scholarly journals The Battle for “NoFap”: Myths, Masculinity, and the Meaning of Masturbation Abstention

2021 ◽  
pp. 1097184X2110182
Author(s):  
Scott Burnett
Keyword(s):  
Subject Position ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Meaning Potential ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
A Site ◽  
Large Corpus

Critical masculinities scholarship has identified a number of ways in which abstention from sex, pornography, and masturbation works to repair and reproduce hybrid and hegemonic masculinities. Though the mercurial and plural nature of contemporary online masculinities is investigated on a number of fronts, analysis to date has often pinned down abstention to a particular subject position, often understood predominantly in its gendered dimensions. In this article, I argue that the anti-pornography, anti-masturbation movement NoFap should be understood as a site of political contestation for the meaning potential of abstention and that these subject positions should be read intersectionally. Through analysis of a large corpus of tweets (6,569) scraped from the micro-blogging site Twitter, I present evidence for seven distinct subject positions linked to discrete myths, which include extreme anti-feminist and anti-Semitic articulations. I argue that this bird’s-eye view of NoFap uniquely lays out competing myths in their specificity, facilitating a nuanced understanding of “morbid” identities.

Psychotic, acritical and precarious? A Lacanian exploration of the neoliberal consumer subject

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliette Lambert
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Mental Health Issues

Extending the critical project of interrogating the consumer subject form, in this study, the consumer subject is read as potentially acritical, precarious and psychotic through Dufour’s Lacanian-inspired analysis of neoliberal subjectivity. Reflecting on two case studies from an ethnographic-type study of young women, identity and consumer culture, I demonstrate how participants attempt to fulfil neoliberal ideals related to agency, productivity and creativity. Relying on commodities for symbolic anchoring in doing so, a ‘psychotic’ and precarious subject position is evidenced. While the findings could certainly be interpreted as productive, tendencies toward materialism, uncertainty and anxiety, along with pervasive mental health issues, provided the impetus to further problematise dominant understandings of the consumer. Neoliberal consumer culture is evidenced as a harmful, dehumanising ideology that fosters competitiveness, individuality and meritocratic tendencies, encouraging a reliance on ever-changing, transient commodities to (in)form the self. This occurs at the expense of compromise, communality and social welfare, through which subjects may find more stable and emancipatory symbolic anchors. Only by recognising critical theorisations of the consumer as dominant subject positions of neoliberalism can cultural consumer researchers begin to imagine opportunities for resistance and emancipatory change.

scholarly journals In search of self: Navigating subjectivity amidst conflicts in Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park (2012)

k ta ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-27
Author(s):  
Azalea Ayu Dewinta Fitriani ◽  
Isti Siti Saleha Gandana ◽  
Nia Nafisah
Keyword(s):  
Personal Growth ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Dynamic Nature ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Active Subject

Entrance into adulthood has often been seen as a phase marked by self-exploration, instability, and struggles to overcome tensions and conflicts. Eleanor & Park (2012) is a novel that explores issues of growing up and tells the story of how the two main characters go through the struggles of their adolescent lives. This study analyzes how Eleanor and Park construct and navigate their subjectivities amidst the various conflicts they face. It does so by, first, identifying and classifying the conflicts the characters encounter and then locating their provisional subject positions that draw on how they react to and deal with the conflicts. While the study confirms the dynamic nature of subject positions, both Eleanor and Park tend to bring to the fore their active subject position in dealing with the conflicts. Moreover, their subject positions further indicate that Eleanor and Park are empowered agents who are capable of deliberating thoughts and actions consciously. In navigating their subjectivities, both characters, in the end, are able to achieve personal growth and empowerment.

Lexicography, discourse and power

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 601-629
Author(s):  
Wenge Chen
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Power And Resistance ◽  
Ideological Struggle ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
A Site ◽  
International English

Abstract This paper conceptualizes dictionary bilingualization as a recontextualizing practice and explores how ideology and power play out in the recontextualization of lexicographic discourse across languages and cultures to result in the transformation of meaning. It first proposes viewing the (bilingualized) dictionary as discourse and emphasizes bilingual lexicography as a site of an asymmetrical linguistic and cultural power dynamics. The paper then argues that a synergy of critical discourse analysis and postcolonial studies can reveal the inter-cultural ideological struggle implicit in the bilingualizing lexicographic practice. The body of the study is devoted to the analysis of those shifts taking place in the entries, definition, illustrative examples and pragmatic labels in a bilingualized English-Chinese dictionary, which, when viewed cumulatively, significantly reshape the ideological positioning of the dictionary. The paper discusses the implications for critical lexicographic studies and for research into the interplay between power and resistance between dominating and dominated cultures. It concludes that Periphery English dictionary compilers are able to negotiate the different subjectivities and ideologies inherent in dictionary making and to adopt a subject position favorable to their empowerment in the international English lexicography, although such resistance is far from capable of restructuring the order of lexicography.

Thinking with Trans Now

Social Text ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 125-147
Author(s):  
Aren Z. Aizura ◽  
Marquis Bey ◽  
Toby Beauchamp ◽  
Treva Ellison ◽  
Jules Gill-Peterson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Queer Of Color Critique ◽  
Queer Of Color ◽  
The World ◽  
A Site

This roundtable considers trans theory’s status as a site of thinking racialization, empire, political economy, and materiality in the current historical, institutional, and political moment. We ask, what does it mean to think trans in a time of crisis?, and what is the place of critique in a crisis?, acknowledging that global crises are not insulated from trans, and trans is not insulated from the world. This roundtable looks to materialist formations to think trans now, including a new materialism premised on thinking about trans embodiment outside of trans as subject position, the materialism of objects and commodities, and a historical materialism shaped by queer of color critique.

‘Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!’: Sport as a site for political activism and social change

Organization ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 952-968
Author(s):  
Kwame J. A. Agyemang ◽  
John N. Singer ◽  
Anthony J. Weems
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
A Site ◽  
Coffee Shops

Is sport an appropriate forum for activists to engage in political protest? In recent years, this question has been the subject of conversations in households, public spaces such as barbershops and coffee shops, and social media and newsrooms, as various high-profile athletes have used their sport platforms to call attention to various social injustices existing within the US society. The purpose of the following interview is to provide further insight into this intersection between sport and politics and the use of sport as a site for political resistance and social change. Dave Zirin, a critical sports journalist, is the sports editor for The Nation and author of several books on the politics of sport. This interview with Dave Zirin offers a nuanced understanding on the recent occurrences involving athlete activism and the overall use of sport as a site for political activism and social change. Topics covered include race and racism in America, social responsibility, and social movements, among others.

Religious Patronage as Gendered Family Memory in Sixteenth-century England

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-29
Author(s):  
Stephanie Thomson ◽  
Katie Barclay
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
Family Identity ◽  
The Family ◽  
Important Means ◽  
Early English ◽  
A Site ◽  
Large Corpus

Through an analysis of a large corpus of sixteenth-century wills and testaments, this article explores Englishwomen’s end-of-life religious patronage a site for the production of family identity and memory, and as a mechanism by which family and faith were woven together. It considers both the influence of the family on women’s post-mortem piety, and their role as executrices for their husbands. In doing so, it argues that women were integral to producing the commemorative practices that ensured their families’ immortality, and that these practices were in turn an important means by which religious practice and belief were renegotiated and refigured during the early English Reformation.

scholarly journals The origin of the Northern Subject Rule: subject positions and verbal morphosyntax in older English

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
NYNKE DE HAAS ◽  
ANS VAN KEMENADE
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
History Of ◽  
Peripheral Areas ◽  
Early English ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Syntactic Context

This article presents new evidence for the early history of the Northern Subject Rule in the form of an exhaustive corpus study of plural present-tense indicative verb forms in Northern and Northern Midlands early Middle English, analysed in relation to their syntactic context, including subject type and subject–verb adjacency. We show that variation between -∅/e/n and -s endings was conditioned by both subject type and adjacency in a core area around Yorkshire, whereas in more peripheral areas, the adjacency condition was weaker and often absent.We present an analysis of these facts in relation to the presence of multiple subject positions in early English, which we show contra earlier literature to be relevant for Northern English as well, We view -∅/e/n endings as ‘true’ agreement, which in the relevant dialects is limited to contexts with pronominal subjects in a high subject position, Spec,AgrSP; other forms of agreement (-s or -th) represent default inflection occurring elsewhere. This analysis supports the hypothesis that the NSR arose when the extant morphological variation in Northern Old English was reanalysed as an effect of pre-existing multiple subject positions.

scholarly journals From cooperative practice to research and back

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (02) ◽  
pp. 194-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiri Langmead
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Construction ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Research Performance ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Construction Of Knowledge ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
A Site

Purpose This paper aims to explore how experiences and emotions arising from the performance of ethnography shape the construction of knowledge about democratic practice in two social enterprises. It argues that ethnographers can develop a more nuanced understanding of organisational practices by moving beyond the self-reflexive work of being aware of one’s position to embrace the emotional work of engaging reflexively with this position, re-embedding reflexive moments in the process of knowledge construction. Design/methodology/approach Reflections are made on the emotions and experiences arising during a 12-month ethnographic study in two social enterprises. Findings The author found that engaging reflexively with relational and emotional processes of meaning-making opened up three analytical starting points. First it highlighted and helped the researcher to see beyond the limits of their assumptions, opening them to new understandings of democracy. Second, it gave rise to empathetic resonance through which the researcher was able to feel into the practice of democracy and re-frame it as a site of ongoing struggle. Finally, it brought to consciousness tacit ways of knowing and being central to both research and democratic praxis. Originality/value The paper adds to limited literature on processes of knowledge construction. Specifically, it contributes new insights into how emotional experiences and empathetic resonance arising at the meeting point of research performance and democratic praxis can offer analytical starting points for a more nuanced understanding of democratic organising in social enterprise.

Justifications of citizens’ subject positions in public debates on welfare

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janne Mikael Autto ◽  
Jukka Törrönen
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Day Care ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Welfare State

Foucault’s work has inspired studies examining how subject positions are constructed for citizens of the welfare state that encourage them to adopt the subject position of active and responsible people or consumers. Yet these studies are often criticised for analysing these subject positions as coherent constructions without considering how their construction varies from one situation to another. This paper develops the concept of subject position in relation to the theory of justification and the concept of modality in order to achieve a more sensitive and nuanced analysis of the politics of welfare in public debates. The theory of justification places greater weight on actors’ competence in social situations. It helps to reveal how justifications and critiques of welfare policies are based on the skilful contextual combination of diverse normative bases. The concept of modality, in turn, makes it possible to elaborate how subject positions in justifications and critiques of welfare policies become associated with specific kinds of values. We demonstrate the approach by using public debates on children’s day care in Finland. The analysis illustrates how subject positions are justified in relation to different kinds of worlds and made persuasive by connecting them to commonly desirable rights, responsibilities, competences or abilities.

scholarly journals Culture as Site of Identification: Exploring Cultural Tool Normalization in Immigrant ESL Adults’ Engagements with Canadian Culture

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 87
Author(s):  
Roumiana Ilieva
Keyword(s):  
Language Education ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Compte Rendu ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
Second Language Education ◽  
Adult Esl ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Langue Seconde ◽  
Canadian Culture ◽  
A Site

Culture is widely acknowledged to play an important part in second-language education. This article advances a view of culture as a site of identification and introduces the notion of cultural tool normalization (CTN) to conceptualize cul- tural reproduction as one aspect of the multifaceted processes of identification with culture. It draws on an account of some of the author’s experiences as an adult immigrant to Canada and on data from a larger study on adult ESL stu- dents’ engagements with unfamiliar cultural discourses to illustrate these con- cepts. The article maintains that viewing culture as a site of identification and examining CTN help us to gain a more nuanced understanding of students’ complicated engagements with the cultural discourses that they encounter. Such nuanced understandings should guide us in our pedagogical practices in adult ESL classrooms.Le rôle important que joue la culture dans l’éducation en langue seconde est large- ment reconnu. Cet article propose une vision de la culture comme site d’identifi- cation et présente la notion de la normalisation de l’outil culturel (cultural tool normalization—CTN)) pour conceptualiser la reproduction culturelle comme un aspect de processus multidimensionnels d’identification à la culture. L’article puise dans un compte rendu de certaines des expériences de l’auteur comme immigrant adulte au Canada, et ensuite, pour illustrer ces concepts, dans des données d’une étude de plus grande envergure portant sur la participation des étudiants en ALS face aux discours culturels peu familiers. L’article maintient que l’interprétation de la culture comme site d’identification et l’étude de la CTN nous aident à mieux comprendre la participation compliquée des étudiants dans le cadre de discours culturels auxquels ils font face. Ce genre de compréhension nuancée devrait guider nos pratiques pédagogiques dans les cours d’ALS pour adultes.

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