Suffragette “vitrinoclasm” and other militant uses of the shop window. The political instrumentalisation of the shop window

Abstract

Taking the shop window as an exhibition device that replicates the spectacularised mode of visual production and consumption characteristic of the capitalist regime of attention, this article analyses the range of disruptive and militant uses of the shop window put into practice by the suffrage movement in the early twentieth century to channel and attract attention to their demand for women's suffrage. We begin by examining the phenomenon of ‘vitrinoclasm’, a neologism understood in this study as a form of cultural resistance against the commodification of the gaze and public space embodied by the shop window. The analysis then moves on to its implementation by the suffrage movement, particularly by the most militant faction, the suffragettes, who pioneered this practice from 1908 onwards. The subsequent spectacularised intervention in shop windows and their collaboration with the commercial system (against which they had initially launched their destructive window-smashing campaign) reflects their strategic appropiation of shop window culture for political ends. This ultimately leads to an ambivalent relationship with the scopic regime and the contradictory instrumentalisation of the spectacle inherent to the shop window. Through a visual investigation of the imagery of vitrinoclasm and other militant uses of shop windows by suffragettes, this article seeks to reflect on the aesthetic and political implications of this form of resistance.