Cultural Representations of Gender Vulnerability and Resistance: A Mediterranean Approach to the Anglosphere (Thinking Gender in Transnational Times)

This Open Access book considers the cultural representation of gender violence, vulnerability and resistance with a focus on the transnational dimension of our contemporary visual and literary cultures in English. Contributors address concepts such as vulnerability, resilience, precarity and resistance in the Anglophone world through an analysis of memoirs, films, TV series, and crime and literary fiction across India, Ireland, Canada, Australia, the US, and the UK. Chapters explore literary and media displays of precarious conditions to examine whether these are exacerbated when intersecting with gender and ethnic identities, thus resulting in structural forms of vulnerability that generate and justify oppression, as well as forms of individual or collective resistance and/or resilience. Substantial insights are drawn from Animal Studies, Critical Race Studies, Human Rights Studies, Post-Humanism and Postcolonialism. This book will be of interest to scholars in Gender Studies, Media Studies, Sociology, Culture, Literature and History. Grant FFI2017-84555-C2-1-P (research Project “Bodies in Transit: Genders, Mobilities, Interdependencies”) funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and by “ERDF A way of making Europe.” Acknowledgments 7 Praise for Cultural Representations of Gender Vulnerability and Resistance 8 Contents 10 Notes on Contributors 12 1 Introduction 16 References 27 Part I Gender Vulnerability, Resilience and Resistance 28 2 Growing Resilient in Irish Magdalene Laundries: An Analysis of the Justice for Magdalenes’ Oral History Project (2013) and Kathy O’Beirne’s Autobiography Kathy’s Story: A Childhood Hell Inside the Magdalen Laundries (2005) 29 2.1 Introduction 29 2.2 Resisting an Imposed Vulnerability Inside the Laundries: Justice for Magdalenes’ Oral History Project (2013) 33 2.3 The Aftermath of Magdalene Laundries: Kathy O’Beirne’s Kathy’s Story: A Childhood Hell Inside the Magdalen Laundries (2005) 37 2.4 Conclusions 41 References 42 3 Becoming Resilient Subjects: Vulnerability and Resistance in Emma Donoghue’s Room 47 3.1 Introduction 47 3.2 Violence, Vulnerability and Parodic Resistance 49 3.3 Resilience, Normalcy and Social Integration 55 3.4 Conclusions 62 References 64 4 Of Mice and Women: Gendered and Speciesist Violence in Joyce Carol Oates’s ‘Martyrdom’ 67 4.1 Gendered and Non-human Martyrdom 67 4.2 Precarious Bodies: Rats and Women 68 4.3 Conclusions 81 References 82 5 ‘Nobody Kills a Priest’: Irish Noir and Pathogenic Vulnerability in Benjamin Black’s Holy Orders 84 5.1 Introduction 84 5.2 Pathogenic Vulnerability 87 5.3 Counteracting Vulnerability: The Vigilante 93 5.4 Conclusions 97 References 99 Part II Gender Vulnerability, Agency and Interdependencies 102 6 Crime Fiction’s Disobedient Gaze: Refugees’ Vulnerability in Ausma Zehanat Khan’s A Dangerous Crossing (2018) 103 6.1 Introduction 103 6.2 Literature, Human Rights, and the Human: The Case of the Mediterranean Sea 106 6.3 Refugees’ Vulnerability and Resistance: A Dangerous Crossing 110 6.4 Conclusion: Towards Resistant Imaginations 116 References 118 7 Detection, Gender Violence and Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie Series 122 7.1 Introduction 122 7.2 Empathic Detection 124 7.3 Conclusions 136 References 138 8 Resisting Binaries: Vulnerability, Agency and the Sovereign Subject Through a Feminist Critical Gaze 140 References 154 9 Trans-National Neo-Victorianism, Gender and Vulnerability in Kate Grenville’s The Secret River (2005) 158 9.1 Introduction 158 9.2 Historical Recollection, Gender and Vulnerability in The Secret River 162 9.3 Conclusions 172 References 174 Part III Gender Vulnerability and Trans*/Post* Identities 177 10 The Vulnerable Posthuman in Popular Science Fiction Cinema 178 10.1 Introduction 178 10.2 Gender Vulnerability and Popular Cinema: The Posthuman Character 182 10.2.1 Posthuman Femininity 183 10.2.2 The Alien Body: Under the Skin (2013) 186 10.2.3 The Transhuman Body: Ghost in the Shell (2017) 189 10.3 Conclusions 192 References 193 11 Trans* Vulnerability and Resistance in the Ballroom: The Case of Pose (Season 1) 196 11.1 Introduction 196 11.2 Vulnerability and Precariousness in the Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ Community 198 11.3 Ballroom Culture: A Communal Space for Protection and Competition 201 11.4 The Ballroom as a Trans* Space 206 11.5 Conclusions 208 References 211 12 A Trans Journey Towards Resistance: Vulnerability and Resilience in the Dystopian Narrative of Manjula Padmanabhan 215 12.1 Introduction: Contextualising Padmanabhan’s Dystopian Saga 215 12.2 Women as the Endangered Sex and the Displacement of Nature by Technology 219 12.3 Transmasculinity and Transfemininity: Stories of Resistance 223 12.4 Conclusions: Feminist Solidarity 229 References 231 Index 235