“Better never means better for everyone”: White feminist necropolitics and Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale

IF 1.3 2区 文学 Q2 COMMUNICATION Quarterly Journal of Speech Pub Date : 2022-11-14 DOI:10.1080/00335630.2022.2136738
M. Neville-Shepard
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引用次数: 2

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article builds on those who have critiqued Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale along racial lines and calls into question the esteemed status the show holds as a rhetorical resource for contemporary feminist activism. By drawing attention to the parasitical relationship that the archetype of the vulnerable (but resilient) white woman has to Black pain and death, I argue that the series further calcifies the dominance of white feminism, enacting what I term “white feminist necropolitics.” To illuminate this theory, the essay presents a close analysis of The Handmaid's Tale. Specifically, I demonstrate how the show deploys post-racial logics to center a white feminist heroine whose story of saviorism relies on the cooptation of Black pain and the exploitation of Black death. Ultimately, this critical reading of the series points to the ways in which white feminism and necropolitics are intricately entangled.
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“对每个人来说,更好永远不意味着更好”:白人女权主义者的死亡政治和Hulu的《使女的故事》
这篇文章建立在那些批评Hulu的《使女的故事》沿着种族路线的人的基础上,并质疑这部剧作为当代女权主义活动的修辞资源所具有的受人尊敬的地位。我认为,通过关注脆弱(但坚韧)的白人女性原型与黑人痛苦和死亡之间的寄生关系,这部剧进一步钙化了白人女权主义的主导地位,实现了我所说的“白人女权主义死亡政治”。为了阐明这一理论,本文对《使女的故事》进行了详细的分析。具体来说,我展示了这部剧如何运用后种族逻辑,以一位白人女权主义女英雄为中心,她的救赎故事依赖于对黑人痛苦的利用和对黑死病的利用。最终,这种对该系列的批判性解读指出了白人女权主义和亡灵政治错综复杂地纠缠在一起的方式。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.80
自引率
36.40%
发文量
39
期刊介绍: The Quarterly Journal of Speech (QJS) publishes articles and book reviews of interest to those who take a rhetorical perspective on the texts, discourses, and cultural practices by which public beliefs and identities are constituted, empowered, and enacted. Rhetorical scholarship now cuts across many different intellectual, disciplinary, and political vectors, and QJS seeks to honor and address the interanimating effects of such differences. No single project, whether modern or postmodern in its orientation, or local, national, or global in its scope, can suffice as the sole locus of rhetorical practice, knowledge and understanding.
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