Abstract

In this review of Feminism and the Politics of Resilience, Angela McRobbie’s conceptualisation of the ‘perfect-imperfect-resilience dispositif’ is praised as offering a clear demarcation from McRobbie and others’ previous work on the earlier de-politicised and individualist era of postfeminism. It calls for more work in the field of feminist media and cultural studies to consider psychoanalytic approaches to questions around pleasure, affect and compulsion in girls’ and women’s popular media culture. In light of the Coronavirus crisis and with a reflection on the spectacular visibility of girls and former young female celebrities in recent mainstream media, this short essay explores two lines of inquiry in response to Feminism and the Politics of Resilience: first, what has the period of the pandemic done to the potent power of the p-i-r? And second, how might we be both careful to recognise the binaristic ways in which the girl subject is culturally constructed, while being sure not to reproduce such ‘ontologised dualisms’ of girlhood in our writing?

Highlights

  • In the competitive Higher Education climate of the Research Excellence Framework in the United Kingdom1 and the broader context of hypervisible self-promotion and European Journal of Cultural Studies 00(0)

  • The book’s key concept of the perfectimperfect-resilience dispositif is not an evolved or advanced state of postfeminism; postfeminism being that turn-of-the-21st-century context epitomised by cultural texts such as Bridget Jones’s Diary

  • Instead, emerging in the recent context of activist feminism, the p-i-r is the everyday ‘feminine pop culture’, which ‘bridges the gap between feminism and capitalism, delivering something that is palatable and that will not deter advertisers’. (McRobbie, 2020: 61) Unlike the earlier era of postfeminism in which feminism was positioned as redundant, the p-i-r is politicised with feminist rhetoric; but it is a feminism which is both profitable and central to ‘resilience training’ (McRobbie, 2020: 46)

Read more

Summary

Introduction

In the competitive Higher Education climate of the Research Excellence Framework in the United Kingdom1 and the broader context of hypervisible self-promotion and European Journal of Cultural Studies 00(0). In feminist media and cultural studies of the past 10–15 years we’ve seen a somewhat overzealous commitment to identifying and making sense of mediated feminine subjects as exemplars of a contemporary postfeminist and neoliberal subjectivity.

Results
Conclusion

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.