Visual infrapolitics

Gender performance in the Italian entertainment industry, between secret visuality and postfeminist resistance

Bibliographic Data

ID12535973
AuthorsFrancesca Martinez Tagliavia (Centre de Recherches Historiques, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume23
Issue2
Pages173-185
Publication date2018-03-22
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Italy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1353-2944 • E-ISSN: 1469-9877
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/mit.2018.9
OpenAlexW2792534608
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited36

This article discusses postfeminist practices of resistance within contemporary visuality. Drawing on concepts used in visual and cultural studies, it describes and interprets the gender performance through which Giulia, a velina, challenges her own sexual and economic domination in her everyday affective labour and work. For this purpose, I report Giulia’s account of herself, resulting from a series of interviews conducted in 2014 and 2015. In the first part of the article, I will describe Giulia’s gendered etiquette, i.e. a complex of corporeal and behavioural prescriptions. Next, I will describe a set of acts of resistance performed by Giulia in her everyday social interactions in order to protect herself, to speak out and to build alliances against the violence implied by the stigma attached to the velina ’s gender/class norm. Finally, I will apply the concept of visual infrapolitics to the open field of visual practices through which a female worker of the entertainment industry criticises the gender-based violence implied by her labour form and by the stigma attached to her gender etiquette. I argue that such a wide field of practices pertains to a postfeminist sensibility and materialises the possibility for collective acts of resistance

Aesthetics · Art · Entertainment · Etiquette · Media studies · Norm (philosophy · Political science · Popularity · Resistance (ecology · Sensibility · Sociology · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology

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Open DOISci-HubOpen Access