'My face is not for public consumption': Selfies, surveillance and the politics of being unseen

Abstract

Using her own activist experience, Raji explores the ways activists use selfies to brand themselves within radical-chic aesthetics, on the one hand, and the aesthetics of normalcy, on the other, in response to the increased policing and criminalisation of direct action protesting in the UK. The chapter seeks to entertain other possibilities for selfie activism: selfies without the face, selfies that interrogate the politics and culture of state and corporate surveillance, and, more broadly, selfie activism that allows a space for those who want to engage in radical political discourse but do not want to be subjected to further state violence.