Sarah Cefai
Biographic Data
| ID | 640508 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarah Cefai |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarah |
| FAMILY NAME | Cefai |
| SIGNATURE | CEFAI S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Goldsmiths University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5283-0442 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
He said, she said
In recent years, popular feminist discourse has increasingly associated feminism with a cultural concept of consent. My reflection in this special section of Cultural Commons: ‘#(No)SeAcabó / It is (not) over’ discusses the Rubiales/Hermoso kiss through the lens of consent by enquiring into how the words ‘he said, she said’ attend to particular kinds of gender injustice. I suggest that ‘he said, she said’ acts as a form of representation that has…
Consent-deception
This article draws on feminist cultural studies, media and cultural theory, and engages with feminist law and criminology, to argue for a newly invigorated conceptualisation of consent in feminist theory. Rather than advance a particular feminist theory of consent, the article argues for a feminist cultural media theory of commonsense consent that is both sensory and representational. This theory acknowledges that there is no concept of consent r…
Lauren Berlant on Genre
There is no doubt that the writing of Lauren Berlant is influential in media and cultural studies as well as across gender and feminist studies and other work in critical, cultural and materialist traditions. Given the complexity of Berlant’s work and its integral refusal of taxonomic and hegemonic terms, it can be difficult for the reader to coherently grasp the singularity of even their most powerful concepts. This essay attempts to think with …
Humiliation’s media cultures
Humiliation, which Silvan Tomkins paired with shame (‘shame-humiliation’), has not received much attention in queer, feminist and cultural analysis. This article addresses this omission by putting forward an account of humiliation’s eventful ‘structure of feeling’. In line with Raymond Williams’ original conception, and in conversation with affect studies, my account links humiliation’s structure to the broader socio-political tensions it articul…
Mediating affect in John Pilger’s Utopia
This article proposes that whiteness should be thought of as an affective structure, theorizing whiteness in terms of optimism, possessive subjectivity and multiculturalism. The article shows how the optimism of ‘the good life’ [Berlant, L., 2011. Cruel optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press] is linked structurally to whiteness in the construction of the Australian nation-state. In this context, Utopia [2013. Film. Directed by John Pilger. A…
Introduction
This Special Issue brings together seven affective mediations on the theme of mediating affect. The articles were presented in an earlier form at the inaugural Affect Theory Conference, held in Millersville (USA) in October 2015. Responding to a Call for Papers, authors were invited to take on the question of ‘media’ and ‘mediation’ in the context of the blossoming field of affect studies. Each article in turn tackles a particular trajectory of c…
Mediating the presence of others
Drawing insight from queer and media studies, this article analyses data from the UK study Adults’ Media Lives. The authors claim that this study reveals the significance of people’s intimate relationships to their media practices, highlighting in particular how people’s media practices mediate the ‘presence’ of others. The authors put forward the concept of mediated intimacy to capture both the cultural intimacy people have with media and the me…
Feeling and the production of lesbian space in The L Word
This article seeks to understand the production of lesbian space in the TV series The L Word (TLW) (Showtime 2004–2009). To do so, it departs from theories of the lesbian gaze to discuss the visibility of feeling. Specifically, I consider how TLW represents the visibility of feeling as constitutive of lesbian bodies, communities and spaces. In TLW, real spaces (actual locations) fold into virtual ones (on screen) in a deliberate construction of t…
Introduction
Articles in this themed section offer critical engagement with globalised flows of cultural practice and the resultant formations of identity that manifest (in) transnational and national contexts of place. This introduction outlines a rationale for thinking about the matter of style as an articulation of structures of desire. In their discussion of style, these articles register on-going changes in the global order of desire, evident through the…
Up Close and Personal, But Not Close Enough
One of the central aims of this book is to establish life online as a legitimate and sociologically significant area of study. To this end the book provides a genuinely wide range of original essays, each of which focuses on a discretely defined empirical site. The collection’s empiricism is impressively buttressed by well‐located literature reviews and the provision of detailed notes on methodology. This makes for an excellent teaching resource,…
Unhappy Families
A review of Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness and David L. Eng, The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy
Mediating the presence of others
Drawing insight from queer and media studies, this article analyses data from the UK study Adults’ Media Lives. The authors claim that this study reveals the significance of people’s intimate relationships to their media practices, highlighting in particular how people’s media practices mediate the ‘presence’ of others. The authors put forward the concept of mediated intimacy to capture both the cultural intimacy people have with media and the me…
Humiliation’s media cultures
Humiliation, which Silvan Tomkins paired with shame (‘shame-humiliation’), has not received much attention in queer, feminist and cultural analysis. This article addresses this omission by putting forward an account of humiliation’s eventful ‘structure of feeling’. In line with Raymond Williams’ original conception, and in conversation with affect studies, my account links humiliation’s structure to the broader socio-political tensions it articul…
Feeling and the production of lesbian space in The L Word
This article seeks to understand the production of lesbian space in the TV series The L Word (TLW) (Showtime 2004–2009). To do so, it departs from theories of the lesbian gaze to discuss the visibility of feeling. Specifically, I consider how TLW represents the visibility of feeling as constitutive of lesbian bodies, communities and spaces. In TLW, real spaces (actual locations) fold into virtual ones (on screen) in a deliberate construction of t…
Introduction
Articles in this themed section offer critical engagement with globalised flows of cultural practice and the resultant formations of identity that manifest (in) transnational and national contexts of place. This introduction outlines a rationale for thinking about the matter of style as an articulation of structures of desire. In their discussion of style, these articles register on-going changes in the global order of desire, evident through the…
Unhappy Families
A review of Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness and David L. Eng, The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy
Up Close and Personal, But Not Close Enough
One of the central aims of this book is to establish life online as a legitimate and sociologically significant area of study. To this end the book provides a genuinely wide range of original essays, each of which focuses on a discretely defined empirical site. The collection’s empiricism is impressively buttressed by well‐located literature reviews and the provision of detailed notes on methodology. This makes for an excellent teaching resource,…
Feeling and the production of lesbian space in The L Word
This article seeks to understand the production of lesbian space in the TV series The L Word (TLW) (Showtime 2004–2009). To do so, it departs from theories of the lesbian gaze to discuss the visibility of feeling. Specifically, I consider how TLW represents the visibility of feeling as constitutive of lesbian bodies, communities and spaces. In TLW, real spaces (actual locations) fold into virtual ones (on screen) in a deliberate construction of t…
Introduction
Articles in this themed section offer critical engagement with globalised flows of cultural practice and the resultant formations of identity that manifest (in) transnational and national contexts of place. This introduction outlines a rationale for thinking about the matter of style as an articulation of structures of desire. In their discussion of style, these articles register on-going changes in the global order of desire, evident through the…
Mediating affect in John Pilger’s Utopia
This article proposes that whiteness should be thought of as an affective structure, theorizing whiteness in terms of optimism, possessive subjectivity and multiculturalism. The article shows how the optimism of ‘the good life’ [Berlant, L., 2011. Cruel optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press] is linked structurally to whiteness in the construction of the Australian nation-state. In this context, Utopia [2013. Film. Directed by John Pilger. A…
Introduction
This Special Issue brings together seven affective mediations on the theme of mediating affect. The articles were presented in an earlier form at the inaugural Affect Theory Conference, held in Millersville (USA) in October 2015. Responding to a Call for Papers, authors were invited to take on the question of ‘media’ and ‘mediation’ in the context of the blossoming field of affect studies. Each article in turn tackles a particular trajectory of c…
Mediating the presence of others
Drawing insight from queer and media studies, this article analyses data from the UK study Adults’ Media Lives. The authors claim that this study reveals the significance of people’s intimate relationships to their media practices, highlighting in particular how people’s media practices mediate the ‘presence’ of others. The authors put forward the concept of mediated intimacy to capture both the cultural intimacy people have with media and the me…
Humiliation’s media cultures
Humiliation, which Silvan Tomkins paired with shame (‘shame-humiliation’), has not received much attention in queer, feminist and cultural analysis. This article addresses this omission by putting forward an account of humiliation’s eventful ‘structure of feeling’. In line with Raymond Williams’ original conception, and in conversation with affect studies, my account links humiliation’s structure to the broader socio-political tensions it articul…
Lauren Berlant on Genre
There is no doubt that the writing of Lauren Berlant is influential in media and cultural studies as well as across gender and feminist studies and other work in critical, cultural and materialist traditions. Given the complexity of Berlant’s work and its integral refusal of taxonomic and hegemonic terms, it can be difficult for the reader to coherently grasp the singularity of even their most powerful concepts. This essay attempts to think with …
He said, she said
In recent years, popular feminist discourse has increasingly associated feminism with a cultural concept of consent. My reflection in this special section of Cultural Commons: ‘#(No)SeAcabó / It is (not) over’ discusses the Rubiales/Hermoso kiss through the lens of consent by enquiring into how the words ‘he said, she said’ attend to particular kinds of gender injustice. I suggest that ‘he said, she said’ acts as a form of representation that has…
Consent-deception
This article draws on feminist cultural studies, media and cultural theory, and engages with feminist law and criminology, to argue for a newly invigorated conceptualisation of consent in feminist theory. Rather than advance a particular feminist theory of consent, the article argues for a feminist cultural media theory of commonsense consent that is both sensory and representational. This theory acknowledges that there is no concept of consent r…
Sociology (10 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Gender, Feminism, and Media (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Political science (5 works)