| Abstract: | This paper seeks to critically examine the capacity for the internet, as a revitalized public sphere, to adequately represent women. I present the argument that the public space of the internet limits the capacity for female vocality by overcoding—in the Deleuzo–Guattarian sense of despotic, unifying, and totalizing processes of representation (Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 41. London: Athlone Press)—the female body images it solicits as aesthetic objects to be judged and consumed. I focus on forms of online polling to suggest that public judgments are powerful discursive mechanisms for the regulation and containment of the female body in public space. |
