Feminist Discourse Research Articles

Feminist Discourse in Irish Literature: Gender and Power in Louise O’Neill’s Young Adult Fiction by Jennifer Mooney

<i>Feminist Discourse in Irish Literature: Gender and Power in Louise O’Neill’s Young Adult Fiction</i> by Jennifer Mooney

Cornering the Market on Maternal Affect: A Discourse Analysis of a Social Media Marketing Campaign for Infant Formula

Breastfeeding advocates and global health agencies have been sounding alarms about the dangers of digital marketing practices of the formula-feeding industry. This study comprised a feminist discourse analysis of materials produced (blog, social media posts, comments) in a paid partnership between baby formula brand Enfamil and an influencer, Marilou Bourdon from Trois fois par jour. Our analysis reveals a sophisticated marketing campaign that co-opts feminist critiques of breastfeeding promotion discourse while carefully avoiding explicitly violating the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes. Underlying this campaign is a rhetoric reliant on pathos to assuage maternal guilt and shame for feeding formula.

Open to All: Administrators’ and Teachers’ Perceptions of Issues of Equity and Diversity in Teacher Leadership

This study is a response to calls for more research on diversity in teacher leadership (TL), particularly in urban schools. Critical race theory illuminated the role race and racism can play in determining who gets access to TL positions and how that access is characterized using liberal discourse and ideology. We used a component mixed methods design to explore whether administrators and teachers perceived that teacher leadership positions were open to everyone. Beliefs that TL opportunities are “open to all” allow the field to accept the status quo, making it difficult to see (or do anything about) racial inequities.

The Rise of the Modern Witch: Analyzing Devon Cole’s ‘W.I.T.C.H.’ in Feminist Discourse

This scholarly investigation critically examines Devon Cole’s song, “W.I.T.C.H.,” within the framework of feminist discourse and its implications for women’s autonomy over their bodies. The study pursues two primary objectives: firstly, it examines Cole’s lyrical portrayal of witches as emblematic of “Women In Total Control of Herself,” and secondly, it assesses the resonance of these lyrics with established feminist theories, particularly within the context of Reproductive Justice. This inquiry is contemporarily situated amidst pivotal developments such as the 2022 Roe vs. Wade decision reversal and the emergence of stringent anti-abortion legislation. The enduring symbol of the witch has consistently persisted as a representation of feminist resistance, retaining its relevance in contemporary popular culture. Artists like Cole strategically leverage feminist theories to infuse their creative works with social commentary, thereby facilitating the dissemination of gender-related concerns. By employing the witch symbol, Cole and her contemporaries actively challenge prevailing societal norms, engendering meaningful dialogues on issues pertaining to women’s rights and autonomy. In sum, this paper illuminates the focal point of its analysis, Devon Cole’s “W.I.T.C.H.,” within the broader context of feminist theory. It underscores the significance of the feminist reinterpretation of the witch archetype and its pertinence to contemporary gender-related matters while also acknowledging the broader sociopolitical backdrop against which this discourse unfolds.

Pandemic reflections on the Care and Control exhibition: refusals, contracts and publics

This article presents reflections on our pre-Covid-19 exhibition Care and Control, and our interdisciplinary collaboration between artist Alice Tatton Brown and social scientists Maud Perrier and Junko Yamashita. The reflections expand current feminist debates about self-care and collective care by centring the importance of public space, refusals and contracts. Care and Control was designed as both an exhibition and a meeting place, created through our ongoing collaboration. It took place in a shopping centre in Bristol (UK) in June 2019. The exhibition was a collage of feminist archival objects and print, contemporary installation and community engagement. Care and Control began broadly as an experiment to seek out alternatives to an individualist approach to self-care, by researching how Women's Liberation Activists practised self-care and collective care beyond the household, and within protest, friendship and public space. In this article, we make a methodological contribution to feminist discussions of collective care by showing how our strategy of a) making a public exhibition and b) writing a Contract of Care is a significant technique for enacting some of the promise of Audre Lorde’s ‘self-care as warfare’. We show how Care and Control, drawing from the legacy of the Women's Liberation Movement, generated resources for countering definitions of self-care that predominate. Reflecting on how the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated classed, racialised and gendered divisions in reproductive labour, our article suggests that self-care and collective care need to be conceptualised drawing on social reproduction.

Let’s Talk about Gender

Abstract Within Europe, gender and Islam have a complex and often polarised discursive history. Whilst some find only repression of women in patriarchal and religious structures, others hail Islam as the birthplace of emancipation. This article explores the experiences of women who have moved out of Islam in both the Netherlands and the UK and finds that many navigate in between these narratives of suppression and liberation. The aim of this article is twofold: based on 22 life-history interviews, it firstly explores gendered experiences whilst growing up (from personal experienced inequality to observing theological or legislative problems), which may have led to various degrees of doubt or distress. It further unpacks gendered embodied experiences, such as veiling, modesty or mosque attendance as having relative importance when moving out of Islam. Secondly, this article elaborates on how these women position themselves, within religious and secular expectations of what it means to be a former Muslim woman. It explores their positionality in a polarised debate: how did they relate to the discourses of suppression and liberation, from either secular(ised) or religious environs?

Beneath Thy Protection: Portrait of the Holy Virgin as a semantic operator

Starting from the third century, many songs, prayers, and icons testify to the way the Virgin Mary – Mother of God – has been attributed the role of protecting the community. Examples include the Akhathist hymn traditionally dated to the siege of Constantinople (626), the Polish anthem “Bogurodzica”, associated with the battle of Grunwald (1410), the icon of Częstochowa that protected Poland from the Swedish invasion (1655), and numerous others. The role of menace is embodied by different enemies: infidels, heretics, or atheists. The Virgin watches over the frontier between two cultural spaces: the inside and the outside of the semiosphere. A case study will provide insight into the function played by the Madonna at the border: the Madonna of the Rocciamelone, the highest sanctuary in Europe, founded by the crusader knight Rotharius (1358). A bronze statue of the Virgin was placed in the sanctuary in 1899. A small corpus of pastoral letters written by blessed Edoardo Rosaz, bishop of Susa (Piedmont), expresses the hope that the Virgin will protect Catholics from liberal heresy. Plastic oppositions such as top/bottom, resulting from the relationship between the Virgin and the landscape, are used to manifest abstract oppositions such as reason/passion, order/disorder, and Church/revolution. This homologation helps us understand how the Virgin, placed in upper space, embodies knowledge and cognition: she becomes a lookout, allowing a transfer of values from the semantic field of war to the religious one. The Virgin guards the border of the semiosphere, the border dividing the self from the other. Her function is the semiotization of incoming materials, transforming external non-communication into information and meaning. This article thus considers the Virgin as a semantic operator inverting the values of liberal discourse into information stored in Catholic cultural space. A mathematical model of the function played by the Virgin will be presented in the terms of quantum computing.

Sexual liberation and religious obligation – the ‘liquid authenticity’ of ‘traditionalist’ bachelorettes in the Israeli dating scene: a phenomenological study

ABSTRACT Following Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of ‘Liquid Modernity’, the term ‘Liquid Authenticity’ is ascribed to a community that holds a type of identity known in Israel as ‘traditional’ and does not purely conform with either the secular or religious identity categories. This concept is examined through an ethno-phenomenological study of female university students who identify with this category and go out on numerous dates through dating apps. These women proclaim a sexual liberation discourse on the one hand, while declaring that they are non-liberal and aspire towards having a traditional family and a Jewish traditional lifestyle. They see no contradiction between their sexual rhetoric, 'erotic capital' and their Jewish-traditional-religious core identities. The article's main argument is that the category to which these women belong is one of many emerging categories in Israeli society that are characterized by ”Liquid Authenticity”: a form of authenticity expressing a cooptation of discourses towards identity-based ethoses and cores. At first glance a feminization of the religious discourse may be suspected, but as illustrated it is rather a cooptation of liberal language and practices into a religious-traditional identity. Similar ”liquid authenticity” configurations can be noted among additional discourse communities and specifically political communities in Israel.

The “Smart City” between Urban Narrative and Empty Signifier: Shaggar in Focus

The objective of this study is to critically analyze the concept of the “Smart City” and its implications within the context of Shaggar. The study aims to explore the relationship between urban narratives and the empty signifiers associated with the “Smart City” concept, with a focus on understanding the underlying tensions and contradictions that arise during the implementation of smart urban initiatives. This study employs a qualitative research approach, utilizing a combination of document analysis, interviews, and observation techniques. Primary and secondary data sources, including official city plans, policy documents, media reports, and expert interviews, are used to gather information and insights. Thematic analysis is employed to identify recurring patterns and themes related to the “Smart City” concept, urban narratives, and empty signifiers in Shaggar. The findings of this study reveal that the “Smart City” concept in Shaggar is shaped by multiple urban narratives, including the discourse of technological progress, sustainability, and efficiency. However, the analysis also highlights the presence of empty signifiers, where the “Smart City” concept often lacks clear definitions, goals, and tangible outcomes. This disconnects between narratives and signifiers create tensions and challenges during the implementation of smart urban initiatives in Shaggar. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that the “Smart City” concept in Shaggar is a complex amalgamation of urban narratives and empty signifiers. The presence of multiple narratives contributes to the allure and promise of the “Smart City” vision, while the lack of clear signifiers results in ambiguity and challenges during implementation. This study underscores the need for critical examination and contextual understanding when envisioning and implementing “Smart City” initiatives. Based on the findings, this study recommends that policymakers, urban planners, and stakeholders in Shaggar and similar contexts should prioritize the development of clear and context-specific definitions, goals, and metrics for “Smart City” initiatives. It is crucial to engage with local communities, incorporate their perspectives, and ensure transparency and accountability in the implementation process. Furthermore, interdisciplinary collaborations and continuous evaluation of projects are essential to address the tensions between narratives and signifiers and to promote more inclusive and sustainable smart urban development in Shaggar and beyond.

Gendered machines in film and television: How ‘post-’ femininities and masculinities challenge the gender binary

Motivated by the representation of robots in film and television, this work examines the role of emerging femininities and masculinities in revisiting the gender binary. The gendered cyborg has been a common trope in cultural texts and a favourite topic in feminist discourse, regarding how it exposes the artificiality of this binary. The case studies are the films Ex Machina and I’m Your Man, and the television series Westworld. The ‘post’-femininities and masculinities are explored through the depiction of gendered robots and their relationships with humans. By drawing on the intersection between feminist and queer theory and posthumanism, this article combines a close reading of gendered representations with an analysis of how they visualise post-gender worlds.

On the Shoulders of a Perfect Stranger: Knowledge Gap About the Indigenous Sámi in the Finnish Teacher Education Curriculum

ABSTRACT Motivated by the growing discussion of the decolonial significance of teacher education (TE) and the problematic mainstream knowledge gap about Indigenous peoples, this study examines Finnish TE curriculum discourses that limit or enable attaining knowledge about and from the Sámi people (henceforth, ‘Sámi knowledge’). The topic is approached through critical discourse analysis and Susan Dion’s theory of the ‘perfect stranger’, a subjective position impeding engagement with Indigenous-related knowledges and reforms. The findings indicate that the formal curricula of the renowned Finnish TE perpetuate future teachers’ perfect stranger position by overriding critical and Indigenous perspectives with biased narratives and liberal discourses uncommitted to social change. Contextualizing the findings within the Finnish system, this study discusses how inadequate institutional support for disrupting the perfect stranger positionality leaves the reality of Sámi knowledge unsustainably dependent on future teachers and calls into question the education system’s capacity to address the knowledge gap undermining Sámi rights in Finland.

The African Union’s Silencing the Guns: between stereotyping and owning gender roles

Following the motto “African Solutions for African Problems”, the African Union (AU) fosters its agency as a regional actor on gender policies. The Silencing the Guns campaign represents one example. Here, the AU attempts to link gender, peace and security policies. Taking the AU’s motto into account, this research explores to what degree Silencing the Guns is driven by the understanding of gender roles linked to African Feminisms, and to what degree gender assumptions of other feminist traditions are embedded. With the help of hypervisibility as a concept, stereotypes will be put into the context of Silencing the Guns. To answer the research question, a mixed-methods approach is applied for data collection. The results clearly indicate references to African feminist theories such as Womanism. In particular, these results help introduce a discussion around epistemological power hierarchies in feminist discourse defining what (harmful) gender stereotypes are for whom. Although there is a common understanding among most of the feminist researchers that gender is a social construct influenced by socio-cultural contexts, the socio-cultural context of the Global North seems to be the universal departure point to investigate gender stereotypes. However, leaving out the various socio-cultural contexts in the Global South that shape gender as a social construct distorts the knowledge about how gender stereotypes function in different societies. Consequently, the main output of this research is a call to rethink the universal claim on how gender stereotypes are defined and interpreted and to urgently encounter multiple decolonial approaches of epistemology, methodology and ontology.

Male Objectification in Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies: A Deconstructive Reading

This paper explores the often-overlooked issue of male objectification in literature, using Jokha Alharthi’s novel Celestial Bodies (2019) to illustrate the concept. While traditional objectification theory focuses primarily on the objectification of women, this study seeks to broaden the conversation by analyzing how male objectification is depicted in the novel. This paper utilizes a deconstructive reading to examine how the novel depicts both men and women fighting against objectification and oppression. In addition, the study examines the evolution of Feminism in traditional Arabic society and sheds light on the role of literature in challenging societal norms and advancing critical thinking. By uncovering the multiple meanings and perspectives within the text, this study contributes to a broader discussion of objectification in literature and society. This paper suggests that Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies is an important contribution to feminist discourse and an essential read for those interested in understanding the intersectionality of gender and objectification in literature.

Coping with the cold: unveiling cryoprotectants, molecular signaling pathways, and strategies for cold stress resilience.

Low temperature stress significantly threatens crop productivity and economic sustainability. Plants counter this by deploying advanced molecular mechanisms to perceive and respond to cold stress. Transmembrane proteins initiate these responses, triggering a series of events involving secondary messengers such as calcium ions (Ca2+), reactive oxygen species (ROS), and inositol phosphates. Of these, calcium signaling is paramount, activating downstream phosphorylation cascades and the transcription of cold-responsive genes, including cold-regulated (COR) genes. This review focuses on how plants manage freeze-induced damage through dual strategies: cold tolerance and cold avoidance. Tolerance mechanisms involve acclimatization to decreasing temperatures, fostering gradual accumulation of cold resistance. In contrast, avoidance mechanisms rely on cryoprotectant molecules like potassium ions (K+), proline, glycerol, and antifreeze proteins (AFPs). Cryoprotectants modulate intracellular solute concentration, lower the freezing point, inhibit ice formation, and preserve plasma membrane fluidity. Additionally, these molecules demonstrate antioxidant activity, scavenging ROS, preventing protein denaturation, and subsequently mitigating cellular damage. By forming extensive hydrogen bonds with water molecules, cryoprotectants also limit intercellular water movement, minimizing extracellular ice crystal formation, and cell dehydration. The deployment of cryoprotectants is a key adaptive strategy that bolsters plant resilience to cold stress and promotes survival in freezing environments. However, the specific physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying these protective effects remain insufficiently understood. Therefore, this review underscores the need for further research to elucidate these mechanisms and assess their potential impact on crop productivity and sustainability, contributing to the progressive discourse in plant biology and environmental science.

VOICING VULNERABILITY: MEDIATING VIOLENCE, VICTIMISATION AND FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY IN NORA GOMRINGER'S MONSTER POETRY*

ABSTRACTThis chapter examines poetic works by the Swiss‐German performance poet Nora‐Eugenie Gomringer that draw on monsters as a conceptual lens to engage with experiences of vulnerable subjects, that is, those that have experienced harm or violence or are considered especially susceptible to these risks. The anthology Monster Morbus Moden (2013–17), with its initial collection Monster Poems (2013), reflects poetically on how female subjects and their bodies, which are conventionally represented as weak, are simultaneously and paradoxically considered dangerously non‐normative and in need of policing. Gomringer explores how this paradox emerges from the interplay of textual and media surfaces, institutional logic and intersubjective power imbalances. The author employs an experimental mix of intertextual, intermedial and performative strategies that draws attention to the embodied and culturally iterative nature of such subject constructions. Putting emphasis on visualising and voicing victimisation, these works can be seen to probe to what extent a monstrous poeticisation of such experiences might shift stereotyping scopic regimes that produce the conditions for the widespread sexual violence against women or curtail reproductive freedoms. This experimentation, this article argues, seeks to establish awareness around the potential mobility of the concept of ‘vulnerability’ that has also been raised in recent feminist discussions.

Media Coverage of Intimate Partner Violence Incidents in Russia Amid the Conservative Turn

In the literature, the period 2017–2018 has been identified as a time when feminist discourse emerged in the Russian media, with the topic of domestic violence (DV) as one of the main sub-discourses. This suggests that mainstream media can act as an agent of positive social change in relation to gender issues, even amid a broader ‘conservative turn’. This study interrogates this argument by examining changes in representations of intimate partner violence (IPV) in Russian media during the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time when increased attention was given to the global ‘shadow pandemic’ of violence in the home.

Lolita in the #MeToo era. New interpretations of Nabokov’s novel by contemporary female authors

The article is devoted to ‘Nabokov’s imprint’ on several contemporary novels (K. E. Russell’s My Dark Vanessa, Lin Yi-Han’s Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise, and V. Springora’s Consent: A Memoir of Stolen Adolescence) that revisit the story of Lolita and relate it on behalf of the underage girl sexually abused by her teacher or tutor. The author explores the poetics of the novels and their emergence from feminist discourse and particularly the campaign against sexual harassment and rape culture that started in 2017 using the hashtag #MeToo. Detailed in P. Boyarkina’s study is the image of an unreliable narrator, brilliantly exploited by Nabokov, who teases his reader by letting them decide on the trustworthiness of the narrator’s story and where the author’s view ends and the narrator’s version begins. Modern novels tend to complicate things even further: the unreliable narrator successfully manipulates both the reader and the female protagonist who tells the story of love and abuse.

Symptom and Evidence: Feminism as a Form of Psychoanalysis

For about sixty years, feminism has been in a complicated relationship with psychoanalysis. On the one hand, psychoanalysis deals with topics important to feminism, and many of its ideas could be rethought. On the other hand, the substantive contradictions between feminism and psychoanalysis hinder their productive collaboration. This article proposes that the problems faced by the project of feminist psychoanalysis arise not so much from the differences as from the similarities between these two discourses. The feminist view is based on the basic foundations of psychoanalysis. The structure of society in feminism is understood in the same fashion as the psychoanalytic unconscious. Feminist discourse aims to “capture” a symptom and offer it up for interpretation. At the same time, the interpretive apparatus of feminism differs from psychoanalytic theory for it is based on an internally coherent system of prescriptions. So long as the symptom is successfully interpreted, political involvement is something that feminism has hopes to achieve. Thus individual cases are taken as analogous to the “conscious” in psychoanalysis and the system of prescriptives the “unconscious”. In such a way a “collective” political subject can be formed. Since psychoanalysis and feminism find the causes of the symptom in different areas that do not intersect they come into conflict.The introduction briefly describes the context of the study. The first section introduces the concepts of description and prescription and analyses feminism’s theoretical foundations. The author comes to the conclusion that the foundations of feminism could be thought of as a system of prescriptives. The second section examines the structures that feminism and psychoanalysis share and how they come into conflict. In the third section, feminism is compared with queer theory, and the differences between the two are used to bring together the idea of a collective political subject. In conclusion, the main strategies for strengthening feminist discourse are considered. Particular emphasis is given to the project of feminist epistemology. The materials used in the article are academic and journalistic articles written by feminists, blog posts and comments from discussion platforms, and a single public interview.

Unsettling Feminism in Social Work: Toward an Indigenous Decolonial Feminism

Feminism and social work alike are complicit in historic colonial projects and further this agenda into the present day through the perpetuation of white supremacy. As social work moves to reckon with historic harms and decolonial feminist discourse proliferates, it remains to be seen how feminist social work will acknowledge or account for the legacy of systemic violence against Indigenous peoples and make meaningful changes going forward. The combination of close reading of the literature and the embodiment of experiential and cultural knowledge informs the development of the Indigenous decolonial feminist framework. Decolonial feminism in social work offers a pathway for Indigenous sovereignty – a collective liberation created and defined by Indigenous peoples for Indigenous peoples. Indigenous decolonial feminism requires a commitment to achieve social justice that is in direct alignment with the overall aim of social work. The present work will delineate an Indigenous decolonial feminism, situate this work within the current feminist social work landscape, and call for the field to engage in critical strategizing for social change and embodied decolonization.

Discourses on Non-Heteronormative Masculinities and Intimate Partner Violence: a Russian Media Case Study

Abstract Purpose The current paper is devoted to the analysis of the mediation of non-heteronormative masculinities within discourses on intimate partner violence (IPV) and domestic violence and abuse (DVA) in contemporary Russian media. Methods The article presents a discourse analysis of five samples of media texts devoted to IPV and/or DVA among LGBTQ people. The media texts were sampled through a keyword search completed on the websites of two openly pro-LGBTQ media outlets (news and entertainment portals Meduza and Takie Dela) and two media outlets catered for predominantly LGBTQ audiences (the news and entertainment portal Parni PLUS and the website of the NGO SPID-Tsentr). Results The interpretative qualitative analysis of the sampled texts demonstrated that the IPV/DVA survivors’ confessional narratives are framed within wider discourses on non-heteronormative masculinities, which are represented both as transgressing concepts of hegemonic masculinity and as challenging stereotypes about non-heteronormative masculinities. Conclusions The outcome of the analysis presented in the paper is that there is evidence of the emergence of new media discourses on IPV and DVA among LGBTQ communities. Drawing on feminist discourses on IPV and DVA in heterosexual relationships and using media strategies of LGBTQ coming-out confessional narratives, the sampled media data reveals an ongoing search for a new language of discussing the relatively new societal problem. Further research into mediation of non-heteronormative male survivors of IPV and DVA promises insightful findings concerning the evolution of discourses on non-heteronormative masculinities in contemporary Russian media.