The Power of Vulnerability: Mobilising Affect in Feminist, Queer and Anti-Racist Media Cultures - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1526133091 ISBN 13: 9781526133090

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2018

Synopsis

In popular campaigns such as #MeToo and #TimesUp, questions of power and agency are increasingly discussed as issues of injury or empowerment. Vulnerability has emerged as a key concept in these discussions and their academic analyses.

This book investigates the historical legacies and contemporary forms and effects of the language of vulnerability. In today’s media culture, traumatic first-person or group narratives have popular currency, mobilising affect, from compassion to rage, in order to gain visibility and political advantage. Vulnerability is seen as a kind of capital; not only as victimhood but also as a resource that can be adopted for various purposes. Contributors to the book, including Jack Halberstam and Sara Ahmed, examine how affect and vulnerability not only reveal but also obscure asymmetries of power, how media activism and state policies address so-called vulnerable groups, and how we determine whose vulnerability counts as socially and culturally legible.

Providing keen insights into the political potential as well as the constraints of vulnerability for feminist, queer and anti-racist criticism, the book will be of interest to scholars and students in media and cultural studies, affect theory, gender studies, queer theory and critical race studies.

About this title

About the Author

Anu Koivunen is Professor of Cinema Studies (Department of Media Studies) at Stockholm University, Sweden
Katariina Kyrölä is Lecturer in Gender Studies at Åbo Akademi University, Finland
Ingrid Ryberg is Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies at Gothenburg University, Sweden

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From the Back Cover

In popular campaigns such as #MeToo and #TimesUp, questions of power and agency are increasingly discussed as issues of injury or empowerment. Vulnerability has emerged as a key concept in these discussions and their academic analyses.

This book investigates the historical legacies and contemporary forms and effects of the language of vulnerability. In today's media culture, traumatic first-person or group narratives have popular currency, mobilising affect, from compassion to rage, in order to gain visibility and political advantage. Vulnerability is seen as a kind of capital; not only as victimhood but also as a resource that can be adopted for various purposes. Contributors to the book, including Jack Halberstam and Sara Ahmed, examine how affect and vulnerability not only reveal but also obscure asymmetries of power, how media activism and state policies address so-called vulnerable groups, and how we determine whose vulnerability counts as socially and culturally legible.

Providing keen insights into the political potential as well as the constraints of vulnerability for feminist, queer and anti-racist criticism, the book will be of interest to scholars and students in media and cultural studies, affect theory, gender studies, queer theory and critical race studies.

From the Inside Flap

In popular campaigns such as #MeToo and #TimesUp, questions of power and agency are increasingly discussed as issues of injury or empowerment. Vulnerability has emerged as a key concept in these discussions and their academic analyses.This book investigates the historical legacies and contemporary forms and effects of the language of vulnerability. In today s media culture, traumatic first-person or group narratives have popular currency, mobilising affect, from compassion to rage, in order to gain visibility and political advantage. Vulnerability is seen as a kind of capital; not only as victimhood but also as a resource that can be adopted for various purposes. Contributors to the book, including Jack Halberstam and Sara Ahmed, examine how affect and vulnerability not only reveal but also obscure asymmetries of power, how media activism and state policies address so-called vulnerable groups, and how we determine whose vulnerability counts as socially and culturally legible.Providing keen insights into the political potential as well as the constraints of vulnerability for feminist, queer and anti-racist criticism, the book will be of interest to scholars and students in media and cultural studies, affect theory, gender studies, queer theory and critical race studies.

Edition details

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1526133091
• ISBN 13: 9781526133090
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 264
• Editor: Koivunen Anu, Kyrölä Katariina, Ryberg Ingrid