The power of vulnerability: mobilising affect in feminist, queer and anti-racist media cultures

List of figures1 Vulnerability as a political language -- Anu Koivunen, Katariina Kyrölä and Ingrid RybergPart I: Vulnerability as a battleground2 Negotiating vulnerability in the trigger warning debates -- Katariina Kyrölä3 Trigger happy: from content warning to censorship -- Jack Halberstam4 Feminist hurt/feminism hurts -- Sara AhmedPart II: Vulnerability and visibility5 Little Pink: white fragility and black social death -- Ylva Habel6 Visibility and vulnerability: negotiating transgender representation and encounters with translatina worlds in The Salt Mines and Wildness -- Laura Horak7 White vulnerability and the politics of reproduction in Top of the Lake: China Girl -- Johanna Gondouin, Suruchi Thapar-Björkert and Ingrid Ryberg8 Spectacularly wounded: white male vulnerability as heterosexual fantasy -- Susanna PaasonenPart III: Vulnerability and cultural policy9 The invulnerable body of colour: the failure and success of a Swedish Film Diversity initiative -- Mara Lee Gerden10 Naming, shaming, framing? The ambivalence of queer visibility in audio-visual archives -- Dagmar Brunow11 Abortion prevention: lesbian citizenship and filmmaking in Sweden in the 1970s -- Ingrid Ryberg12 The caring nation: Don't Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves as a reparative fantasy -- Anu KoivunenIndex

The power of vulnerability interrogates the new language of vulnerability that has emerged in feminist, queer and anti-racist debates about the production, use and meanings of media. The book investigates the historical legacies and contemporary forms and effects of this language. In today's media culture, traumatic first-person or group narratives have popular currency, mobilising affect from compassion to rage to gain cultural visibility and political advantage. In this context, vulnerability becomes a kind of capital, a resource or an asset that can and has been appropriated for various groups and purposes in public discourses, activism as well as cultural institutions. Thus, politics of representation translates into politics of affect, and the question about whose vulnerability counts as socially and culturally legible and acknowledged. The contributors of the book examine how vulnerability has become a battleground; how affect and vulnerability have turned into a politicised language for not only addressing but also obscuring asymmetries of power; and how media activism and state policies address so-called vulnerable groups. While the contributors investigate the political potential as well as the constraints of vulnerability for feminist, queer and antiracist criticism, they also focus on the forms of agency and participation vulnerability can offer.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book is available as an open access ebook under a CC-BY-NC-ND licence.This book investigates the new language of vulnerability that has emerged in feminist, queer and antiracist debates on media, taking a particular interest in the historical legacies and contemporary forms and effects of this language. Contributors such as Jack Halberstam and Sara Ahmed examine how vulnerability has become a battleground, how affect and vulnerability have turned into a politicised currency both for addressing and obscuring asymmetries of power, and how media activism and state policies address so-called vulnerable groups. Taking on such heated topics as trigger warnings and diversity policies, the book will be of interest to scholars and students in media and cultural studies, affect theory, gender studies, queer theory and critical race studies