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Souvent décriées lorsqu’il s’agit de stars du divertissement, les relations parasociales sont aussi un fléau de la politique à l’âge néolibéral et de l’intimité fabriquée par les réseaux sociaux. Les écueils de la « politique copine » se sont fait ressentir avec une acuité particulière lors de la campagne des législatives anticipées. Les sympathisant·es de gauche approchant la politique de manière plus informelle sont tombé·es dans l’impasse de la proximité en copinant, voire en transformant en mèmes, des femmes politiques telles que la cheffe de file écologiste, Marine Tondelier.

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SS-330 – Cultural Studies 

Pratt Institute

Social Science and Cultural Studies 

Spring 2025

 Instructor: Fania Noël, Ph.D   

COURSE DESCRIPTION & LEARNING GOALS:

This course explores the relations of cultural artifacts in the contemporary world to their various social contexts. Culture is understood as the material expressions and images that people create and the social environment that shapes the way diverse groups of people experience their world and interact with one another. The course focuses on the critical analysis of these various forms of media, design, mass communications, arts, and popular culture. Critical Black Studies and Black Feminisms Theory inform this course. It involves a critical and systematic examination of key works by influential thinkers, considering how they both contributed to and drew from larger intellectual movements. As an interdisciplinary, writing-intensive course, we will engage with seminal texts and ideas from these traditions while connecting them to contemporary culture, current events, and our creative and intellectual endeavors. 

The primary goals of this course are to:

  • Connect theoretical methods and concepts to creative and intellectual pursuits beyond the classroom.
  • Develop nuanced understandings of ourselves, others, and the social, cultural, and historical relationships that shape our interactions.
  • Use cultural studies to engage in reflective and metacognitive practices, fostering self-directed and motivated learning.

COURSE OUTLINE

Session 1: January 28 – Introduction

  • During, Simon. “Introduction.” The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During, Routledge, 1993, pp. 1–27. (27 pages)
  • Hsu, Hua. “Stuart Hall and the Rise of Cultural Studies.” The New Yorker, 2017. (5 pages)
  • Barthes, Roland. “From Work to Text.” The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During, Routledge, 1993, pp. 56–68. (12 pages)
    Total pages: 44

Session 2: February 4 – Theory and Methods of Cultural Studies

  • Hall, Stuart. “Encoding, Decoding.” The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During, Routledge, 1993, pp. 90–103. (13 pages)
  • Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” In Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford University Press, 2002, pp. 95–119. (24 pages)
  • hooks, bell. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” Black American Cinema, Routledge, 2012, pp. 288–302. (14 pages)
    Total pages: 51

Session 3: February 11 – Place and Space

  • De Certeau, Michel. “Walking in the City.” The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During, Routledge, 1993, pp. 151–160. (9 pages)
  • McKittrick, Katherine. “On Plantations, Prisons, and a Black Sense of Place.” Social & Cultural Geography, vol. 12, no. 8, 2011, pp. 947–963. (16 pages)
  • “Black Geographies: Mapping Black Spaces and Places.” Black Feminisms, https://blackfeminisms.com/black-geographies/. (3 pages)
    Total pages: 28

Session 4: February 18 – Frankfurt School and Public Sphere

  • Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into the Category of Bourgeois Society. Translated by Thomas Burger, MIT Press, 1989, pp. 1–36. (36 pages)
  • Fraser, Nancy. “Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World.” Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 24, no. 4, 2007, pp. 7–13. (6 pages)
    Suggested Reading:
  • Fraser, Nancy. Remaining sections, pp. 14–25. (12 pages)
    Total pages (requested): 42; Suggested: 12; Overall: 54

Session 5: February 25 – Culture and Distinction

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Field of Cultural Production, or the Economic World Reversed.” Poetics, vol. 12, no. 4-5, 1983, pp. 311–336. (25 pages)
  • Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press, 1977, pp. 72–81. (10 pages)
  • Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, “Structures, Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power,” pp. 159–176. (17 pages)
    Suggested Reading:
  • Bourdieu, Pierre. Remaining sections from Outline of a Theory of Practice, pp. 82–95. (13 pages)
  • Hebdige, Dick. “From Culture to Hegemony.” The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During, Routledge, 1993, pp. 357–367. (10 pages)
  • Geary, P. (2020). The production of taste: ecologies, intersections, implications. Studies in Theatre and Performance, 40(3), 280–291.
    Total pages (requested): 42; Suggested: 34; Overall: 76

Session 6: March 4 – Surveillance and Violence

  • Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Random House, 1977, pp. 170–210. (40 pages)
  • Browne, Simone. “Branding Blackness: Biometric Technology and the Surveillance of Blackness.” Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, Duke University Press, 2015, pp. 89–96. (7 pages)
    Suggested Reading:
  • Poster, Winifred R. “Racialized Surveillance in the Digital Service Economy.” In Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life, edited by Ruha Benjamin, pp. 133–166. (23 pages)
    Total pages (requested): 42; Suggested: 33; Overall: 76

Session 7: March 11 – Marxist Approaches (Mid-Term)

  • Gramsci, Antonio. “Hegemony, Relations of Force, Historical Bloc.” Prison Notebooks, pp. 189–221. (31 pages)
  • Marx, Karl. “Estranged Labor.” Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, translated by Martin Milligan. Available online: Marxist Archive. (10 pages)
    Suggested Reading:
  • Marx, Karl. “The Power of Money.” Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, remaining sections, pp. 11–15. (5 pages)
  • Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” In Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, Monthly Review Press, 1971, pp. 85–100. (15 pages)
  • Lettow, Susanne. “Biocapitalism.” Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy, vol. 2, 2018, pp. 6–8. (2 pages)
    Total pages (requested): 41; Suggested: 22; Overall: 63

Session 8: March 25 – Watching Race

  • Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, and Sneja Gunew. “Questions of Multiculturalism.” The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During, Routledge, 1993, pp. 193–200. (7 pages)
  • Gray, Herman S. “Television and the Politics of Difference.” American Studies: An Anthology, 2009, pp. 433–445. (12 pages)
  • Wallace, Michele. “Negative Images: Towards a Black Feminist Cultural Criticism.” The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During, Routledge, 1993, pp. 118–139. (21 pages)
    Suggested Reading:
  • Wallace, Michele. Remaining sections, pp. 140–131. (9 pages)
    Total pages (requested): 40; Suggested: 9; Overall: 49

Session 9: April 1 – Whiteness is a Country: Nation and Nationalism

  • Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “There Is No Such Thing as Western Civilization.” The Guardian, 2016. (7 pages)
  • Anderson, Benedict. “Introduction.” Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 1983, pp. 1–9. (9 pages)
  • Fanon, Frantz. “On Violence.” The Wretched of the Earth, Grove Press, 1963, pp. 145–155. (10 pages)
  • Ong, Aiwha. Flexible Citizenship. Duke University Press, 1999, pp. 1–21. (20 pages)
    Suggested Reading:
  • Mills, Charles. The Racial Contract, Chapter 1. Cornell University Press, 1997. (32 pages)
    Total pages (requested): 47; Suggested: 32; Overall: 79

Session 10: April 8 – Gender and Its Discontent

  • Oyẽwùmí, Oyẽọ́nké. The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. University of Minnesota Press, 1997, pp. 1–20. (20 pages)
  • Butler, Judith. “Gender Is Burning.” Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. Routledge, 1993, pp. 81–99. (18 pages)
  • Ahmed, Sara. “A Phenomenology of Whiteness.” Feminist Theory, vol. 8, no. 2, 2007, pp. 149–165. (16 pages)
    Suggested Reading:
  • Namaste, Viviane. “Undoing Theory: The ‘Transgender Question’ and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory.” Hypatia, vol. 24, no. 3, 2009, pp. 11–22. (12 pages)
    Total pages (requested): 54; Suggested: 12; Overall: 66

Session 11: April 15 – Feminisms and Antagonisms

  • Cho, Sumi K. “Converging Stereotypes in Racialized Sexual Harassment: Where the Model Minority Meets Suzie Wong.” In Critical Race Feminism: A Reader, edited by Adrien Katherine Wing, NYU Press, 2003, pp. 349–366. (17 pages)
  • Farris, Sara R. In the Name of Women’s Rights: The Rise of Femonationalism. Duke University Press, 2017, Introduction, pp. 1–16. (16 pages)
  • Richardson, Trevor. “Objectification and Abjectification in Ex Machina and Ghost in the Shell.” Medium, 2017. (3 pages)
    Suggested Reading:
  • Additional analysis of Ex Machina. (6 pages)
    Total pages (requested): 36; Suggested: 6; Overall: 42

Session 12: April 22 – Black Feminist Methodologies

  • Hill Collins, Patricia. “It’s All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation.” Hypatia, vol. 13, no. 3, 1998, pp. 62–82. (20 pages)
  • Brooks, Daphne A. “Introduction.” Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound. Harvard University Press, 2021, pp. 9–49. (40 pages)
    Suggested Reading:
  • Ashley Patterson et al. (15 pages)
    Total pages (requested): 40; Suggested: 15; Overall: 55

Session 13: April 29 – Bread and Circus: Spectacle, Love, and Technology

  • TV Show: Black Mirror – “San Junipero” (S03, Ep 4) and “15 Million Merits” (S01, Ep 2). Available on Netflix.
  • Beer, David. “Power Through the Algorithm? Participatory Web Cultures and the Technological Unconscious.” New Media & Society, vol. 11, no. 6, 2009, pp. 985–1002. (16 pages)
  • Gray, Herman. “The Feel of Life: Resonance, Race, and Representation.” International Journal of Communication, vol. 9, 2015, pp. 1108–1119. (11 pages)
  • Haraway, Donna. “The Cyborg Manifesto.” In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, 1991, pp. 149–155. (6 pages)
  • Potter, Russell A. “History – Spectacle – Resistance.” In The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Simon During, Routledge, 1993, pp. 458–474. (16 pages)

Suggested Reading:

  • Haraway, Donna. “The Cyborg Manifesto.” In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, Routledge, 1991, pp. 155–181. (26 pages)

    Total pages (requested): 49; Suggested: 32; Overall: 77

Session 14: May 6 – The Day After the End of the World: Environment, Techno-Capitalism

  • Films: Mad Max: Fury Road and Blade Runner 2049. Available on streaming platforms.
  • Said, Edward. “Introduction.” Orientalism. Pantheon Books, 1978, pp. 1–28. (28 pages)
  • Wilson, Sheena, et al. “Introduction: On Petrocultures: Or, Why We Need to Understand Oil to Understand Everything Else.” In Petrocultures: Oil, Politics, Culture, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017, pp. 1–16. (16 pages)
    Suggested Reading:
  • Mbembe, Achille. “Necropolitics.” Public Culture, vol. 15, no. 1, 2003, pp. 11–40. (29 pages)
    Total pages (requested): 44; Suggested: 29; Overall: 76

Session 15: May 13 – Final Exam

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SSWI-262T  Contemporary Theories of Gender

Pratt Institute

Social Science and Cultural Studies 

Spring 2025

 Instructor: Fania Noël, Ph.D   

Required texts 

The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka

COURSE DESCRIPTION & LEARNING GOALS:

This course explores the relations of cultural artifacts in the contemporary world to their various social contexts. Culture is understood as the material expressions and images that people create and the social environment that shapes the way diverse groups of people experience their world and interact with one another. The course focuses on the critical analysis of these various forms of media, design, mass communications, arts, and popular culture. Critical Black Studies and Black Feminisms Theory inform this course. It involves a critical and systematic examination of key works by influential thinkers, considering how they both contributed to and drew from larger intellectual movements. As an interdisciplinary, writing-intensive course, we will engage with seminal texts and ideas from these traditions while connecting them to contemporary culture, current events, and our creative and intellectual endeavors. 

COURSE OUTLINE

Session 1: January 28, 2025 – Introduction

The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka – chapt 1

Required Readings (34 pages):

  • Chanter, T. 2007, “Introduction” and “Formative Moments,” in Gender: Key Concepts in Philosophy (New York: Continuum), pp.1-30.
  • 1821, Petition to the Cherokee National Council by the Cherokee Women’s Councils (4 pages).

Suggested Readings:

  • Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónkẹ́. The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. U of Minnesota Press, 1997. pp. 1-30.

Total Pages: Required (34), Suggested (30).

Session 2: February 4, 2025 – Gender and its Discontents

The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka – chapt 2-3

Required Readings (36 pages):

  • De Beauvoir, S. 2011, The Second Sex (New York: Vintage), introduction (8 pages).
  • Butler, Judith. “Gender is Burning.” In Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. Routledge, 2011, pp. 81-99 (18 pages).
  • Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama’s baby, papa’s maybe: An American grammar book.” In The Transgender Studies Reader Remix. Routledge, 2022, pp. 93-104 (11 pages).

Suggested Readings:

  • hooks, bell (1982). Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. pp. 27-49 (22 pages).

Total Pages: Required (36), Suggested (22).

Session 3: February 11, 2025 – A Feminist Grammar

The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka – chapt 4
Required Readings (36 pages):

  • Murphy, M. 2015, “Reproduction,” in Mojab, S. (ed.), Marxism and Feminism (Zed Books), pp. 287-305 (18 pages).
  • Collective, Combahee River. “The Combahee River Collective Statement.” In Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, 1983: 264-274 (10 pages).
  • Anzaldua, G. 1984, Borderlands / La Frontera, pp. 23-35 (12 pages).

Suggested Readings:

  • hooks, bell. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” In Black American Cinema. Routledge, 2012, pp. 288-302 (14 pages).
  • Fluegel, J.C. 2004, “The Great Masculine Renunciation,” in Purdy (ed.), The Rise of Fashion: A Reader (Minnesota UP), pp. 102-108 (6 pages).

Total Pages: Required (36), Suggested (20).

Session 4: February 18, 2025 – Racialized Gender, Racialized Feminisms

The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka – chapt 5

Film: Get Out (2017) by Jordan Peele.
Required Readings (34 pages):

  • Jones-Rogers, Stephanie. They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South, Chapter 1, pp. 1-24 (24 pages).
  • The Most Overlooked And Underrated Characters In ‘Get Out’ Are Black Women by Brittany Willis (2 pages). Read online.
  • Morrison, Toni. “What the Black ôWoman Thinks About Women’s Lib.” New York Times (1971), pp.ķķ1-8. o⁸
  • Farris, Sara R. In the Name of Women’s Rights. Duke University Press, 2017. Introduction (16 pages).
  • Gunn Allen, P. 1992, “The Red Roots of White Feminism,” in The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (Boston: Beacon Press), pp. 209-220 (11 pages).

Total Pages: Required (34), Suggested (27).

Session 5: February 25, 2025 – Trans Theory

The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka – chapt 6
Required Readings (35 pages):

  • Namaste, Viviane. “Undoing Theory: The ‘Transgender Question’ and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory.” In Hypatia, 24(3), 2009: pp. 11-22 (12 pages).
  • McKenzie Wark, “Girls Like Us.” Read online (2 pages).
  • Snorton, C. Riley. Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. U of Minnesota Press, 2017. Chapter 1, pp. 17-38 (21 pages).

Suggested Readings:

  • Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” In The Transgender Studies Reader Remix. Routledge, 1987, pp. 93-104 (11 pages).

Total Pages: Required (35), Suggested (11).

Session 6: March 4, 2025 – Silent and Revolutionary Dolls

The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka – chapt 7-8

Film: Ex Machina (2015) by Alex Garland – HBO Max.
Required Readings (36 pages):

  • Sumi K. Cho, “Converging Stereotypes in Racialized Sexual Harassment.” In Wing, Adrien Katherine (ed.), Critical Race Feminism: A Reader. NYU Press, 2003, pp. 1-10 (10 pages).
  • Shimizu, Celine Parreñas. The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene. Duke University Press, 2007, Ch. 1, pp. 1-26 (26 pages).

Suggested Readings:

  • Trevor Richardson, “Objectification and Abjectification in Ex Machina and Ghost in the Shell.” Read online (4 pages).
  • Da’Shaun, L. Harrison. “Pretty Ugly: The Politics of Desire.” In Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness. North Atlantic Books, 2021, pp. 11-32 (21 pages).

Total Pages: Required (36), Suggested (25).

Session 7: March 11, 2025 – Ecofeminism (Midterm Exam)

Film: Children of Men (2006) by Alfonso Cuarón – available on Hulu.
Required Readings (35 pages):

  • Gumbs, Alexis Pauline. “Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals.” Soundings 78.78 (2021): 20-37 (17 pages).
  • Mies, M. and Shiva, V. 2014, Ecofeminism (London: ZED Books), Introduction, pp. 1-18 (18 pages).

Suggested Readings:

  • Morton, T. 2010, “Queer Ecology,” PMLA 125(2), pp. 273-282 (9 pages).

Total Pages: Required (35), Suggested (9).

March 18 Spring Break – No Class

Session 8: March 25, 2025 – Disembodiment and the Office Wife

Film: Her (2014) by Spike Jonze – available on Apple TV and Amazon Prime.
Required Readings (35 pages):

  • Ashley Bardhan, “Men Are Creating AI Girlfriends and Then Verbally Abusing Them,” Futurism.com (2 pages). Read online.
  • Eva Gustavsson, “Virtual Servants: Stereotyping Female Front-Office Employees on the Internet,” Gender, Work & Organization 12(5), 2005: 400–419 (19 pages).
  • Poster, Winifred R. “Racialized Surveillance in the Digital Service Economy.” In Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life, ed. Ruha Benjamin (Duke University Press, 2019), pp. 133-147 (16 pages).

Suggested Readings:

  • Benjamin, Ruha. Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life. Duke University Press, 2019. Introduction, pp. 1-15 (15 pages).

Total Pages: Required (35), Suggested (15).

Session 9: April 1, 2025 – Ho Theory: Controlling Images 

Film: WAP by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion (Music Video).
Required Readings (35 pages):

  • Srinivasan, Amia. “Talking to My Students About Porn.” In The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-first Century. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021, pp. 33-38 (5 pages).
  • Harrison, Da’Shaun L. “Pretty Ugly: The Politics of Desire.” In Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness. North Atlantic Books, 2021, pp. 11-32 (21 pages).
  • Lomax, Tamura. “Black Venus and Jezebel Sluts: Writing Race, Sex, and Gender.” In Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture. Duke University Press, 2018, pp. 13-25 (12 pages).

Suggested Readings:

  • Srinivasan, Amia. “Talking to My Students About Porn.” In The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-first Century, pp. 38-65 (27 pages).

Total Pages: Required (35), Suggested (27).

Session 10: April 8, 2025 – Family Affair: Wife, Daughters, Motherhood

Film: The Zone of Interest (2023) by Jonathan Glazer.
Required Readings (35 pages):

  • Hill Collins, Patricia. “Black Women and Motherhood.” In Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Taylor & Francis Group, 1990, pp. 198-205 (7 pages).
  • Rich, Adrienne. “Split at the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity.” In Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979–1985, 1986, pp. 100-123 (22 pages).
  • Moslener, Sara. “White Women’s Bodies and the Dilemma of Purity Culture Recovery.” Read online (4 pages).

Suggested Readings:

  • Hill Collins, Patricia. “Black Women and Motherhood.” In Black Feminist Thought, pp. 187-215 (28 pages).
  • Mattheis, Ashley A. “#TradCulture: Reproducing Whiteness and Neo-Fascism Through Gendered Discourse Online.” In Routledge Handbook of Critical Studies in Whiteness, 2021, pp. 91-101 (9 pages).

Total Pages: Required (35), Suggested (37).

Session 11: April 15, 2025 – Queer Theory

Film: Black Mirror – San Junipero (Season 3, Episode 4).
Required Readings (34 pages):

  • Philyaw, Deesha. “Eula.” In The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. Pushkin Press, 2022, pp. 1-11 (11 pages).
  • Rich, Adrienne Cecile. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (1980).” Journal of Women’s History 15(3), 2003, pp. 18-23 (5 pages).
  • Smith, Andrea. “Queer Theory and Native Studies: The Heteronormativity of Settler Colonialism.” In Queer Indigenous Studies, 2010, pp. 42-52 (10 pages).

Suggested Readings:

  • Rich, Adrienne Cecile. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (1980).” Journal of Women’s History, pp. 1-39 (39 pages).

Total Pages: Required (34), Suggested (39).

Session 12: April 22, 2025 – From Marxist Feminist to Girl Bossing

Film: Barbie (2023) by Greta Gerwig.
Required Readings (35 pages):

  • Rich, Adrienne. “What Does a Woman Need to Know.” In Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1985, pp. 1-9 (8 pages).
  • Cecilia Rio, “‘On the Move’: African American Women’s Paid Domestic Labor and the Class Transition to Independent Commodity Production.” In Rethinking Marxism 17, 2005, pp. 489-510 (19 pages).
  • Federici, Silvia. “Women, Reproduction, and the Commons.” In The South Atlantic Quarterly 118(4), October 2019, pp. 711-724 (23 pages).

Suggested Readings:

  • مَست قَلَندَر, “Barbie’s White Feminism Problem.” Read online (2 pages).
  • First International Congress of Working Women, Washington, D.C., October 28–November 6, 1919 (4 pages).

Total Pages: Required (35), Suggested (6).

Session 13: April 29, 2025 – The Violence of Women: Monsters, Revenge, and Saviors

Films:

  • Monster (2003) by Patty Jenkins – Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
  • Promising Young Woman (2020) by Emerald Fennell – Amazon Prime, Canal+.
  • Gone Girl (2014) by David Fincher – Disney+ and Canal+.

Required Readings (35 pages):

  • Cardi, Coline, and Geneviève Pruvost. “Thinking Women’s Violence.” In History of the Present 5(2), 2015: 200-216 (14 pages).
  • Jordan, June. “I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies.” (1 page).
  • Gentry, Caron E., and Laura Sjoberg. “Beyond Mothers, Monsters, Whores.” In Thinking About Women’s Violence in Global Politics, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015, Introduction, pp. 1-20 (20 pages).

Suggested Readings:

  • Gross, Kali. Vengeance Feminism: The Power of Black Women’s Fury in Lawless Times, 2024, pp. 1-13 (13 pages).

Total Pages: Required (35), Suggested (13).

Session 14: May 6, 2025 – Future(s)

Film: Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) by James Cameron – Disney Plus.
Required Readings (34 pages):

  • James, Joy. “Captive Maternal Love: Octavia Butler and Sci-Fi Family Values.” In Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory, 2015, pp. 185-199 (14 pages).
  • Asenap, Jason. “Avatar: The Way of Water or How Not to Make Indigenous Futurism Movies.” Read online (4 pages).
  • Goeman, Mishuana. “‘Remember What You Are’: Gendering Citizenship, the Indian Act, and (Re)Mapping the Settler Nation-State.” In Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations, University of Minnesota Press, 2013, pp. 41–60 (20 pages).

Suggested Readings:

  • Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopias: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, NYU Press, 2009, Introduction, pp. 1-18 (18 pages).

Total Pages: Required (34), Suggested (18).

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J’ai été frappée par la manière dont les débats sur BookTok U.S. résonnent étrangement et tristement avec le film (que j’ai détesté) It Ends With Us. En novembre 2024, à la suite des résultats de l’élection présidentielle américaine, le BookTok américain s’est enflammé et transformé en champ de bataille. Une partie des influenceurs de BookTok, majoritairement des femmes blanches milléniales, exigeait que la politique reste en dehors de la lecture, et que “it’s not that deep”. La lecture est souvent présentée, sous des formes différentes, comme une activité noble, manifestation de capital symbolique, culturel ou moral. De la même façon que lire beaucoup de livres ou avoir des diplômes rendrait automatiquement radical ou révolutionnaire (hello la tradition réactionnaire et fasciste intellectuelle), on a vu des dizaines de booktokeuses (et booktokeurs) démontrer que, malgré des centaines de livres lus par an (majoritairement de fiction, fantasy ou science-fiction), elles/ils tombent dans deux grandes catégories :

  1. Une absence totale de littératie médiatique, les rendant incapables de discerner les paraboles ou les messages au-delà des événements touchant le personnage principal ;
  2. Une mauvaise foi évidente, consistant à refuser d’assumer un positionnement politique conservateur tout en manipulant les autres pour les faire passer pour ignorants.

Lire la suite ici

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Les fans de la série How to Get Away with Murder se souviennent d’une réplique phare du personnage Nate Lahey : « Les Blancs ramènent toujours la question de la race quand ça les arrange, jamais quand c’est pertinent. » On pourrait dire la même chose de la figure du violeur, brandie comme un étendard par les « nice guys » lorsqu’il s’agit du spectre de l’inconnu dans une ruelle sombre, mais jamais lorsqu’il s’agit de se confronter à la réalité des chiffres : la vaste majorité des victimes connaissent leurs agresseurs, et ces derniers considèrent souvent que ce n’était pas un viol.

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La cérémonie d’ouverture des Jeux olympiques a suscité de nombreuses réactions allant de la célébration des minorités représentées aux plus vives critiques de washing. Si les lignes qui distinguent ces réactions ne sont pas binaires gauche/droite, elles traduisent néanmoins des oppositions idéologiques et politiques. Je me propose ici d’analyser comment au cœur de la réception de cette cérémonie d’ouverture se trouvent le désir d’appartenir au récit national français et comment ce désir entre en contradiction avec la possibilité de libération, de justice et d’égalité pour tous·tes.

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Loin d’être en opposition au discours dominant, les discours sur la mobilité sociale et les success stories de la diversité sont une version paternaliste et bienveillante du racisme et du classisme. Le terme « parvenu » a été facilement détrôné par celui de transfuge de classe, moins insultant et émanant du champ de la sociologie. D’aucun·es soutiennent que la principale caractéristique du transfuge de classe est d’avoir réussi à déjouer le déterminisme de la reproduction sociale, d’être un ou une évadé·e statistique. J’estime au contraire que l’existence du transfuge de classe participe au déterminisme et à la reproduction des élites ; elle est une nécessité pour le maintien du néolibéralisme.

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Les réactions suscitées par la banderole attaquant la chanteuse peinent à expliquer les références racistes et les persistances de l’idéologie coloniale en France.

Face à l’offensive contre l’artiste Aya Nakamura – évoquée pour la cérémonie d’ouverture des JO de Paris – menée par la droite et l’extrême droite, une partie de la gauche et ceux et celles qui se réclament du centre-gauche nous offrent une fois de plus le spectacle de leur incapacité à nommer les choses, trop accrochés à un cadre idéologique qui n’a jamais été à la hauteur de la compréhension de la race comme générateur de la modernité et du contrat racial.

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Souvent on décrit à tort ce travail comme travail émotionnel […] Le travail herméneutique [montre] comment les relations platoniques des hommes sont prises en charge par les femmes de leur entourage (compagne, amie ou membre de leur famille) et que les groupes amicaux d’hommes ne sont pas moins compliqués mais s’engagent moins dans l’intimité et peuvent durer très longtemps du fait de la relative superficialité de la relation.

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Fisayo avait répondu sans hésitation à Pascal quand elle avait serré la main de Jérôme. Son naturel ne laissait aucune place aux interprétations : « Oui on s’est déjà croisés. » Pascal n’avait alors pas compris l’étonnement de Jérôme. Oui, Fisayo avait bien déjà croisé Jérôme 149 jours auparavant à l’espace ping-pong de leur lieu de coworking, il lui avait alors demandé son numéro ; mais Fisayo l’avait aussi croisé il y a 129 jours lors de leur premier date, puis il y a 119 jours lors de leur second date. Par la suite, elle avait fait en sorte de ne plus « croiser » Jérôme, ce même de manière asynchrone. Elle l’avait bloqué sur WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter et LinkedIn. 

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