Probing ‘instaworthiness’: Siting the selfie

Abstract

This article examines ‘instaworthiness’ as a classificatory category in discourses of place-making. It engages in social-semiotic analyses of the selfies clicked at instaworthy cafes and pubs in Kolkata to highlight how the photographic performativity of selfie-taking reconfigures the notions of placemaking. It accounts for: how is an ‘instaworthy’ spot made and consumed? What ramifications does showcasing the self within these specific sites have upon perceptions of identity, both of the self and the space in question? In locating photographic practices of selfies within the wider shifts of the heuristics of ‘instaworthiness’, this article teases out how the self interacts with a diverse range of non-human actors toward conferring visual apartness upon certain spaces. Thus, producing and circulating selfies as a performance warrant thinking through how discourses of the self and that of spatiality co-constitute each other.