As a trend, it perpetuates the very structures it originally aimed to destabilise, and thus social media undermines hyper-femininity as a potential mode of subversive praxis against patriarchal-capitalist oppression.

The institution of marriage makes women vulnerable, as does being unmarried in a society that idealises marriage as the norm. It is argued that the use of civil unions as an alternative to legal marriage does not protect women from this vulnerability, and nor do proposed reforms to the institution. The institution of legal marriage therefore must be abolished. A hybrid of Clare Chambers’ piecemeal regulation of relationships and Elizabeth Brake’s minimal marriage, termed the anti-vulnerability approach to relationship regulation (or the AVA) is put forward as the best means to regulate relationships in a way that will protect women from vulnerability. The AVA is implementable in countries where Western marriage is not always the norm, such as South Africa, and is also strongly compatible with LGBTQIA+ relationship styles and arguments against marriage. However, as a piecemeal regulation of relationships cannot be implemented alongside holistic regulation systems, such as legal marriage, legal marriage would need to be abolished to create a system of regulating relationships that will be able to protect women from vulnerability.