SESSIONS K Thursday 13:45–15:15

K1 Global cultures of masculinity Chair: Anna Hickey-Moody, Goldsmiths College, United Kingdom

This panel brings together established and emerging scholars from a range of institutions that are renowned for their contributions to cultural studies in order to explore the politics of globalization through the lens of located studies of masculinity. Across lived and theoretical engagements with empirical, transnational business cultures, film, media, sport and philosophy, the scholars brought together here mediate lived practices and disciplines of thought located in very different cultures and contexts. Issues of identity politics such as disability, ethnicity, workplace culture and epistemic debates brought to the fore through philosophical investigations are explored side by side in this challenging and complimentary collection of works, to offer a global, practical and theoretical perspective on the lived experience of masculinity in contemporary cultural formations and practices.

Masculinity Politics and the Jargon of Strategy Timothy Laurie, University of Melbourne, Australia

It is a sociological commonplace to say that masculinity is articulated ?strategically? to achieve social or material rewards, and many critics have pointed to the impediments to social justice initiatives caused by the strategic possession of gendered social advantages. While valuing these insights, this paper interrogates the formula of MASCULINITY = STRATEGY as the sense making device through which masculinity is held ethically accountable. In particular, the paper questions the metaphors of positionality, military combat and patriarchal dividends that continue to inform many sociological explanations of gendered social relationships. By reading this scholarship alongside Luce Irigaray's Speculum of the Other Woman (1974), the paper argues that social scientific figurations of strategic masculine identity formation still invoke an Oedipal economy of fixed gendered rewards, thus foreclosing more nuanced discussions of ambivalence within the social production of gendered desire.

Carbon fiber masculinity: Homosociality, hegemony and late capitalism Anna Hickey-Moody, Goldsmiths College, University of London, United Kingdom

Heterosexual economies of misogyny that articulate the socio-sexual dynamic that Judith Butler calls ’the heterosexual matrix’ articulate across surfaces of carbon fiber. Like the many other signifiers of the phallus and the successful realization of male sexual pleasure that occupy the global capitalist cultural imaginary and shape economies of relation in late capitalism, carbon fiber is the masculine prosthesis of the decade. Harder, faster, stronger, lighter, carbon fiber not only allows men to build more effective machines; it constitutes machines on which men can become faster and can dominate other men. Oscar Pistorius’

136 biography extends the surface of carbon fiber masculinity as technology of homosociality and misogyny, not just hegemonic masculinity. The Pistorius-Carbon fiber assemblage overcame the feminizing position of being a ’disabled’ athlete. With carbon fiber, Pistorius was able to dominate non disabled male athletes and the murder of his then girlfriend, Reeva Rebecca Steenkamp, shows us that he is also keen to dominate, indeed to control and abuse, women. Carbon fiber is the technology that propelled Pistorius beyond the socio- cultural politics of disability, it is the surface that connects him to global assemblages of sporting masculinity. This paper explores affects, economies and surfaces of what I call ’carbon fiber masculinity’ and discusses Pistorius’ use of carbon fiber, homosociality and misogyny as forms of protest masculinity through which he attempted to recuperate his gendered identity from emasculating discourses of disability.

“I Just Don’t Know What Went Wrong” - The Brony Masculinity Mikko Hautakangas, University of Tampere, Finland

The animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, originally targeted to little girls, has achieved an unexpected world-wide fan base among young adult men. These fans, referred to as “bronies”, form communities and share fan-produced material online, arrange conventions, and also interact with the show’s producers – just like most contemporary fandoms do. However, the brony phenomenon has stirred controversy and confusion because of its unconventional relation to masculinity: the male affection for a “girlish” fantasy world seems to require some kind of explanation (such as ironic or queer attitude), which bronies however refuse to provide. This paper focuses on the codes of mainstream masculinity that bronies appear to violate, and the significance of these violations to bronies themselves as a transgressive identity strategy. The empirical material consists of interviews, ethnographic observation and content analysis of internet discussions.

K2 Multimodal narration Chair: Kati Kallio, Finnish Literature Society, Finland

Djibril Diop Mambety’s film 'Hyenas' at the Crossroads between Life Experience, a Folk Tale, Short Story and Film Anny Wynchank, University of Cape Town, South Africa

D.D. Mambety's film, Hyenas, originated from a life experience in Dakar. This paper analyses a crossroads, where a personal experience and moral tale evolved into a powerful African film. Mambety's experience was the regular visit of a prostitute to the Dakar docks, where she distributed money to the down-and-outs. She abruptly ceased these visits. Based on this experience, Mambety wrote a tale, Ramatou, which became the foundation of a film. A friend pointed out the similarity of his scenario to the Swiss dramatist Durrenmatts's play, The Visit. With Durrenmatt's enthusiastic encouragement, Mambety made Hyenas: Ramatou, now immensely wealthy, offers the villagers billions to kill her former lover, who had abandoned her thirty years before. Mambety intended this film to convey a strong political message, an indictment of some supranational organisations. Ramatou represents the IMF and the World Bank, who often dictate to African nations how to manage their economy.

137 Socio-cultural context in film adaptation Marjo Vallittu, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Narration is one of the most difficult things to adapt from novel to film due to the different means of expression in both media. Yet it is not the only reason for contentual differences, which cannot be analysed without knowledge of the work's socio-cultural context. A temporal distance between the works emphasizes this. Works may for example reveal changes in the notions on society and morality. A good example is Mika Waltari's novel, ”Inspector Palmu's mistake” (1940), the action of which takes place in the 1930s. Matti Kassila's film (1960) was also a period drama but contained different narrative elements. Kassila's screen play included for example Hitler's speech whereas it is mentioned neither in Waltari's novel nor in the film. One reason for this is the difference in socio-cultural contexts: 1940s was the time of war, and the 1960s marked the beginning of cultural liberation.

Multimodal registers of Ingrian oral poetry Kati Kallio, Finnish Literature Society, Finland

In Ingrian singing culture of the early 20th century, the ways of combining poetic, musical and vocal features were deeply context-dependent. When singing, various melodies, rhythms, tempos, movements and gestures, refrains, and tones of voices were used. Especially in certain ritual contexts, the poems and the ways of singing were rather fixed. When analysing this historical Finnic singing culture, the concepts of multimodality and register have proven fruitful. Multimodality means approaching local practices from various sensory levels: how do the meaning potentials of textual, musical, kinaesthetic and visual spheres influence each other? The concept of register helps to analyse the local genres in relation to group identities, public and private spheres, ritual and everyday uses. The registers and local genres are taken as frames of interpretation, which gain their meanings via different kinds of recurrent uses and associations within a speech community.

K3 Cultural pedagogies Chair: Lari Aaltonen, University of Tampere, Finland

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“Us and them in children’s culture” – (de)construction of differences in Finnish children’s literature Jaana Pesonen, University of Oulu, Finland

Reading children’s literature should be seen as a transformative act, as cultural artefacts, such as children’s literature, can have an input in transforming people’s understanding of differences and of ‘us and them’. According to my analysis anti-racist morality can occur in literary texts for children as deconstructing of dominant discourses and questioning of representations related to dichotomy of ‘us and them’. In this paper differences are not examined only as representations of different ethnicities, but also as other social categorisations such as gender, class, age, dis/ability and nationality. The research data consists of analysis on texts and images of selected Finnish picturebooks and semi structured interviews done with the writers and illustrators of children’s literature. The focus is on the construction and deconstruction of differences in books for children, thought I examine also the authors and their intentions or indirect conceptions related to the topic.

When you know just a bit too much...: Representation, stereotyping and ethics in applied culture work in Finland Lari Aaltonen, University of Tampere, Finland & Joonas Keskinen, Culture Cooperative Uulu, Finland

Tampere based Uulu Culture Cooperative was formed in 2003 by a group of ethnomusicologists. Uulu promotes music from different parts of the world, and from Finland’s own tradition. The cultural aspects of music and every man’s right to musicality are emphasized in all the activities. Uulu works nationally with all age groups. During the ten years of the cooperative’s existence, Uulu has been regularly evaluating the basic ideologies behind the concepts of its work. This paper elaborates on the double standards of stereotyping in culture work. As the need to simplify different cultures for education purposes forces Uulu to use certain kind of stereotyping, it also is a double-edged sword. Banal stereotyping and exoticism are lurking behind the corner. This case aims to unravel the power structures and politics of representation in culture work.

K4 The Somatic and the Social: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges 2: Affective Methodologies Chair: Britta Timm Knudsen, Aarhus University, Denmark

Affective Mappings as World-Making Tools Britta Timm Knudsen, Aarhus University, Denmark & Carsten Stage, Aarhus University, Denmark

Our book Affective Methodologies investigates three main challenges to the study of affective processes: 1) how to ask situated research questions, 2) how to collect embodied data and 3) how to identify affectivity in relation to material from various fields (Knudsen and Stage, forthcoming in 2014). Our methodological investigation in this paper will focus on how to collect embodied data through user-generated visual mapping strategies

139 combined with sessions of collective interpretation of these visual productions (Gauntlett 2005). These techniques will be deployed to investigate (both also reinforce) the affective and discursive impact of two aesthetic projects – “From Godsbanen to Gellerup” and “To Remind” – both focused on stimulating processes of user involvement and citizenship. We will nevertheless not only ask: “how are receivers affected by the events?”, but also: “can everyday creative mappings become tools to maintain and strengthen the long-term effects of aesthetic events and participatory experience designs?”. In that way we approach methods as not only strategies for obtaining data about the world, but also as “inventive” world-making devices (Lury & Wakeford 2012).

A ‘mother’ and her fans – affective relations in fandom of Lady Gaga Lise Dilling-Hansen, Aarhus University, Denmark

In 2009 the artist Lady Gaga got a nickname; Mother Monster. Besides referring to the monstrous elements of the norm challenging performances of Gaga, the nickname also implies the personal and intimate cloning-, imitation or mirroring relations between the artist and her fans in which Gaga serves as ‘mother’, mentor and matrix, and thereby guides, comforts and encourages her little monsters. This presentation focus on how modes of affect can be traced in the fan relation concerned, using mixed methodologies (Davis & Michelle, 2011) to investigate how these “semiconscious bodily reactions” (Thrift, 2008) can be read in their state as “semantically and semiotically formed progressions” (Massumi, 2002) in the acts, words and behaviors of the fans. The analytic work will be done based on varying fieldwork conducted in New York, 2013 and 2014.

Emotional Geographies: Mediating and Feeling Extreme Flooding Joanne Garde-Hansen, University of Warwick, United Kingdom

This paper presents emergent cultural studies themes from an interdisciplinary UK Economic and Social Research Council-funded research project that aimed to increase understanding of how communities experience and learn from extreme flooding through their interaction with media and use of communication technology. Drawing upon the media representation of extreme flooding in the UK case study area, the emergence of social and emotional media and the use of data to sustain flood heritage, the paper reflects upon evidence collected of the emotional responses to flooding. It takes account of how media producers and consumers construct affective responses to floods and memories of flood events through dominant disaster narratives. The research emphasises the importance of lay knowledges, notions of a ‘watery senses of place’, shared flood heritage and participatory methods of research that address the problem of forgetting and remembering floods.

K5 The Lure of Nationalism: Reconstructing the national body in cultural productions Chair: Ken Takiguchi, National University of Singapore

As a complex and in some cases a highly popular entity, nationalism is advocated by government, elites, as well as by activists, civilians, and progressives. Nationalism could be so ubiquitous and predominant in certain contexts of East Asia that it almost seems to 140 function like a phantom, an unseen but conscious controller of daily life. As a ground wherein identities as well as various figures of bodies are formulated and discursively performed in the interest of political aims, nationalism could be understood in terms of bodily movements; likewise, it often intersects with cultural productions. This panel explores the ways in which the ideas of the nation or nationalism are represented, reconfigured, and embodied through various forms of cultural productions in the context of current East Asia. Extending the notion of nationalism and the body, we attempt to examine how the body and the bodily movements are choreographed and framed up in various ideological, nationalist projects and how these are reproduced as cultural products.

Nationalism(?) with ‘Our’ Enemy in and out of Japan Yukie Hirata, Dokkyo University, Japan

This research clarifies the relationship between representations of North Korea and Japanese nationalism through the analysis of Manga published in Japan. In recent years, the image of North Korea has been represented as a tool for strengthening nationalism in Japan, and this has been confirmed through the consolidation of Japan’s national identity. In the national narratives, there is the present, without historical context, and it concerns ‘our Japan’ and the Japanese identity while representing others as evil or the enemy. I examine the figure of consumable nationalism in Japan through analyzing the national narratives in Japanese Manga culture.

We are never free from the lure of the national: Reconstruction of the Marginal Bodies in Movement Dang-Dang'sFragmented Memories: An Eternal Parting ver.2 Hyunjung Lee, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

This paper explores how the concept of nationalism and the myth of Korean-ness are reconstructed via the figures of minorities in the recent documentary-performance entitled Fragmented Memories: An Eternal Parting conceived by Movement Dang-Dang. The performance showcases the phenomena of Korean diaspora, starting from the history of the deportations of Korean populations in USSR during the 1930s-1940s. The performance also raises the issues of other groups of Korean populations, such as Joseonjok or Zainichi, and examines how the issue of Korean diaspora is situated within the current context of South Korea. Despite the progressive nature of the Movement’s objectives the performance as a whole becomes ambivalent and almost runs the risk of conspiring with the hegemonic ideology of nationalism, blood, family, or home. By analyzing the choreographic constructions of Korean diaspora in the performance, I unfold the moment in which a progressive deconstruction of Korean-ness at times converges with the mainstream idea of nationalism.

Nationalism, Internationally Constructed: Representation of nationalism in Japan-Singapore theatre collaboration Mobile 2: Flat Cities Ken Takiguchi, National University of Singapore

Intercultural theatre collaborations have always been a sphere where the issues of cultural ownership, exploitation and misuse are raised and negotiated. In the collaborations in Asia, especially when Japan is in their pictures, setting a creative ground becomes an even more complicated task because of the history of Japanese invasion of the region during the Second World War. When the artists wish to theatrically represent the history, colonialism and 141 nationalism through intercultural collaborations in Asia, what are the possible approaches to be taken? To answer this question, this paper examines a Singapore-Japan theatre collaboration Mobile 2: Flat Cities staged by Singapore’s The Necessary Stage in 2013, with the reference to the earlier collaborations between Japan and Southeast Asian countries.

K6 Communicating humanitarianism I: Audiences and publics of humanitarian emergencies Chair: Kaarina Nikunen, University of Tampere, Finland

The emergence of new communication technologies in northern and southern societies has reshaped media environments and cultural space profoundly. Mediated experiences travel in space and time faster than before, and spaces for collective emotions have increased and are no longer nationally bound. Media technological development offers new transnational ways of participation with new spaces for construction of communities, identities and shared experiences. Further on, the notions of monitorial citizenship and clictivism point to new forms of social engagement and citizenship that seem to increase visibility of activism and yet decrease the scale of commitment. However, these changes are not necessarily as straight forward and simple as some technology-oriented research suggest. Contrarily, it seems that humanitarianism is challenged in multiple ways, both inside and outside: within the aid organizations as discontent towards the concept of universal ethics and within societies at large as a trend towards increased individualization and a commercialization of distant suffering. Within this framework, we wish to attract papers that offer new insight on the ways in which aid organizations, journalists, film and television producers, local governments, citizens and political groups use the media to discuss issues of humanitarianism. We encourage work that critically explores the area of humanitarianism in the transforming mediascape.

Transient Compassion: How British publics respond to Humanitarian Communication Rachel Tavernor, University of Sussex, United Kingdom

For decades visual images of extreme hunger communicated by NGOs have been widely criticised as overtly negative and representatively inaccurate, often depicting starving children though a colonial gaze that ‘anesthetises’ the public. Despite these criticisms, large humanitarian campaigns show that publics still take action through donation and/or petition. This paper will undertake an empirical study of the 2013 ‘Enough Food IF’ campaign to explore the forms of response to the visual communication used. In so doing, it departs from traditional literature on ‘compassion fatigue’ that locates the media image as responsible for a lack of public participation. I will argue that the current use of ephemeral figures, celebrities and fragile ‘others’, provokes a fleeting form of compassion. Humanitarian organisations use this transient interest to direct audiences to immediate forms of action. Transient compassion recognizes the ‘other’ in need, acknowledging that ‘we need to act now’; however it fails to establish a long-term commitment to be in solidarity with the cause.

142 Distance breached or distance transformed? Dilemmas of simulated and banal closeness in humanitarian communication Domen Bajde, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark & Gry Høngsmark Knudsen, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Social media have been argued to have had a profound transformational impact on humanitarian communication and those involved in it. Networked humanitarian organizations are supposedly more accessible and transparent to outside observers and collaborators (Kanter and Fine 2010). Their “audiences” too are networked, socially inter- connected and "cause-wired", to use another popular phrase (Watson 2009), again implying an unprecedented closeness of “donors” to humanitarian causes and the “beneficiaries” of humanitarian action. However, even optimistic commentators recognize that humanitarian action taking place on social media is often cursory and vain (Watson 2009). While humanitarian causes can greatly benefit from the social networks of trust, reputation, validation and collaboration, these same structures and dynamics of social media also contribute to a narcissistic culture, wherein responsibilities to vulnerable others regularly give way to fixations with expressive selves (Chouliaraki 2012). Connectivity does not erase but rather transforms distance, and that moral action requires “proper distance”, rather than an absence of distance (Silverstone 2006, Chouliaraki 2011). We examine two cases of networked humanitarianism, wherein social media are used to mobilize and coordinate humanitarian action globally (the case of Kiva.org), or locally (the case of Kirkens Korshær). In both cases, connectivity fails to radically breach the distance between humanitarian agents and vulnerable others, or to genuinely amplify the voice of the latter. Our findings show that distance is reformatted to involve either simulated closeness (in the case of Kiva) or banal closeness (the case of KK). The two (re)forms of distance encountered give rise to several dilemmas and challenges that should not be overlooked by scholars and humanitarian stakeholders.

Representing and Reconstructing the Disaster: Wenchuan Earthquake as a Media Event in Contemporary Chinese Society Xiaojun Ye, National University of Singapore

With modern media, the Wenchuan Earthquake in China had been a unified time-space, in which the whole nation was mobilized to response. However, the complexity of this disaster has been reduced to fit in a heroic and epic framework with a clear ending in public media. This paper, which is based on textual analysis and ethnography, tries to rearticulate an alternative story by exploring not only how different social forces and technologies produce and shape the representation of distant suffering on media; but also this media representation could reshape and reconstruct the disaster in turn. Additionally, this paper attempts to go beyond the debate framed by the dualism between distant compassion and disaster consumption, showing how mediated disasters could connect a large society with the affected population but at the same time disintegrate local community in affected areas.

143 K7 Aesthetics in action Chair: Susan Luckman, University of South Australia, Australia

Bollywood Cinema of the 1970s: Deciphering the Code and Defining the Genre Wendy Cutler, Catholic University of the West Angers, France

The contents of this paper will deal with the exploration of a significant popular art in India known as Bollywood cinema. It will focus on action movies of the 1970s and try to define their belonging to a specific genre in relation to the socio-cultural changes which occurred during that period. These films are thoroughly codified and in order to grasp their importance and significance, the viewers have to understand their codes. The popularity of these films makes us wonder if they are the continuity of a specific popular genre in Indian cinema that already existed before. By focusing on a specific genre trend, I propose to try to answer this question by highlighting the uniqueness of Bollywood films.

Beautiful Vengeance: Martial Arts Films à-la-mode and the Aestheticized Ethicized Contest Keiko Nitta, Rikkyo University, Japan

This presentation discusses the dominant tendency of the contemporary Asian martial arts films and analyzes its functions and problems. Since the success of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, other high-class directors including Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar-wai predictably followed in his footsteps. Their enhancement of the work’s aesthetic elements by a dreamy cinematography, refined fight choreographies, stylish costumes, and locations at a number of stunning off-the-beaten-track deserts, plains, and mountains, established the mode of contemporary version of the genre with an international blockbuster potential. In parallel with an ambiguous response to such a tendency among the core fandom, however, this new way of elaboration seems to function as an imperfect marker of one significant narrative theme in the earlier works particularly by Bruce Lee’s. By tracing the continuation and interruption between the two periods, I will indicate a theoretical problem in the contemporary attempts as softly elevated violence films.

‘Here there be dragons’: Adventure Narratives, Technology and the Mobile Homes of Backpackers Jessica Pacella, University of South Australia

There is a rich history of travel literature that suggests identity and making of the self are things that are acquired, distilled and sought after during budget and long-haul travel. However, how ‘connectedness’, or rather, mobile technologies, impacts long-haul budget travel has yet to receive similar attention. Given that contemporary research on ‘independent travellers’ is largely united by a desire to understand how these individuals ‘incorporate their travelling experiences into their own conception of self-identity’ (Davidson 2005), this paper demonstrates how the impact of technology is revealed through intersections of participants’ relationship to home while abroad. Using data collected during a six-month stay at a youth hostel in Australia as a part of a larger research project, this paper suggests that the travel stories of backpackers in the age of digital technology is at odds with the mythical figure of the lone ‘pioneer’ as romanticised in backpacker adventure narratives.

144 Masked life and youth subculture - How cosplayers dwell between the ACG and real worlds in China Tingting Qin, Peking University, China

Cosplay opens a window for understanding youth culture. Cosplayers are those who dressed up like characters in ACG (Animation/comic/game), using costume\making-up\properties and so like. In China, they have a strict distinguish between ACG world which they call a “two dimensional world” and the real one called “three dimensional world”, and it’s the former that they appreciate. In their views, the real world is utilitarian, odious and selfish where people hide their own hearts, while the two dimensional world is where ACG-lovers have fun together, far away from contrast and boring competition. For them, cosplay gives a stage for the hidden personalities and escaping from pressure temporarily. Chinese cosplayers share common viewpoints, ex.: 1)“Love regardless of gender”, they are more tolerant of homosexuality, and some girls are even trying it themselves. 2) most cosplay girls fond of “H” manga (tanbi), prefer boy’s love(BL) story to boy-girl love story(BG). 3) they use a distinguished language system full of cyberspeak, adjusted rough words and ACG slang. 4) most of them like Japan and prefer Japanese animation to Chinese. Cosplay is no doubt a subculture, but I want to debate that subculture theory from CCCS is obsolete and misleading in this case. Their cosplay activities are nested in daily life, which happens most in weekends and vocations. The sensitivity of distinguishing between the two worlds gives them a free shift for different impression managements. Those who achieve less in real world are more likely to be absorbed in ACG. Cosplay life also attributes to their daily life; most of them report that they benefit from cosplay in friendship and personal skills. This paper uses my fieldwork study in Beijing from 2011 till now. I pay attention to both their cosplay life and ordinary life where they are students, white-collars, waitress, and kindergarten teachers and so on. Without knowing their no-cosplay life, we can’t understand cosplay.

K8 Populism as movement and rhetoric II: Populism of the elite? Chairs: Emilia Palonen, University of Helsinki, Finland & Erkki Vainikkala, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Populism as a movement is by definition linked to the “people”, and further to grievances, resistance, protest and demands common enough to bring people together around a core issue and leader. To be effective, “populist rhetoric” must be sufficiently “weak” or vague in order to make room for different investments and issues. This may result in culturally embedded rhetorical appeals, which do not fit the description of populism as a movement of the common people. As a response to perceived threats, the elite, too, may resort to populism. It may bring together certain economic ideologies, national interests and notions of well-being as the only viable values to show the way forward. The combined strength and vagueness of this “populism of the elite” is no different from the functioning of the “ordinary” or the peoples’ populism, which in fact can be drawn into its orbit. What happens when populism turns cultural?

145 Politics of cultural populism in Finland Emilia Palonen, University of Helsinki, Finland

Populist rhetoric is often considered as one that articulates a distinction between people and the elite. In Cultural Studies, “cultural populism” has been conceptualized by McGuigan as the turn by research to popular culture, that then maintains a distinction between high and popular culture. In politics, dichotomous populist rhetoric may become the trade of most political parties. This paper seeks to reconceptualise cultural populism to study populism. It claims that populism spreads also to the elite. Besides of an emergence of culture of populism – where dichotomous rhetoric around vague common demands is omnipresent, populism becomes cultural. To illustrate the point the paper investigates the case of Finland where populist rhetoric penetrates discussions of potential Guggenheim Helsinki and Himanen & Castells’ hotly debated study commissioned by the PM Katainen. Through these projects the elite builds chains of equivalence, and envisions a homogeneous Finland, threatened by critics, parochialisation and globalisation.

Populist rhetoric, relationality, and cultures of interaction Urpo Kovala, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Populist discourse does not emerge in a void but in contact with and as reactions to other discourses. Part but not all of this is manifest in populist discourse itself, not the least as antagonisms against ‘elites’. In both academic and non-academic debates, however, the focus usually settles on populist discourse and its subjects, and the other discursive positions tend to slip more or less out of sight. This paper looks at recent Finnish debates around populism as interplay between various different positions working on each other in sometimes surprising ways. In addition, due to the nature of new public fora, different cultures of interaction with very different goals and means come to a clash. The traces of this dynamic as well as related rhetorical means and the roles of "tertii" (Simmel), third positions, are analyzed in the paper.

The Dirty Class – Neoliberal Capitalism Translated into Cultural Terms Jussi Ojajärvi, University of Oulu, Finland

Neoliberalism normalizes the socioeconomic figure of the ‘disposable worker’ (Harvey 20005). This process has its cultural counterparts as well, for instance, the figure of the ‘dirty class’, which knits together ‘dirt’ and the ‘lower’ or working class. This articulation is not new, yet around the year 2000 it symptomatically re-emerged in media representations. However, some literary texts also applied it as an ironic tool of diagnostic critique. Theoretically speaking, the articulation of dirt and the working class may be a ‘projective identification’ preferred by the middle classes, for it translates the economic insecurity of the middle class audiences into a cultural binary opposition by the means of which they can distantiate themselves from the neoliberal disposability of the workers. Simultaneously, the insecurity still in fact remains their own disposability, for very often the middle class subjects themselves, too, are neoliberal labor. As a vehicle of projective identification, ‘dirty class’ is related to ‘disgusted subjects’ (Lawler 2005) and ‘revolting subjects’ due to ‘social abjection’ (Tyler 2013).

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