Liza Marklund och den feministiska litteraturfabriken

Abstract

In her ”true” stories Buried Alive and Asylum Granted Liza Marklund, Swedish journalist and crime writer, acts as a ghost writer for Maria Eriksson’s presumed life story of abuse, hiding and flight to the USA where she, according to Marklund’s novel, was granted asylum. In 2008 the journalist Monica Antonsson published Mia – The Truth About Buried Alive. In the book she questions the factual background of Buried Alive. Marklund argued that although some changes were made to make identification of the characters more difficult, the bulk of the story was factually correct. Antonsson’s book initiated a heated debate in webloggs in 2009. When faced with Antonsson’s critique, former fans of Marklund accused her of being a liar, protected by politicians as well as the so called media elite. In this article, the debate about Buried Alive and Marklund’s position as a popular and influential feminist, is analyzed as a manifestation of a mediatized logic consisting of the ongoing intimization, feminization and commercialization of the public sphere, which ultimately deprofessionalizes the traditional role of the writer as well as the journalist. The users of social media precipitate this development. It is argued that this intimization process is part of a desire for a new realism, elaborated in ”true stories” in both literature, film, reality shows and the art world. Buried Alive and Asylum Granted are a mixture of fact and fiction – faction – which has its roots in contemporary reality culture as well as tabloid journalism. When negotiating about truth and lies in these books, thus reconstructing a traditional discourse of accusation, the bloggers forced Marklund to defend herself. This shows that Marklund’s Buried Alive not only creates a naive emotive reader craving for the truth, but also a new ”fourth estate” public position for amateur users of social media.