Nonny Kesteven, 12765856.
Comparative Cultural Analysis MA Thesis, University of Amsterdam, June 2020.
Lifting the Digital Veil on Instagram Poetry
Contents:
Introduction 1-8
Chapter One: Race and Postcolonialism 9-26
Chapter Two: Creative and Digital Labor 27-42
Chapter Three: The Me Too Movement and Digital Feminism 43-58
Conclusion 59-61
Introduction
In an age in which technology has trickled into almost every aspect of culture, it was surely inevitable that literature would be translated from the pen and paper to the keyboard and screen, and with it its enduring themes and content. Instagram was released in 2010 as a photo-sharing application, where users could follow other accounts and search for wider content using hashtags. As the social media platform evolved into an application which was not only for photos but for art, activism, fashion, music, advertising and literature, poetry also became a subsection of the app, and with it came a huge following and trend for unknown poets to share their work. The emergence of Instagram poetry has seen millions of people engaging with white squares of text on their devices, replacing Keats with Kaur. Appearing within small white digital frames, Instagram poems often share an aesthetic of lowercase, structure-less, rhyme-less, typewriter-style text, sometimes accompanied by a sketch or an image. The poems are controversial within the literary world regarding their “artless” style, however what no one can ignore is how popular they are, and how much they “sell” (Watts). What constitutes a poem as literary or not is often correlated with the author, and by the language and themes which are evoked for the reader. Therefore, Instagram poetry perhaps reflects a cultural need to reject traditional literary form and categorisation, and in the process give a voice to those whom history has largely ignored such as women of color, which I will address in my first chapter. A voice is also given to elevate twenty-first century movements such as Me Too, which I will address in chapter three, whilst adhering to a certain aesthetic that Instagram has created, leading to a movement which has gathered immense traction and influence.
Throughout my three chapters, I shall address the unignorable, sometimes uncomfortable, yet nonetheless important ways Instagram poetry is used to reflect race, gender, postcoloniality, creative and digital labor, and online movements. The Instagram poet I have selected for my primary close readings is Rupi Kaur (@rupikaur_), yet I shall also be analyzing the poetry of Yrsa Daley-Ward (@yrsadaleyward), Nayyirah Waheed (@nayyirah.waheed), and @atticuspoetry. Their combined global following of over 6.5 million (as of May 2020) "like" and "comment" on their posts, "tagging" their friends or expressing their personal emotional experience of the poems. The themes which are addressed by Instagram poets are not unlike the traditional themes of
romantic poetry, yet with a rather more open interpretation of form and aesthetics, and displayed on a digital platform which millions of people engage with every day.
Three of my chosen poets are women of color, and amongst the most renowned on Instagram, and indeed popular culture in general. Kaur is a first generation Punjabi-Canadian, Waheed is African-American, and Daley-Ward is British of Nigerian and Jamaican heritage. In 1984, Audre Lorde claimed that poetry was considered a "less rigorous or serious art form" and the "major voice of poor, working class, and Colored women". She argued that this was due to many women of color not having a "room of one's own […], reams of paper, a typewriter, and plenty of time" which was required to write prose, a formerly white and privileged genre, as embodied by Virginia Woolf to whom Lorde refers to in this quote (116). Today, along with huge civil rights progress and the majority of people owning a smartphone and having access to Internet
connection, Instagram poetry is much more accessible for both poets and readers, regardless of race and class, yet Lorde’s writings on poetry still remain relevant. 1
Kaur, Waheed and Daley-Ward's poems often advocate intersectional feminism; their language praising and encouraging women whilst also embracing difference and addressing abuse. From the supposed scribblings of Lorde's working-class “Colored” women to the influential Instagram poet, poetry has helped to develop activist movements through its visibility, popularity, and relatability. I do not wish to argue that Instagram poetry has changed the form of poetry, or created a new genre, rather that it has increased free access and distribution, and to determine what this elevated platform can contribute or enable for modern society. One such aspect of Instagram poetry which I shall explore further in my first chapter on race in relation to Instagram poetry, is that it is vital to take into consideration the postcolonial responsibility through which the white reader must be aware of their privilege and ignorance, whilst avoiding categorizing or analyzing the work of poets solely according to race. In order to address race, gender, activism, and creative and digital labor in relation to Instagram poetry, I will analyse the work of the Instagram poets themselves, theorists ranging from Audre Lorde to Angela McRobbie, and many in between. Although the critical work which I will be using varies greatly in opinion, timeframes and topics, by bringing them into discussion I wish to demonstrate that Instagram poetry is not just an aspect of social media but a medium that situates many centuries-old themes and issues in a pertinent modern context.
1 According to research published in 2018, 81% of US residents own a smartphone. Globally, this statistic varies, yet the vast majority of countries, be them considered “developed” or not, have a high percentage of smartphone ownership. My point, rather than to make a general assumption, is to stress that a huge number of people in the world have access to this content. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/
For example, Kaur's work varies from Instagram post to post, and indeed to her printed books, milk and honey and the sun and her flowers . It is an extract from a poem in the latter titled “broken english” which I will insert here:
“her life is brilliant and tragic kiss the side of her tender cheek she already knows what it feels like
to have an entire nation laugh when she speaks she is more than our punctuation and language we might be able to paint pictures and write stories but she made an entire world for herself
how is that for art”
(Kaur, 151).
This poem narrates the plight of Kaur's parents moving to Canada and never fully assimilating with the culture and language. This extract is from the final stanza of the poem, which was not posted on Instagram, yet ends the section of the sun and her flowers entitled “rooting”. By writing that her mother “is more than our punctuation” whilst not using any herself, Kaur nods to traditional
Punjabi Gurmukhi script, a mimicry which she has attributed to the style of all her poems, yet has also denied at times. Also, by calling it “our[s]” she situates herself as an English speaking 2 Canadian rather than a South Asian woman like her mother. One of the questions which I will be
2 On her website in the FAQ section, Kaur explains her Gurmukhi influence yet in an interview with HelloGiggles in 2015, Kaur, when asked why she wrote only in lowercase answered that "visual art was my first love and I am passionate about branding and the way something looks. Writing in all lowercase is a part of that branding and visual experience for me". https://rupikaur.com/faq/#periods ,
asking in this thesis is whether women of color have a responsibility to always address race without such a critical standpoint as Kaur often holds. Does her constant criticism of her heritage allow for the white reader to access yet appropriate the language and content, or is it a personal process for the artist to work through questions of race? This poem seems not only to be an ode to her mother, but a reflection of the general female experience, demonstrated through her use of indirect female pronouns. By likening the journey of a woman of color to the creation of “art”, Kaur addresses themes of race, gender, postcolonialism and emotional and physical labor. By pulling these themes out of the work of Instagram poets, I wish, throughout three chapters split thematically, to explore the evocations of Instagram poetry and what its language, aesthetic and influence contributes to a wider cultural understanding, and indeed asking: “how is that for art”?
Daley-Ward, on the other hand, explores a wider variety of poetic form, often following conventional capitalization and punctuation in her poetry and rarely posting poems with
accompanying sketches as Kaur does. Although, like Kaur, she refers to personal experience, her poetry also caters to shared experience, emphasising the ordinariness of the seemingly
extraordinary. One of her poems appears on her Instagram page as a video screenshot of an iPhone Note:
“I miss you in tiny earthquakes In little underground explosions My soil is a hot disaster
Home is burning You’re a lost thing.”
The caption that accompanies this short poem is “The words that find you at the end of the day” followed by seventeen hashtags including “#poeticsoul” and others of that ilk. The ambiguous yet natural language of this poem is evocative of Lauren Berlant's idea that “what is unbearable or unclear in our fantasies and experiences of intimacy” such as the “underground explosions” which Daley-Ward describes, “open onto modes of political discourses of nationhood, citizenship and identification” (Duschinsky & Wilson, 179). Daley-Ward likens her heartache to environmental disaster, a turmoil not of her soul but her “soil”. She is a woman of the earth but her home is burning, evoking a sense of displacement alongside the clichéd romantic trope of a lover as a home, not dissimilar to the themes of home as an “entire world for herself” in Kaur's poem. If the earth on which that home stands is ruptured by “tiny earthquakes” and “underground explosions” then the foundation is damaged, just as in a relationship, or with personal identity politics.
Daley-Ward's Instagram bio reads “I tell stories. Some tall, some dark”. This poem is both tall and dark in its hyperbole and imagery, yet quotidian in its form as an iPhone note, displaying a quick thought being typed “at the end of the day”. The ease at which one can upload an Instagram poem gives a sense of spontaneity, something which print poetry rarely conveys.
In my first chapter, I shall be further discussing the poetry of Kaur, Daley-Ward as well as Waheed, and the writings of various critics in order to examine how Instagram poetry addresses race and gender whilst also considering whether work is taken out of these contexts in order to appeal to the white reader, thereby erasing cultural difference and allowing for appropriation. I will examine what is lost when postcolonial studies homogenize culture. I also wish to explore how the medium of Instagram has enabled several women of color to become some of the most read and known poets of this day and age, and what the literary controversy surrounding their poetry reflects
in a postcolonial setting. Instagram provides a poetic platform for women of color; poets who might not have had the opportunity to be published in print due to the overwhelmingly white majority of the publishing industry. By providing a more accessible platform, Instagram allows for poetry to be shared freely, and for poets to reach print success just as Kaur, Daley-Ward and Waheed did. What I wish to address is why women of color poets are held responsible for writing and teaching about issues of race and gender, when the same is not expected of white artists. I shall be applying the critical work of Audre Lorde, Jahan Ramazani and Sandra Ponzanesi amongst others, in order to explore the representations of race and postcolonial homogenisation in Instagram poetry, and how the medium itself reflects and conflicts with representation, appropriation and intersectionality.
My second chapter will be an examination of how theories of creative and digital labor relate to Instagram poetry and its poets. Through the works of Angela McRobbie, Tiziana Terranova, Bridgstock & Cunningham, Walton & Luker and others, I shall distinguish the distinction between creative and digital labor whilst linking both to Instagram poetry as a tool by which to reveal the nuances of exploitation on the platform, from both sides of the screen. Instagram is not the first platform on which artists self-publish work for free, but it certainly provides an interesting perspective. What I shall also readdress in this chapter is the reverse evolution of the Instagram poem to the print book, with all of my primary poets having become best-selling print poets, transgressing their origins as less renowned Instagram poets. The reach of the poetry and the poets behind them reflects the art and publishing industry as well as acting to unearth the extent of unpaid creative and digital labor, and the intrinsic assumptions made by society that the artist must work for free, or never be free from work.
In my third chapter, I shall be exploring the relation between Instagram poetry and activism, specifically the Me Too movement and fourth-wave digital feminism. By transgressing the limits of frames, borders and boundaries within art, Instagram poetry is redefined as a new vehicle by which informative literature and information can be communicated and distributed to the modern reader and consumer. In countries which allow uncensored access to the Internet - these countries also having the highest proportion of Instagram users - the app is often used to convey opinions, political stances, art, and, inevitably, anger. As McLaughlin writes, “art's social role is to question, challenge, and reimagine the ideological status quo” (53). By doing this, Instagram poetry “reaches the so-called common reader” through its posts (57).
This thesis will use the chapters outlined above in order to argue that Instagram allows people to access, read, and share free poetry in order to raise awareness of many issues personal to them and also broadly shared amongst those consuming the poetry. What this indicates is that Instagram poetry, whilst being an important source of information and solidarity for many, is also compiled of largely unpaid labor, compromising the artist and bringing up issues of how the poet, especially the poet of color, is exploited, either willingly or by the postcolonial cultural industry in general.
Chapter One: Race and Postcolonialism in Instagram Poetry
Race and postcolonialism in Instagram poetry is brought to the fore through language, identity, homogenization and the distribution or outreach of the poems. As outlined in the
introduction of this thesis, Audre Lorde argued that poetry was considered a less “serious” form of literature, and often left for “Colored women” to write (116). Indeed, a considerable amount of successful Instagram poets are women of color, as are my three primary poets, yet the temporal contexts and changed societies in which these two aspects operate have changed the way their poetry is read compared to Lorde's time, which I will be examining in this chapter. Through a racial and postcolonial framework, I wish to examine the modern cultural consequences of these poets’ language, the ways in which they use their platforms, and how their poetry and platforms coincide with society's understanding of postcolonial literature. A Professor of Media, Gender and Postcolonial studies, Sandra Ponzanesi asks “what is the added value of defining the ‘postcolonial cultural industry’ as separate” in a modern context, and also what is lost when postcolonial studies homogenize culture (47). The homogenization of culture occurs when art is left undistinguished from other art for the sake of cultural acceptance and or ease of contextualizing it.
What I wish to explore is indeed what is gained and lost, and what is problematized when homogenizing art, in this case Instagram poetry, for the sake of “colorblindedness” and how this is situated in the sphere of social media platforms. I will be arguing that it is not the responsibility of the artist of color to produce didactic work for the sake of the white reader, just as Lorde argues, whilst examining how Instagram poets Rupi Kaur, Yrsa Daley-Ward and Nayirrah Waheed use
their platforms and language. Situating their poetry in a postcolonial cultural industry indicates the problems between the historical fetishisation of “ethnic chic” art, and also within that of
“colorblindness”, both differing and problematic concepts by which to frame and analyse their work. I shall be applying critical work on race and poetry such as that of Jahan Ramazani, Audre Lorde and Sandra Ponzanesi in order to explore representations of race in Instagram poetry, the gravity of the poet's voice, language, identity, and how the medium itself reflects and conflicts with representation, appropriation and intersectionality.
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, as relayed by Ponzanesi, denounced art as having been commodified in the mid-twentieth century through “mass deception” (11). They argued that “art as a critical tool had been replaced by art as a commodity” (Ponzanesi, 12). This, as Ponzanesi points out, is problematic as it homogenizes culture and art, not allowing for the critical analysis of art in a wider global framework but instead generalizing all art under Western taste and influence. Written while many countries were still under colonial rule, their argument obviously fails to take into account art in a postcolonial context. Ponzanesi uses their critique in order to address the way in which what, “at the height of modernism, was seen as ‘primitive art’ and within the current global market as ‘cultural otherness/diversity’ or [...] ‘ethnic chic’” (21). When considering Instagram poetry created by women of color in the modern age of technology, and the
unprecedented scope of communication and distribution, the same risk of homogenization occurs through the anonymity and lack of context that often comes with Instagram. As “ the ephemerality of Instagram prevents knowledge of exactly who reposts Kaur’s images or how many of her photos have been circulated—since screenshots of Insta-art are outside of the artist’s control”, work
is often taken out of context, sometimes resulting in the problematic erasure of important racial frameworks in poems (Kruger) .
Rupi Kaur's poetry is read by many people globally through Instagram, who buy her books, attend her masterclasses and workshops, and her spoken word or reading events. Although some of her poems do address her experience as a woman of color and as a first generation
immigrant to Canada from the Punjab region of India, the majority of her poems seem to cater to people of all ethnic backgrounds:
“i am of the earth
and to the earth i shall return once more life and death are old friends
i am their late-night chatter their laughter and tears what is there to be afraid of
if i am the gift they give to each other this place never belonged to me anyway i have always been theirs”
(@rupikaur_, 29 January 2020).
She writes “i am of the earth”, a symbolic trope which she often uses in her poetry to emphasise the temporality and earthly connectedness of humanity, which, in this context, seems to have the effect of homogenization. Ramazani in “Poetry and Race: An Introduction”, writes that
“we should question one-sided paradigms, whether avant-gardist or nominally colorblind, that risk evacuating identity categories just at the historical moment when formerly
marginalized groups and subjectivities are asserting them for political, social and aesthetic purposes” (xi-xii).
Kaur's above poem is “nominally colorblind” and indeed risks “evacuating identity categories” by not mentioning race, as Ramazani suggests. However, one of the questions I am asking is; does she always need to talk about race as a woman of color? It is not Kaur’s obligation to address race, as this refuses her the right to simply be a poet. From a consumerist perspective, by writing poems such as these which do not mention race, Kaur appeals to a wider audience globally, by addressing “life and death”, “laughter and tears” whilst also dispossessing herself. She inadvertently positions herself as a writer of homogenizing, seemingly “colorblind” poems yet also ones that unite readers through modern “political, social and aesthetic purposes”.
Long before Instagram poetry, Lorde wrote that “white women ignore their built-in privilege of whiteness and define woman in terms of their own experience alone”, fueling their “reluctance to see Black women as women and different from themselves” (117-18). By reading Kaur's poetry in either her print books or on-screen through a colorblind lens, the white reader ignores their own whiteness, consciously or not, and, in doing so, fails to engage with
intersectionality or their privilege. Perhaps Kaur would not have garnered the success and following she has if it were not for her homogenization of the human experience, yet she does allow space for race and, whether she chooses to write about it all the time or not, is a woman of color.
“it is a blessing
to be the color of earth do you know how often
flowers confuse me for home”
(@rupikaur_, 2 October 2019).
I do not believe that as a woman of color it is Kaur's responsibility to limit her poetry to only address topics of race and gender, however, she does use her platform to a certain extent for this. By “confus[ing]” her with “home”, the “flowers” are personified yet the body is abstracted. By again placing her body as the earth in an almost religious way, a “blessing”, she provides a
metaphor for the color of her skin, yet dehumanizes and detaches her body as if it does not belong to her, as in the previous poem where she writes “i have always been theirs”. This “theirs” in relation to bodily dispossession could refer to a higher being, her poem like a short prayer, a verse of a scripture in which her body is situated as the earth but also a subject of it. This reflects an escapism from the reality of living as a woman of color in a “white” country in which she was not born, however the language is also literally grounding, bringing the experience back to the
simplicity of nature.
Kaur's poetry and Instagram following can also be read from another perspective, not one of colorblindness and homogenization, but one of racial fetishization. In a postcolonial setting, over seventy years since India gained independence from British colonial rule, Indian culture is, as Ponzanesi observes, often considered as a “neo-Orientalism” and has ignited an obsession for “asian cool” (33). Through a “new popularity of literature from India and its diaspora” (Sengupta in Ponzanesi, 36) which emerged in the late nineties, “the triumph of English, as a language, a literature and a way of being, can be celebrated” (Appadurai in Ponzanesi, 35). Appadurai here argues that by exoticizing and fetishizing Indian culture, the Western world is actually just praising
their own colonial Anglicized influence. However, Indian culture is also considered to be “uniquely different and inherently marketable” for the Western consumer, not as a reflection of a successful colony but as an exotic “other” which is coveted for its difference and brought closer through othering (Ponzanesi, 43).
Instagram, a visual platform, provides an easier access to this “fetishization”, as I outline below. The alternating posts of poems and photos on Kaur's Instagram account sometimes feature photographic portraits of herself wearing traditional Punjabi dress. Her online image, as it were, caters to her poetry, advertising her speaking events and her books, and is bound up in the aesthetic which Ramazani attributes to marginalized poets. Her poems all use the same black typewriter font, sometimes with her illustrations accompanying the text which are all sandwiched between posts that could be confused with any so-called “influencer” on Instagram, but what she is selling is not sponsored products but her poetry. I do not wish to denounce the selling of products via
aesthetically-directed photos of oneself as influencers do on Instagram, I am rather suggesting that the “product” that Kaur is selling is not the version of Indian culture fetishized by the West, nor is it a representation of a “successful” Western integration, but instead a fetishization of the aesthetic style of poetry which she knows to be popular on Instagram.
Ponzanesi concludes that, in order to separate the postcolonial cultural industry from the cultural aesthetic and art industry in general, we must ask the question:
“Do we assume a cosmopolitan critical participant who does not succumb to entertainment and the suspension of critical awareness? Or do we engage with a multi-sited reading which varies not only across space and time but also according to the ‘postcolonial
literacies’ entailed in the decoding, as Hall would say, or deconstruction of certain meaning, as Spivak would phrase it?” (47).
The “critical participant” of an Instagram page could be both “cosmopolitan” and indeed “succumb to entertainment and the suspension of critical awareness”. By categorizing the critical participant, “multi-sited” readings are lost. What they inevitably do incorporate, however, is an unconscious postcolonial perspective, which, in the West, has the dangerous effect of homogenizing culture, yet is also a problematic demand for women of color artists to only write about their race and gender, something which would never be expected or respected of a white artist. The language of Kaur's poetry often indicates a homogenous readership:
“it isnt blood that makes you my sister it's how you understand my heart as though you carry it
in your body”
(@rupikaur_, 24 May 2019).
This poem adheres to a female readership which overshadows race and skin color, and instead focuses on solidarity and “understand[ing]” on a deeper level, literally within the “heart”. The poem also seems to nod to ee cummings, a poet which Kaur's style is not unlike, through the notion of “carrying” someone else's “heart” as the 1952 cummings poem “i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)” reads. Deliberate or not, the reference to cummings’ poem here is striking as he, a dead white male, seems an odd choice to homage here, despite their stylistic similarities. Kaur has indeed acknowledged in an interview that “ee cummings was doing all
lowercase before I was even born”, defending herself against plagiarism accusations by saying “I have never claimed that form” (Arora, 2018). Kaur has insisted that her style is a reworking of Gurmukhi script from her native Punjab which does not use capitalisation or punctuation (faq, rupikaur.com). By referencing cummings, Kaur seemingly embraces the paradigms of literature which her poetry otherwise tries to reject; that of the colonial white male. It is problematic to situate her in the tradition of cummings, particularly given that her poetry embraces themes of
womanhood and her experience as a South Asian woman. However, this argument also perpetuates the idea of fetishized “ethnic art” and therefore should not be framed around the originality of the dead white male author but instead around the artistic intention and reference behind Kaur’s poetry, in this case the content of the poem which addresses the theme of embodied love.
Yrsa Daley-Ward, a Black British woman, writes about themes of love, earth,
environmentality and the durability that comes with these issues. Her poetry addresses race less than Kaur's, in fact the only poem mentioning her Blackness that appears on her Instagram page is in an image of her standing in front of one of the poems she published in bone (2014) printed on a wall, which reads:
“I am the tall dark stranger those warnings prepared you for.”
(@yrsadaleyward, 2 October 2017).
Her poems have also garnered international success, on and off Instagram, and by talking about her pain she defies the trope of women of color having to write about their race:
and compatibility
how it kicks you in the belly every now and then.”
(@yrsadaleyward, 26 November 2019)
This short poem emphasizes the mundane pain of love that comes and goes “every now and then”, for people alike. Daley-Ward often leaves aside her race in her poetry despite being
unapologetically Black. She addresses inherent racism which labels her as the dangerous “dark stranger”, yet she channels her poetic writing into that of heartbreak and love rather than limiting herself to topics of race as postcolonial fetishization would expect.
“The cultural capital of poetry and its strong association with issues of language and
identity, of who speaks for whom and how, have made it a significant site of ethnolinguistic contention” (Ramazani, ix).
The “cultural capital” of Instagram poetry is outlined in my second chapter on creative and digital labor, yet the issues of language and identity and the weight of the voice of the “speaker” or writer are indeed important when considering the cultural postcolonial and “ethnolinguistic” implications of Instagram poetry, especially when they seem to be absent. Daley-Ward need not mention her race, nor shape her poetry around themes that only affect the African diaspora, however, the act of writing pain is inherently tied up with her being a Black woman. If we are to then consider “race as a comparative social form”, then the writings of women of colour helps us “reframe race beyond the idiom or ‘container’ of identity and to reflexively interrogate the parameters within
contemporary poetic works where explicit racial reference may be absent” (Chen, 2-3). This also applies to Kaur referencing cummings, as the form of the poem is changed according to the content and experience of the poet, especially in terms of her race. Therefore neither women can be
copying this old genre, as writing about race, explicitly or not, becomes a new form in itself.
Lorde addresses the “expectation” of Black people to “educate” white people, comparing it to a “constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future” (115). What Lorde argues is that, rather than taking it as a responsibility to educate, Black people are in fact wasting energy that could be used to improve their own futures. In terms of Daley-Ward's Instagram poetry, Lorde's argument wholly applies in that she should not be expected to always remind the reader of her race when this should be something that the reader is already aware of, without holding her, as a Black woman, to standards of educating them, something which many white readers expect even today nearly forty years after Lorde's text was published, despite the multitude of information they can access online, just as they access Instagram poetry.
The “temporality of the colonial mode of representation of otherness” which needs to be “explod[ed]” in order to reveal a “temporality that raises the possibility of impossibility within colonial rule” according to Frantz Fanon (Kara Keeling, 565), is brought to light through some of Kaur's poems which observe her “luck” in being
“the first woman in my lineage with freedom of choice. to craft her future whichever way i choose”
Her reflection on all the “mothers” and “grandmothers” before her, framed above an illustration of Indian women sat around a firepit, enhances Fanon's sense of temporality in a colonial context. As with the objects that Keeling analyzes in her essay “Looking for M—: Queer Temporality, Black Political Possibility, and Poetry from the Future”, in Kaur's poem, “the past is put in the service of the present” in order to display to the reader what the past adds to one's present, establishing distinct timelines whilst also colliding very separate issues (Keeling, 571). In the way that Lorde argues against women of color having to educate the white reader, Kaur speaks of the increased opportunity of education that she has had, as well as the “privilege” to “craft her future whichever way i choose” (@rupikaur_ 2020). By focusing on the past through “my mother and her mother and her mother before her”, Kaur reflects on the future in the same way that Keeling understands Karl Marx's famous quote that “the social revolution cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future” in that this reflects an “impossible possibility” (Keeling quoting Marx, 565, 567). By “effect[ing] a radical break with the past”, a “rupture”, poetry's temporal value seemingly lies in its historical reinterpretation or retelling of the past rather than in its linguistic or aesthetic value (Keeling, 566). The “social revolution” in this case is the attempt to reconfigure a colonial past in a postcolonial present in which race remains but colonial rule does not, nevertheless situating time as not only a concept but a mode of representation in which context cannot be ignored.
The concepts of temporality, coloniality, race and gender in this context come together through Instagram poetry. In specific terms, Instagram posts stay on the account's page, however they take on a different temporality in the way that, when they are first posted and appear on the feed of the account's followers, they are scrolled past, paused, liked or not, and then put aside as the user swipes down to the next post, or misses it entirely due to algorithms. How much gravity,
then, can an Instagram poem have if it is so easily missed or digested in such a short time? The fleeting temporality that an Instagram poem can have when scrolled past in the feed versus a more lasting effect when the reader takes time to read and digest it or when it is taken and published in print, or indeed left on the Instagram page, indicates the precarity and fragility of time in the context of poetry. The intention of anything written at any specific time technically remains in that moment, however, the language and content can last for generations, appealing or relating to any given person's life at any given time, just is the magic of poetry. As Keeling writes, “undisciplined and vulnerable, firmly rooted in our time, might we nevertheless feel, even without recognition, the rhythms of the poetry from [the] future” (579). In this way, rhythms are what allow poetry to temporally shift, despite a seeming “root[ing] in our time”, certainly, Kaur's poems reflecting on the colonial past of her ancestors are “from the future” in the way that her future and success can be congratulated as unprecedented for former generations who unknowingly wrote the future.
Kaur's poem represents the “colonial mode of representation of otherness” by reflecting on the hardships of women in the past whilst articulating her “privilege” and gratefulness as a woman in the West in this day and age (Ponzanesi, 24). “Cultural artefacts come to embody and signify meanings in the course of their circulation and consumption” (Appadurai in Ponzanesi, 24), therefore, if we are to consider the past experiences of Indian women as a “cultural artefact”, the meaning of their experiences are memorialized through the liberation and success of their female Indian descendant. In this way, Kaur acknowledges the “honor” of her position in a modern postcolonial context, without forgetting or ignoring her heritage, but at the same time repositions herself as no different from any other Canadian, a resident of a multicultural country, a world away from the Punjabi village from which she came yet still in touch with her history and the sacrifices
that were made by her family which changed the “rhythm” of the future. Through discussing temporality in terms of the form, language and content of Instagram poetry, and how it used to represent an active past, present or future - be it intended for Marx's anticipated “social revolution” or not - it nevertheless reflects the postcolonial need to address issues of the past, whilst
simultaneously working out what Instagram poetry can do for the future.
Nayirrah Waheed, an African-American poet who also found fame on Instagram, uses her platform in a rather different way than Daley-Ward or Kaur, the latter of whom she has accused of plagiarism. Comparing the two poets’ work proves that the style and language is very similar, but, as aforementioned, this open form has been in literary circulation for many decades. Nonetheless, Waheed has comparatively less followers than Kaur, yet uses her platform in a different way, and 3 has recently removed individual poems from her page, using it instead to advertise her future book with abstract images and videos of text. Her previously published print books, salt (2013) and Nejma (2014) were compiled of her Instagram poems, salt, published the year before Kaur's first print collection, milk and honey . Waheed addresses race more viscerally than Kaur, evoking identity crises, pain and shame through her use of language:
“i lost a whole continent.
a whole continent from my memory. unlike all other hyphenated americans my hyphen is made of blood. feces. bone. when africa says hello
my mouth is a heartbreak.
because i have nothing in my tongue to answer her.
i do not know how to say hello to my mother.
- african american ii”
( salt)
Waheed here constructs the African-American experience as incomparable to other ethnic groups in America, yet the purpose of the language is to evoke the pain and “heartbreak” of a life lived with knowledge that your ancestors suffered greatly with “blood. feces. bone.” which has been reduced to a mere “hyphen”. Waheed writes of loss, yet through her poetry wishes to gain
understanding of what she “does not know” on a personal level, having been born as an American citizen, a different journey than that of her ancestors transported as slaves on the Middle Passage. Despite this detachment, it is clear in Waheed’s poetry that:
“ As anyone who reads the poetry of historically oppressed and marginalized peoples knows, that work carries a strong impetus to recover repressed, often unwritten histories” (Ramazani, xix).
Certainly “repressed”, and largely “unwritten”, or rather, unread until relatively recently, the history of African Americans is relayed by Waheed using visceral imagery and simplistic form and
language, in order to “recover” the importance of telling the story of oppression and detachment, even if she cannot fathom it. Waheed “lost” a “whole continent” from her history, not knowing how to say “hello” to her “mother”, her heritage. The disconnect relayed in this poem reflects the need for these stories to be told not only to white postcolonial readers but also to other African Americans, so neither will forget the trauma that was inflicted on Black people. The language that
Waheed uses is harsher and more affecting than Kaur's, as if she is less concerned with the aesthetic than with using her platform to make her voice as a black woman heard and heard again in an emancipatory way.
Ponzanesi writes of this emancipatory function of the cultural industry, which I would like to re-specify in this context to Instagram poetry, that it
“do[es] not co-opt and cannibalize the postcolonial hype for mere commercial purposes, but participate[s] in the promotion of new aesthetic and political parameters of appreciation and evaluation that open up new venues for emancipating the postcolonial from its niche market” (47).
Through Instagram poetry, then, the postcolonial “hype” is allowed aesthetically and politically through art to rearticulate the commercialisation of suffering. Rather than “cannibaliz[ing]” the “ethnic chic” of postcolonial art, Instagram poetry by women of color allows for the spreading of awareness and evoking a compassionate understanding from the white reader, without capitalizing on the suffering inflicted by this group through “new aesthetic and political parameters of
appreciation”. The West is then left to repent for the actions of their predecessors through appreciating and understanding postcolonial art without capitalizing on it for their own profit, which Instagram allows, whilst also giving the reader the option to buy the print versions of these poems, supporting the artistic plight of the women of color who created the content and who are directly affected by the content of this poetry. The poems of Waheed and Kaur which directly address race and gender do not allow the white reader to consume their art passively. By
and emancipate the postcolonial from its niche market through accessible and trendy styles of open form poetry posted on Instagram. However, Ponzanesi suggests earlier in her text, contrary to her praise of the postcolonial cultural industry as having “emancipatory” powers, that “the
consumption of ethnic difference does not guarantee emancipation but, on the contrary, can trigger the re-instalment of pernicious forms of racism and exclusion” (37). While this is certainly true in many cases, the example in Ponzanesi's text being the UPS marketing campaign of 2002 which read “What Can Brown Do For You?”, referring to the color of their parcels yet evoking a deeply unsympathetic and ignorantly racist rhetoric, I believe that in the case of Instagram poetry, and to agree with Ponzanesi's later argument of emancipating postcolonial art from its former niche bracket, that its consumption encourages in clusion and education of difference and responsibility through language and aesthetics.
Despite the universal consumption and widespread success of Instagram poetry, one is still hyper-aware of the commodification of such an art form on a social media application. As
Cashmore wrote in 1997 during the peak of the hip-hop movement, “whites not only appreciate black culture: they buy it” (Ponzanesi, 27). Perhaps this is why these Instagram poets branched out from the platform into print poetry when previously their art was “summon[ed]” for free “with a button” (Cashmore in Ponzanesi, 28). Cashmore explains how “blackness has been transformed into a marketable commodity, a profitable good for multinational entertainment corporations, mostly owned by whites” (31). Indeed the publishing industry is overwhelmingly white, a survey in 2015, DBS.1 (Diversity Baseline Survey), revealed that 79 percent of people working in publishing in the USA described themselves as white, with a second survey in 2019 revealing that
this number had not changed. This problematically high percentage of white publishers reflects 4 again the commodification of postcolonial literature, especially that of women of color, as they are not proportionally represented in the industry but are still arguably used as “exotic chic”
commercialized artists, as previously seen on Instagram and therefore expected to garner success and profit for the publishing houses. Waheed self-published her first book, salt, when she had difficulties with publishers, reflecting the difficulties of being published at all, but this is also surprising considering the ease at which Kaur's first collection milk and honey garnered success. Perhaps this was due to Kaur's higher number of Instagram followers, or, because her work was considered more “accessible” or “whitewashed”, as milk and honey refers less to race than Waheed's poems in salt. There are still many renowned published poets of color, and I am not forgetting the fact that “ poetry has long been a valuable space for both constructing and deconstructing racial identities” (Ramazani, xii) . However, there is still an undeniably smaller proportion of writers of color and the publishing industry reflects this. Instagram is not a publishing organization, what it instead does is enable visibility and, as I address in the next chapter on
creative and digital labor, provides a “stepping stone” for poets to print, implicating a changing literary process and a different kind of promotion or discovery platform for writers and readers globally.
Ultimately, Instagram as a platform allows for unprecedented access to art and literature for anyone with a smartphone, wherever they live and whatever their race or gender. However, with so much access comes a responsibility and an awareness in a postcolonial age. However
“relatable” the content of the poems, erasing the race and gender of the poet in order to cater the
poem to the reader’s literary or aesthetic needs creates a whitewashed ignorance which only white people have the privilege to assume. Rupi Kaur, Nayirrah Waheed and Yrsa Daley-Ward prove that poetry is alive and thriving, but also use their platforms to articulate the problems with Western assimilation and culture, and the problematic expectation addressed by Lorde that women of color are held responsible to educate the white reader on issues of race. The cultural industry which Adorno and Horkheimer criticized so fervently in the mid-twentieth century has reached levels of consumerism that far bypass that of the 1940s, however, the industry now takes into consideration the art of people of color not just as “primitive” or “ethnic chic” for Westerners but instead as art like any other. Just as on Instagram it is the responsibility yet also the choice of the reader to educate themselves on the experience of the artist or not. Art is subjective and no platform can control the way it is individually consumed, however, through a postcolonial education and understanding, the cultural industry can evolve in an intersectional fashion whilst avoiding homogenization.
Chapter 2: Creative and Digital Labor
Labor, be it for capital gain or for creative expression, has been theorized and complicated as the digital age of computers, social media, artificial intelligence and accessibility has evolved. What is considered to be true labor under a capitalist society is debated and questioned, and the role of the worker changes along with it. In this chapter I will be examining in particular Angela McRobbie's book Be Creative: Making a Living in The New Culture Industry (2016) and Tiziana Terranova's essay “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy” (2000) amongst others, in order to explore the concept of “creative digital labor” in relation to the Instagram poetry of Rupi Kaur and Yrsa Daley-Ward. By discussing the “pleasure” derived from work - brought up by both McRobbie and Terranova - and how the artists’ self-satisfaction or fulfillment is often used to justify their free labor, I will discuss the perks of cultural work such as defining one's “cultural identity” or gaining “upward mobility”, and what the impact of a changed working landscape, including location and types of digital labor, indicates for Instagram poetry as an aspect of work and of a consumed product (McRobbie, 31). I will be exploring the exploitation of creative and digital labor throughout this chapter in different contexts which I will distinguish here: Firstly, I refer to the exploitation of the artist in the sense of releasing their work for free online where it can easily be plagiarized or pirated. The same exploitation occurs when “who is a worker and what should count as work [is blurred], and the [worker's] right to reject work” is denied (Walton & Luker, 3). Secondly, I also refer to the exploitation of the Instagram user in relation to their unpaid digital labor of liking and commenting which determines the algorithms and therefore whether or not a post becomes successful or not. Thirdly, I will discuss whether or not either of these
definitions of exploitation can be considered as exploitative if they are done willingly or completed within an education programme, “self-exploitative” even, or if the act of unpaid labor itself is intrinsically exploitative (Bridgstock & Cunningham, 12).
Kaur and Daley-Ward's poetry are forms of digital labor through their production,
distribution and means of capital, the poets themselves are “digital artisans” (Terranova 35). These “artisans” set the precedent for digital labor in the modern age as well as the forms of labor that appear on Instagram, poetry being one of them. I distinguish between “digital artisan” and “digital laborer” by the type of work that is produced. The “artisan” seems to be the one posting art or content, in this case the Instagram poet, the “laborer” is the Internet user. One could argue that initially, Instagram poets were “acting out a desire for [socially shaped] affective and cultural production” by creating and posting accessible and affective art on a widely visible platform that was often “shaped” by modern cultural, aesthetic and thematic trends (Terranova, 36-7). However, “in the digital economy the worker achieves fulfillment through work and finds in her brain her own, unalienated means of production”, therefore in the digital world, the worker - in this case the poet - is seemingly exploited through the assumed intentions behind her work and the platform onto which she is posting said work (Terranova, 38).
To assume that the intention behind an Instagram poet's work is purely based on intellectual and cultural satisfaction would undermine the capital value of their work as “real work” and the success which they have garnered as artists. Terranova goes on to write that “free labor is the moment where this knowledgeable consumption of culture is translated into productive activities that are pleasurably embraced and at the same time often shamefully exploited” (37). However, her definition does not account for the kind of creative work that Instagram falls under, as Instagram
poetry is not necessarily “shamefully exploited” but instead “embraced” in order for it to become something more than “free labor”. She further suggests that free labor is “not necessarily exploited labor” if it is “willingly conceded in exchange for the pleasures of communication and exchange” (48). Therefore, the definition of exploitation is complicated by personal experience, opinion, and the volume of the work done, resulting in a torn perception of how the platform is and should be used.
In terms of unpaid labor at the other end of the screen, the Instagram user also spends hours of their time searching for and looking at online content, a type of digital labor in itself. Engaging with posts on social media platforms such as Instagram can be considered as free labor, or purely as a form of distribution which makes available art for those who might not be otherwise exposed to it, giving a livelihood to the creator, and in the meantime requiring the free labor of Instagram users for their work to garner any success. “By circulating and interacting with hashtags and images from brand-organized events, users both promote brands and produce data on user engagement” (Afnan et al, 2). The same applies to Instagram poetry, with Kaur herself referring to her poetry and online image as aspects of her “brand” (faq, rupikaur.com). The idea that anyone posting or even browsing the Internet or an app is an exploited unpaid laborer seems rather too encompassing in a modern day context, yet it is true that this kind of unpaid labor is what maintains the paid positions and the “brands” or content. If no one scrolled through Instagram every day then there would be no need for the paid programmers, content creators, creative directors and countless more workers that keep the app within its multi-billion dollar value and as a space in which art can be posted for free.
Kaur, Waheed and Daley-Ward have all published print books, as this is the primary way to make money from Instagram poetry without taking sponsorships or working for the app. The reversal of the poems from screen to script on the one hand has the effect of a “flattening and homogenisation of personhood” in the way that it requires the Instagram poet to sell themselves as “digital artisans” with a “brand” in adhering to a certain style, whilst giving in to the capitalisation of their art (McRobbie, 94). This paradoxically enables the artist financial and creative agency; the goal for any self-employed artist. This so-called loss of “personhood” occurs when the artist's image goes from one curated online to one confined within pages. This is problematic insofar that it places Instagram as a stepping stone for credible artistic success, with the “struggling” artist left to digitally capitalize on their art until they are offered a book deal due to their online success, which may not be what they intended or imagined for their work. As aforementioned, the poets who I am analyzing, partly due to their success and visibility on Instagram, have all reached this phase and garnered enviable and uncommon international success compared to their Instagram poet peers. Instagram is not the only way for a poet to become well-known or published, some have blogs, some perform at spoken word events, some send their poems directly to publishers. The arduous process of getting published is by no means a new phenomenon, nor is it solely linked to Instagram, however what Instagram does is provide a platform that enables the poet to reach critical acclaim in print, a stepping stone to success, which in the process requires inevitable free labor.
Many Instagram poets do not achieve success to the extent of my primary poets, yet they all started somewhere and rose to fame not merely by talent or hard work, but by chance and a
Instagram poets who saturate this subsection of Instagram, their success in this “workplace” measured by how many “likes” their posts get, which also determines how much their salary will be. Without paywalls or any guarantee of payment, Instagram poets are sometimes compromised in terms of their agency as creator and laborer, and the reader becomes a passive one. By reading Instagram poetry for free on a digital application, one is exposed to art that would usually be kept hidden in a book that the reader must buy. This is what Terranova hails as “free cultural/ affective labor”, perhaps due to the “glamorization of digital labor” in the Internet age, one that does not occur for poets who attempt to get published via other means (38, 33). What is glamorized is the representation of artists who work online as having their own time and freedom to produce their art. This is perhaps irresponsibly portrayed on Instagram through the success of some poets, mirroring the “romantic ethos” of self-employed artists which McRobbie mentions in the way that, as many things online do, presents an unrealistic, or hard-to-achieve, romanticized representation of creative success (90). Instagram is designed for users to post the highlights of their lives, curating a version of their life that does not necessarily correlate to their reality. Indeed, the same applies for anyone making a living on the platform, usually influencers who receive their income through sponsorships for advertising goods, another “must” of making a living on Instagram.
For Instagram poets, there is a fine line between what Terranova outlines as “shameful exploitation” - having their work copied without payment - and imitation, with many “poets” accusing each other of copying content (37). With a form so open and relatable, and indeed one that caters to a specific aesthetic and linguistic trend, one is reminded of the suggestion by Jacob Edmond in Make it the Same: Poetry in the Age of Global Media (2019) that contemporary poetry is “repetitive” in general. Edmond observes how contemporary poetry draws on the styles of old in
