Date of Award
Spring 5-19-2022
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Illustration & Visual Culture
Degree Type
Thesis
Abstract
This thesis project explores the phenomenological qualities of the internet; asking, since the internet is difficult to grasp, what other modes of investigation might we have available? Using an investigative framework set forth by Jack Halberstam, this thesis declines to come to knowledge solely through understanding the formal, the structural, the highly visible and mainstream. The literature that I have gathered provides a range of modes for interrogating the simultaneously central and inconsequential subject of my thesis itself: the potato. Juxtaposing the physical, political and material conditions of the potato the internet’s least academic mode of knowing: the meme. Analyzing the potato alongside the meme allows us to discuss the role of the mundane among the proposed modes of investigation.
Language
English
Program Chair
John Hendrix
Recommended Citation
Evers, Candice, "Because Potato" (2022). MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture. 11.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/mfa_illustration/11
Included in
American Material Culture Commons, American Popular Culture Commons, Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Illustration Commons, Infrastructure Commons, International Relations Commons, Mass Communication Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, Political Theory Commons, Reading and Language Commons, Social Justice Commons, Social Media Commons, Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons, Visual Studies Commons