scholarly journals Water logged Mona Lisa: who is Mary Sue, and why do we need her?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Frey
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Wish Fulfillment ◽  
Mona Lisa ◽  
Media Texts

Theorists suggest that participatory readers create mainstream-based texts - fan crafts - in order to address the ways they are 'hailed' by the themes and subject positions offered by a text by becoming textual re-writers (Jenkins, 1992,2003 ; Busse & Hellekson, 2007; Chander & Sunder, 2007; Willis, 2007). Re-writers force their personal position or opinions into the centre by creating fanworks based in and on established media texts. The 'Mary Sue' is a self-gratifying fan-crafting trope centered on an idealistic authorrepresentative character, a wish-fulfillment device for the re-writer that bridges the re-writer's reality and that of her favoured fiction. This paper is a comprehensive summarizing of the 'Mary Sue' and its precedents. It asks how they can be deployed as Meta Sues to actively investigate the self or marginalized subjects in media texts. It is accompanied

scholarly journals Water logged Mona Lisa: who is Mary Sue, and why do we need her?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Frey
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Wish Fulfillment ◽  
Mona Lisa ◽  
Media Texts

Theorists suggest that participatory readers create mainstream-based texts - fan crafts - in order to address the ways they are 'hailed' by the themes and subject positions offered by a text by becoming textual re-writers (Jenkins, 1992,2003 ; Busse & Hellekson, 2007; Chander & Sunder, 2007; Willis, 2007). Re-writers force their personal position or opinions into the centre by creating fanworks based in and on established media texts. The 'Mary Sue' is a self-gratifying fan-crafting trope centered on an idealistic authorrepresentative character, a wish-fulfillment device for the re-writer that bridges the re-writer's reality and that of her favoured fiction. This paper is a comprehensive summarizing of the 'Mary Sue' and its precedents. It asks how they can be deployed as Meta Sues to actively investigate the self or marginalized subjects in media texts. It is accompanied

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.

The Category of Alterity as a Factor of the Ecological / Non-ecological Mode of Communication (Based on Mass Media Texts)

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 30-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Е. Кислякова ◽  
E. Kislyakova ◽  
В. Шаховский ◽  
V. Shahovskiy
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Verbal Interaction ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Media Texts ◽  
Ecological Communication

The article treats the issue of ecological / non-ecological communication within the discourse of mass media with regard to fluctuating interrelation of the Self and the Other. The system of the interrelation of the Self and the Other represents the communicative category of alterity. It is proved that to foster the ecological mode of the verbal interaction it is essential to form an adequate image of the Other: as a constituent of any discourse it has to be adequate to the communicative situation.

scholarly journals Violent Attachments

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-29
Author(s):  
Hagar Kotef
Keyword(s):  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
The Self ◽  
Political Identities ◽  
Subject Positions

Drawing on feminist and queer critiques that see violence as constitutive of identities, this essay points to subject-positions whose construction is necessarily conditioned by exercising violence. Focusing on settler colonialism, I reverse the optics of the first set of critiques: rather than seeing the self as taking form through the injuries she suffers, I try to understand selves that are structurally constituted by causing injury to others. This analysis refuses the assumption that violence is in conflict with (liberal) identity, and that, therefore, the endurance of violence of liberal states/societies is dependent upon mechanisms of active blindness (or denial, deferral, and other forms of dissociation). I argue that this assumption, which is shared by many critiques of violence, fails to perceive that people can desire the violent arrangements supporting their communities. They therefore fail to address political settings wherein violence is an affirmative element of political identities.

scholarly journals Questioning the Subject in Biographical Interviewing

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 16-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Harding
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
University Students ◽  
The Self ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Training Video ◽  
The Past ◽  
Emotional Aspects ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Recent Project

This paper considers how different approaches to interviewing and styles of questioning produce different sorts of biographical subjects and accounts. It compares styles of biographical interview (chronological and narrative) and types of question (narrative and explanatory), and presents an approach, which treats the interview as a collaborative co-production primarily concerned with the present and subjectivity, rather than the past and fact. It also considers how biographical interviewing may direct and contain narratives of the self through the subject positions it creates and offers interviewees. Discussion is grounded in reflection on a recent project involving university students in interviewing young people leaving care about their care experiences and making a training video for professionals. The paper highlights the inter-subjective and emotional aspects of interviewing in this context.

Children Talk Horror Videos: Reading as a Social Performance

1993 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gemma Moss
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Performance ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Media Texts ◽  
Media Audience

This article argues that children should be treated as a specific media audience in their own right, who are engaged in actively learning how to read media texts. I use children's talk about horror videos to argue for a social theory of learning in which both talk about text and the social contexts in which the genre circulates orientate readers towards its content and the subject positions from which it can be read.

scholarly journals Talent Production in Interaction

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magnus Kilger ◽  
Rickard Jonsson
Keyword(s):  
Personality Traits ◽  
Performance Appraisal ◽  
Technical Skills ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
The Self ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Developmental Potential ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Different Types

In sports, there is an extensive interest in identifying and selecting talented children in order to develop elite adult athletes. The process of selecting and screening talents involves not only physical and technical skills but also efforts to find adequate personality traits. Therefore, different types of performance appraisal interviews (PAIs) are becoming increasingly common within the field. Departing from fieldwork in two selection camps for Swedish youth national teams in soccer and hockey, we will take a closer look at the PAIs employed during these camps. This article takes on a narrative approach, emphasizing PAI as a narrative genre and a framework for a specific form of interaction. Our findings show how eligibility is performed in interaction through following three practices: (i) showcasing gratitude without tipping into flattery, (ii) using temporality as a way of displaying developmental potential, and (iii) adopting the role of the self-reflecting subject. This genre of interviews not only produces certain practices but also preferred subject positions and narratives. The PAI is thus a narrative genre where the players are encouraged to perform talent in order to appear selectable.

scholarly journals Between Care and Contract: Aging Muslim Immigrants, Self-appointed Helpers and Ambiguous Belonging in the Danish Welfare State

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-128
Author(s):  
Sara Lei Sparre ◽  
Mikkel Rytter
Keyword(s):  
Immigrant Families ◽  
The Self ◽  
Public Health Care ◽  
Close Relative ◽  
Grey Zone ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Care Managers ◽  
Standard Procedures ◽  
Muslim Immigrants ◽  
Care Worker

In Europe, a growing population of aging citizens have migrant background, and many have their origin in non-Western countries. Often, care arrangements in these families are different from those of the majority populations. In Denmark, a growing number of immigrant families utilise an option in the Social Service Act, under which municipalities can contract a family member to take care of an elderly citizen at home. Due to the special construct of the ‘self-appointed helper arrangement’, the caregiver is both a professional care worker, formally employed by the municipality, and a close relative. As such, the arrangement provides a unique opportunity to examine ideas and practices of care at the intersection of the immigrant family and the state.Based on data from interviews with and observations among both immigrant families and municipal care managers, we explore consequences of this care scheme for aging citizens and their self-appointed helpers. Drawing on the concept of ‘lenticular subject positions’, we show how both the self-appointed helpers and the care managers adopt two different, often contradictory, perspectives or subject positions simultaneously.In all, we argue that the self-appointed helper arrangement constitutes a grey zone in the Danish public health care system, since both care managers and helpers seem to neglect the national legislation and standard procedures, in relation to the elders and the general work environment. The consequences are most severe for the self-appointed helpers who end up in a particular precarious position at the margins of the Danish labor market.

scholarly journals Communities of care: Public donations, development assistance, and independent philanthropy in the Wa State of Myanmar

2020 ◽  
pp. 0308275X2097409
Author(s):  
Andrew Ong ◽  
Hans Steinmüller
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Development Assistance ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The Self ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Rebel Governance ◽  
The Poor ◽  
De Facto States

If there are any charitable, philanthropic, or welfare-state activities in the de facto states of insurgent armies, they are generally interpreted in terms of utilitarian motives and the self-legitimation of military elites and their business associates. However, development and philanthropy in the Wa State of Myanmar have more extensive purposes. We argue that a framing of care rather than of governance allows for ethnographic attention to emerging social relations and subject positions – ‘our people’, ‘the vulnerable’, and ‘the poor’. In this article we describe ‘communities of care’ by analysing public donations, development assistance and independent philanthropy in the Wa State as categories of care that each follow a different moral logic, respond to different needs, and connect different actors and recipients. Zooming in on the ways in which communities of care reproduce moral subjectivities and political authority allows a re-imagining of everyday politics in the de facto states of armed groups, no longer wedded to notions of control, legitimacy, and ‘rebel governance’.

Unsettling Perception: Screening Surveillance and the Body in Red Road

Paragraph ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Watkins
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Control Room ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Camera Lens ◽  
Film Image ◽  
Colour Sensation ◽  
Female Protagonist ◽  
Fictional Worlds

The association of colour, sensation and the body, which is noted by Jacqueline Lichtenstein and Merleau-Ponty through their insights on colour as the disturbing of structure and form, offers a way in which to foreground a series of questions about embodiment and the discourse of vision. An analysis of the chromatics of Red Road (Dir. Andrea Arnold, UK/Denmark, 2006), which features a female protagonist who works as a surveillance officer in a CCTV control room, offers a way to echo and disrupt the ‘mechanisms and techniques of reality-control’ (de Lauretis 1984, 84) and to challenge what constitutes socially acceptable bodies and the cinematic institution of the image of woman. In Red Road the legible architecture of the film image emerges through the myriad colours of light reflected by a camera lens and the effacement of details in areas affected by shadow and variations in focus. The camera is almost always in motion and responsive to the gestures of the protagonist's body, signalling the potential of the chromatics of Red Road to trouble the structures of seeing familiar to cinematic representation. Colour and perception remain open to contingency and change, fostering alternative subject positions that trace the interrelations of the body — its senses and sensations — and the discourse of vision. The unsettling of perception refigures the encounter between the self and others through the imaginary or fictional worlds that remind us of the uncertainties and vulnerability of such interactions.

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