Lena Karlsson
Docent | Senior lecturer | Deputy head of department
Towards a language of sexual gray zones : feminist collective knowledge building through autobiographical multimedia storytelling
Author
Summary, in English
This article examines the narrative and discursive feminist labor of the Swedish 2010 Twitter-initiated #talkaboutit campaign focusing on sexual “gray areas.” The campaign sought to lessen the perceived gap between experience and discourse and work towards an adequate language encompassing difficult sexual situations presented as residing in the gray area between choice and coercion. Autobiographical narratives of negative sexual situations amounting to something less than rape were summoned, produced, and intensively disseminated online and in print media. I mainly analyze the autobiographical stories produced by what could be called the core members of the campaign as they signal the purpose of collective autobiographical storytelling as well as what is sayable and culturally exigent. I analyze how new grounds of contention in between sex and violence are staked out focusing equally on the feminist act of personal/political storytelling and on the story told about sexual “gray areas.” The article discusses the tension between the feminist collective, side-by-side, mode of storytelling and knowledge building and the equally present neoliberal narrative arc which culminates in a subject personally responsible for acting differently next time.
Department/s
- Department of Gender Studies
Publishing year
2019
Language
English
Pages
210-224
Publication/Series
Feminist Media Studies
Volume
19
Issue
2
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Topic
- Gender Studies
Keywords
- autobiographical storytelling
- feminist activism
- online campaign
- Rape
- sexual consent
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1468-0777