Item Details

Postfeminism – for whom or by whom? Applying discourse analysis in research on the body and beauty (the case of black hair)

Issue: Vol 12 No. 2 (2018)

Subject Areas: Gender Studies Linguistics

Abstract:

This article explores postfeminism in the context of beauty consumption in the Global South. Advocating a transnational feminist perspective, it construes incorporation of postfeminism into the Global South in two senses - as the reception of a globally circulated discourse and as the embodiment(s) of it in different dimensions of lived femininity. Specifically, it examines how postfeminism is interpreted by black South African women in their beauty consumption. A combined, discursive-and-embodied approach is advanced to transcend the body/discourse binary and hence reflect on the intricate relationship between postfeminist discourse and the body in which it materialises. The article concludes by discussing the discursive dynamics of arriving at the subjective understanding(s) of the Western cultural logic of postfeminism in the cultural reality of postcolonial Africa, and by suggesting the methodology of research on discourse and beauty.

Author: Ewa Glapka

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