The specific visuality of women of the global South in the media of the global North

Abstract

This paper examines how neoliberal, gendered discourses of globalization position marginalized communities of women in popular culture, focusing on the ways in which the media of the global North produces the specific visuality of women of the global South. The representations of women of the global South, such as factory workers, mail/online-order brides, and domestic workers, point to the globalized mode of feminization of labor and the power asymmetry inherent in globalization. By analyzing the ways in which the female body of the global South embodies commodification, sexualization, and abjection, the paper points out that women’s experiences are marginalized or erased in the neoliberal narrative of globalization. The (re)imagination of women of the global South in the media of the global North testifies to the historical legacy and discursive traditions of the colonial/imperial past and points to the reproduction and dissemination of sexualized and racialized imagery of otherness.