“What’s that behind you?” — self-curation for remote working
The way we curate our image is also an attempt at creating ourselves as commodities.
Are you a gamer? That was the first question I was asked as I logged into an online meeting.
As someone who had just recently bought a Nintendo Switch and even more recently finished Hollow Knight just having just earned some legitimacy to call myself a gamer, that question took me by surprise.
Erm, yes. I game. Why do you ask?
Your chair
Ahhhh, of course.
What I had forgotten was that I was taking this meeting at my friend’s house (who is a ‘proper gamer’, with all the bells and whistles) instead of my carefully curated home office.
Ok fine, home office is a bit too generous. It’s a tiny corner next to my kitchen/living room. But it doesn’t matter where its located or how big or small it is. What matters is what people see when I’m “in office.”
Depending on how I strategically position my laptop, you either see the view out of my window (reserved for the days I haven’t cleaned my apartment) or a corner of my living room showcasing my yucca (the only plant I could keep alive), a painting by Alina Effendi (one of my most prized possessions), and a small bookshelf.
What you don’t see — concealed expertly from view — is that underneath the bookshelf is the TV, paused probably on whatever reality tv series Netflix has just released.
So why am I making these careful choices? And am I the only one? Turns out, I’m not alone in this.
Most of us give a fair bit of thought into how we curate our spaces and in turn, how we represent ourselves in this emerging world of remote working.
While most people I spoke to preferred to have their cameras off during online meetings, they had similar concerns when it came to turning the camera on.
Maria, a communications specialist, stated:
“We had an office branded background that we were supposed to use but it would mess with the bandwidth. So if needed, I used whatever background was in Zoom. I didn’t like my previous bed showing in the background so I used to be conscious. Now, I have a nice bed and window situation so I pretend to be really cool about it.”
She also added that people in her office “have bookshelves or paintings behind them normally which looks all professional.”
The theme of bookshelves and paintings (or rather artwork, in general) was a recurring one. Moreover, when it came to virtual backgrounds, people spoke of at least one of three things: humorous memes; clean/ home environments; and branded/company backgrounds.
All these different approaches to online meeting backgrounds can be understood through what Zygmunt Bauman (2007) calls subjectivity fetishism.
Subjectivity Fetishism
For Bauman, we are both, simultaneously, promoters of commodities and commodities ourselves. The specificity of a society of consumers, according to Bauman,is the blurring of the divide between “choosers and the things to be chosen.”
No one can become a subject without first turning into a commodity, and no one can keep his or her subjectness secure without perpetually resuscitating, resurrecting and replenishing the capacities required of a sellable commodity.
If this sounds like LinkedIn, you are right on the money.
Bauman, highly critical of social media, also extends his thesis to all situations where the complexity of the human subjective experience is flattened into ‘points’; whether that is the through social media algorithms or the the case with immigration systems aiming to attract the “brightest and the best.”
Subjectivity Fetishism & Remote Working
How exactly does Bauman’s thesis tie back into online meeting backgrounds?
Parallels can be drawn with his statement in the case of British teenagers on social networking whereby he states,
avidly and enthusiastically putting on display their qualities in the hope of capturing attention and possibly also gaining the recognition and approval required to stay in the game of socializing.
What we choose to put on display to our colleagues during the online meetings isn’t simply a window into who we are but rather is an opportunity for us to curate ourselves in a specific manner for social acceptance.
Earlier, I mentioned certain background themes that kept coming up when I conducted my research. Let’s take a deeper look into that starting with displays of books.
What can I say about books and identity that hasn’t already been said?
It was 2019, when Marie Kondo became a household name, a meme and then public enemy number one for suggesting people should have less than 30 books (misunderstandings of her words that were based not only in racism but also in capitalism). Kondo’s suggestion against hoarding books caused such an uproar because books have come to occupy the status of a sacred object (commodity fetishism) through which, we not only create ideas of ourselves but also commoditize ourselves (subjectivity fetishism). Who am I if not my top five favorite books that give you an insight into the complexity of my being?
In the same line, humorous memes, clean/home environments, and company/branded backgrounds, all speak to how we curate ourselves. The first giving a peek into one’s personality, the second giving the illusion of a look into our personal home environment (implying certain comfort and accessibility but not really) and the third, I find the most interesting.
On the one hand, it can be read as establishing firm boundaries between personal and professional life but on the other — in Bauman’s reading — it blurs the boundaries between the two while also pledging allegiance to the latter (similar to branded LinkedIn cover photos). How many of us answer the question “What do you do?/ Tell me something about yourself”, with our job titles as opposed to our hobbies, qualities, and interests.
If you follow my writings, you know that while I find Bauman highly inspiring, there are things I disagree with him specifically with, what I call, his ‘doomsday’ approach. For me, it is not as dystopian as it is for Bauman. In typical poststructuralist fashion, for me, power is productive and that allows room for resistance and disruptions. Thus, I am not fully convinced that these backgrounds are always a case of subjectivity fetishism in the Baumanian sense. Further research is needed (and so, this series will continue).
Finally, I want to mention two examples of backgrounds that weren’t necessarily a theme but were interesting nevertheless.
One of my research participants, speaking of her colleague, mentioned that her virtual background is that of “a beach.” I found this particularly interesting as this falls into a different category: aspirational. While still giving a look into her life, the aspirational background tells not only of who she is but also who she wishes to be; a bigger slice of her life.
Another participant spoke about her colleague who “did not care” and even had alcohol bottles in the background. Has she been able to reject the confines of subjectivity fetishism? Not exactly since the participant did speak about her with certain judgement. However, I do believe this is an interesting avenue to further research into with regards to the disruptive potential. As disruptions, in line with the decolonial as well as poststructural schools of thought, aren’t always necessarily about outright resistances but also, moments of negotiations.
Curation of our personas, especially, online personas isn’t a new topic — that’s what social media is after all. It is interesting that this trend of curation has moved beyond the confines of social media into curation for remote working but then again, that isn’t new either. Just when we thought we were doing away with ideas of ‘professionalism’ and moving into a more casual work culture, it turns out there’s more than meets the eye with regards to how we present who we are, and now where we are, to the world.
Resources
Consuming Life, Zygmunt Bauman
Interested in the decolonial school of thought? Read Arturo Escobar and Walter Mignolo. For poststructuralism, Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall.
