Servals in the Big Cities - Giving Us Glimpses
Becoming-Animal: Braidotti and Spinoza's Vitalist-Materialist WorldviewI spent about an hour sifting through the first page as I wanted to see how the woman and the serval were interacting (over the 900 posts); I realized that it was not just one serval but multiple (their names organized in the stories). This was one way that their personalities and habits could be differentiated, as it was nice to see the page owner not classify them under a monolith (just serval).
There was not much variation through time, but I found a significant difference between what was posted on the actual page and what was contained within the stories. First, within the stories, I found a particularly striking image of a woman and her serval, with a bandage across her hand to signify she was just scratched / bitten by it. If the woman wanted to preserve a perfect image of her serval, she would not post this as this could lead individuals away. Nonetheless, she felt confident that this was appropriate to do, highlighting the difference between a house cat and a serval. If the viewer has come across multiple pages without much differentiation between the two (much like how I was feeling), this image did well to not desensitize from the inflictions that servals can have on human beings / their owners. Furthermore, by linking this image in the stories, I was prompted to look at these images first as they are contained at the top of an Instagram page. Not only did the image make me want to explore deeper into the actual page, but I was more inclined to pay attention to actual posts that may have shown the serval severely biting or scratching its owner. Since their are many serval pages, I was happy to find one that did not shy away from showing a serval reacting against an owner.
Meriel1
The second page I wanted to focus on was particularly interesting as I realized the woman in the page had a child and I could track how her content was changed before and after giving birth. The main difference was that the servals did not appear in any photos with the child, clearly two separate domains despite the woman being a 'mother' to both of them. In addition, it was clear when the woman had added another serval to her family as she showed the two cats playing amongst one another, but not with the child. Usually, the videos that seem to go viral on the Internet show some sort of interaction between human and animal, and especially between child and animal. Animals often appear in picture books and are characterized to be the perfect companion piece for the child - the two can simultaneously grow up with one another. However, this is not the case for the big cat and the child, as the serval at any moment could turn on the child and harm it. Therefore, it reinforces the notion that although we see the serval being trusting towards its owner / other adults, through a subliminal message like keeping serval and child apart, it highlights that these two domains cannot intersect with one another. Of course, being a content creator on Instagram, one has to be able to consistently post about their life so it comes to no surprise why the owner of the account would take no chances between her serval and child.
No men in sight - why?
Although this project focuses on women on Instagram, the serval hashtag really only produced results that included women. Evidently, the only man that came into focus was on meriel.1's page, as he is the husband of the account owner. I wanted to leave this as an open-ended question, as I was also struggling to uncover how these men participate in these images. Definitely, they give us glimpses into how we can follow the private and public spaces - the women seen in 'domestic' spaces, such as interacting with the serval in their own home. Briefly including the 'Difference as the Principle of Not One', Braidotti affirms this posthuman subject as being bound by a: "compassionate acknowledgement of their interdependence with multiple others, most of which are anthropocene" (Braidotti, 101). Now, this seems like a task for the Western posthuman subject, as it now under posthumanism needs to recognize this condition. I think the women in these pictures, to some extent, recognize the interdependence between one another, and form their connection using this mutual recognition with one another. Now to ask why this does not seem apparent between serval/man? I do not have a definitive answer but perhaps you can comment on this binary.
Telegram
Although hashtags are facilitated through Instagram, many of the pages are linked to a popular platform in Russia, namely Telegram. The company was founded by a Russian so it is not surprising that the platform boasts a large and active user base. Especially with many social media sites being censored in Russia, it is no surprise that it's own platform has increased in popularity. Telegram's main focus is on privacy, encryption and open-source API, meaning that Telegram values the security and data of its consumers. Thus, through the access of hashtags, users can be brought to the telegram accounts of these owners and initiate further conversations, behind the wall that Telegram puts up for its users. Certainly, this makes it difficult to trace where these sales are taking place since users on Telegram have the safety net of its encrypted messaging features. Taking a description from an online article, Telegram can be summed up by: "Telegram is similar to Apple’s Messages but it has dedicated apps for all platforms – PC, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS – and it also allows you to set up secret chats with messages that can self-destruct after a set amount of time, giving you a new level of privacy".
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- Hashtags as Digital Currency Sofia Svichtcheva