Feminist dilemmatic theorizing: : New materialism in communication studies

• Autores: Kate Lockwood Harris
• Localización: Communication Theory, ISSN-e 1468-2885, Vol. 26, Nº. 2, 2016, págs. 150-170
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Feminist communication scholars often adopt seemingly incommensurate stances to navigate tensions among agency, discourse, materiality, and history. I argue that valuing these “contradictions” is a hallmark of feminist communication research, a tradition I label feminist dilemmatic theorizing. Because feminists seek to describe and transform the world, they employ constitutive and representative understandings of communication. Rather than assert these approaches as paradoxical, I reread existing scholarship for nascent feminist new materialisms. Using sexual violence as an example, I argue that feminist communication theory develops a distinct approach to the force of communication, one in which discourse is not all-powerful. Accordingly, I suggest communication theorists draw upon existing feminist scholarship to meet critiques of social construction and develop a material turn.