Mobilising Affect in Feminist, Queer and Anti-Racist Media Cultures
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i The power of vulnerability ii iii THE POWER OF VULNERABILITY Mobilising affect in feminist, queer and anti- racist media cultures EDITED BY ANU KOIVUNEN, KATARIINA KYRÖLÄ AND INGRID RYBERG MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS iv Copyright © Manchester University Press 2018 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors. This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) licence, thanks to the support of The Swedish Research Council, which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the author(s) and Manchester University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 3309 0 hardback ISBN 978 1 5261 3311 3 open access First published 2018 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third- party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset by Out of House Publishing v CONTENTS List of figures vii List of contributors ix 1 Vulnerability as a political language 1 Anu Koivunen, Katariina Kyrölä and Ingrid Ryberg Part I VulnerabIlIty as a battleground 2 Negotiating vulnerability in the trigger warning debates 29 Katariina Kyrölä 3 Trigger happy From content warning to censorship 51 Jack Halberstam 4 Feminist hurt/ feminism hurts 59 Sara Ahmed Part II VulnerabIlIty and VIsIbIlIty 5 Little pink White fragility and black social death 71 Ylva Habel 6 Visibility and vulnerability Translatina world-making in The Salt Mines and Wildness 95 Laura Horak 7 White vulnerability and the politics of reproduction in Top of the Lake: China Girl 116 Johanna Gondouin, Suruchi Thapar- Björkert and Ingrid Ryberg vi vi Contents 8 Spectacularly wounded White male vulnerability as heterosexual fantasy 133 Susanna Paasonen Part III VulnerabIlIty and Cultural PolICy 9 The invulnerable body of colour The failure and success of a Swedish film diversity initiative 151 Mara Lee Gerdén 10 Naming, shaming, framing? The ambivalence of queer visibility in audio- visual archives 175 Dagmar Brunow 11 Abortion prevention Lesbian citizenship and filmmaking in Sweden in the 1970s 195 Ingrid Ryberg 12 The caring nation Don’t Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves as a reparative fantasy 216 Anu Koivunen Index 239 vii FIGURES 5.1 Motley/ Brokiga merchandise in the window of the children’s bookshop Bokslukaren/ Book Eater in Stockholm (2018, photo: Ylva Habel) 78 5.2 Motley/ Brokiga merchandise in the window of the art gallery Konst och Folk/ Art and People in Stockholm (2018, photo: Ylva Habel) 79 6.1 Giovanna in The Salt Mines (screen grab, 1990: directors Susana Aikin and Carlos Aparicio) 101 6.2 Wu and Erika in Wildness (screen grab, 2012: producers Wu Tsang and Kathy Rivkin: director Wu Tsang) 107 7.1 Robin and Miranda in Top of the Lake (screen grab, See- Saw Films, 2017: directors Jane Campion and Ariel Kleiman) 125 9.1 Launching the Fusion Programme in January 2016 with participants Aida Chehrehgosha, Saadia Hussain, Mara Lee Gerdén, Farnaz Arbabi, Farah Yusuf, MyNa Do, Nikeisha Andersson, and Saleen Gomani together with jury members Klara Grunning, Baker Karim, and Sara Waldestam (photo: Christopher Mair) 154 11.1 Lesbian Front meeting in The Woman in Your Life Is You (screen grab, 1977: produced and directed by Lesbisk front Stockholm) 197 11.2 Eva and Maria go to the archipelago (screen grab from Eva and Maria, Tjejfilm, 1983: directors Marie Falksten, Mary Eisikovits, Annalena Öhrström) 198 12.1 Swedish Crown Princess Victoria awarded the prize of ‘Homo of the Year’ to Jonas Gardell at the annual QX gay gala, 4 February 2013 (screen grab, TV4, 2013) 217 viii viii FIgures 12.2 Remembering friends and lovers (screen grab from Don’t Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves, episode 3, Sveriges Television, 2012: director Simon Kaijser) 221 12.3 The spectacle of AIDS (screen grab from Don’t Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves, episode 3, Sveriges Television, 2012: director Simon Kaijser) 223 12.4 Jehovah’s Witnesses’ image of an afterlife (screen grab from Don’t Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves, episode 3, Sveriges Television, 2012: director Simon Kaijser) 229 12.5 Paul’s funeral (screen grab from Don’t Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves, episode 3, Sveriges Television, 2012: director Simon Kaijser) 230 ix CONTRIBUTORS Sara Ahmed is an independent scholar and feminist writer. She has held academic posts at Lancaster University and Goldsmiths, University of London. Her books include Living a Feminist Life (2017), Willful Subjects (2014), On Being Included (2012), The Promise of Happiness (2010), Queer Phenomenology (2006), The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004, 2014), Strange Encounters (2000) and Differences that Matter (1998). She is working on a new project on complaint and has just completed a book provisionally entitled What’s the Use: On the Uses of Use. She blogs at feministkilljoys.com. Dagmar Brunow is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Linnaeus University, Sweden. She is the author of Remediating Transcultural Memory: Documentary Filmmaking as Archival Intervention (de Gruyter, 2015). Dagmar is the editor of Stuart Hall: Aktivismus, Pop und Politik (Ventil, 2015) and co- editor of Queer Cinema (Ventil, 2018). Her research project, ‘The Cultural Heritage of Moving Images’ (2016– 18), has been financed by the Swedish Research Council. Dagmar is also a programmer at the International Queer Film Festival Hamburg. Johanna Gondouin is Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Gender Studies, Stockholm University. Gondouin holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and is a former postdoctoral researcher in Cinema Studies before joining Gender Studies. Her research as well as her teaching is focused on post- colonial feminist theory, critical race and whiteness studies, feminist media studies and critical adoption studies. Gondouin has recently finished the research project ‘Mediating Global Motherhood: Gender, Race and Sexuality in Swedish Media Representations of Transnational Surrogacy and Transnational Adoption’, funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR). She is currently leading the international research project ‘From Waste to Profit: Gender, Biopolitics and Neoliberalism in Indian Commercial Surrogacy’, also funded by VR. x x ContrIbutors Ylva Habel is Assistant Professor in Media and Communication Studies, and Researcher in the field of anti- black racism at CEMFOR (Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Racism), Department of Theology, University of Uppsala. Her research draws on black studies, postcolonial, critical race and whiteness studies, and specifically revolves around the affective economy of Swedish exceptionalist, colourblind discourses. With an inter- disciplinary background in cinema studies, her analytical approach entails an interest for combining these perspectives with the optics of media his- tory, visual and material culture. In her upcoming research, she will focus upon kindred discursive logics in recent Swedish and Dutch media debates, and examine the ways in which blackness figures in relation to perennial welfare state values. Jack Halberstam is Professor of Gender Studies and English at Columbia University. Halberstam is the author of six books, including Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (Duke University Press, 1995), Female Masculinity (Duke University Press, 1998), In A Queer Time and Place (New York University Press, 2005), The Queer Art of Failure (Duke University Press, 2011), Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal (Beacon Press, 2012), and Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability (University of California Press, 2017) and has written art- icles that have appeared in numerous journals, magazines and collections. Halberstam has co- edited a number of anthologies including Posthuman Bodies with Ira Livingston (Indiana University Press, 1995) and a special issue of Social Text with Jose Muñoz and David Eng titled ‘What’s Queer About Queer Studies Now?’ Laura Horak is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University. She is author of Girls Will Be Boys: Cross- Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908– 1934 (Rutgers University Press, 2016), which the Huffington Post declared one of the Best Film Books of 2016. She also co- edited Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space (Indiana University Press, 2014), winner of the Society of Cinema and Media Studies award for best edited collection. She recently co- edited a special issue of Somatechnics on ‘Cinematic Bodies’ and the anthology Unwatchable (Rutgers University Press, 2019). She is currently researching the history of trans- made films in the United States and Canada. Anu Koivunen is Professor of Cinema Studies in the Department of Media Studies at Stockholm University, currently working as Professor of Gender Studies at Tampere University, Finland. She has written on feminist and queer film theory, the affective turn in feminist and queer xi ContrIbutors xi theory, Finnish cinema and television history, new narratives about Sweden Finns as well as mediated cultures