Noemi Ciarniello, Emiliana De Blasio, Donatella Selva
{"title":"Neoliberal Feminism and Political Leadership: The Representation of Giorgia Meloni and Elly Schlein in Popular Culture","authors":"Noemi Ciarniello, Emiliana De Blasio, Donatella Selva","doi":"10.1177/17499755241238135","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Building on a long tradition of studies on the intertwining of politics and popular culture, the article examines the representation of the two Italian political leaders of the moment, Giorgia Meloni and Elly Schlein, offered by women’s magazines. The study focuses in particular on two interrelated aspects: on the one hand, the extent to which the discursive strategies to talk about the leaders, their personal lives, careers and ideas contribute to strengthen the contemporary hegemony on feminism; on the other hand, the discursive strategies used to represent the leaders through a frame of competition typical of the neoliberalism. Indeed, we refer to the most recent trends in feminism research, contested among post-feminism, neoliberal feminism and celebrity feminism. Within this framework, we examined whether and how female political leaders can become icons of life, style and power in a way that is functional to the neoliberal narrative. The critical discourse analysis conducted on eight Italian women’s magazines over the course of a year makes it possible to highlight some results that contribute to the reflection on neoliberal feminism and female leadership. In particular, leaders are presented through argumentative strategies of genealogism, exceptionalism and compensation: the ways in which magazines justify their position of power refer to family relationships and character qualities, emphasizing the characteristics closest to the neoliberal model and overshadowing all others, including political ideas. Rather, leaders are deradicalized and depoliticized to favour instead a reassuring narrative in which women have broken the glass ceiling. In that way, women’s magazines renounce representing women leaders for their ideas and ideologies, and instead focus on their unique mark of difference: their gender.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cultural Sociology","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755241238135","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Building on a long tradition of studies on the intertwining of politics and popular culture, the article examines the representation of the two Italian political leaders of the moment, Giorgia Meloni and Elly Schlein, offered by women’s magazines. The study focuses in particular on two interrelated aspects: on the one hand, the extent to which the discursive strategies to talk about the leaders, their personal lives, careers and ideas contribute to strengthen the contemporary hegemony on feminism; on the other hand, the discursive strategies used to represent the leaders through a frame of competition typical of the neoliberalism. Indeed, we refer to the most recent trends in feminism research, contested among post-feminism, neoliberal feminism and celebrity feminism. Within this framework, we examined whether and how female political leaders can become icons of life, style and power in a way that is functional to the neoliberal narrative. The critical discourse analysis conducted on eight Italian women’s magazines over the course of a year makes it possible to highlight some results that contribute to the reflection on neoliberal feminism and female leadership. In particular, leaders are presented through argumentative strategies of genealogism, exceptionalism and compensation: the ways in which magazines justify their position of power refer to family relationships and character qualities, emphasizing the characteristics closest to the neoliberal model and overshadowing all others, including political ideas. Rather, leaders are deradicalized and depoliticized to favour instead a reassuring narrative in which women have broken the glass ceiling. In that way, women’s magazines renounce representing women leaders for their ideas and ideologies, and instead focus on their unique mark of difference: their gender.
期刊介绍:
Cultural Sociology publishes empirically oriented, theoretically sophisticated, methodologically rigorous papers, which explore from a broad set of sociological perspectives a diverse range of socio-cultural forces, phenomena, institutions and contexts. The objective of Cultural Sociology is to publish original articles which advance the field of cultural sociology and the sociology of culture. The journal seeks to consolidate, develop and promote the arena of sociological understandings of culture, and is intended to be pivotal in defining both what this arena is like currently and what it could become in the future. Cultural Sociology will publish innovative, sociologically-informed work concerned with cultural processes and artefacts, broadly defined.