Angela McRobbie: Gender Shaming and Anti-Welfarism in Neoliberal Popular Culture

16. November 2017
ab 18:30 Uhr
Aula am Campus der Universität Wien
Spitalgasse 2-4 / Hof 1.11
1090 Wien

This lecture offers a series of reflections on the distinctively gendered aspects of anti-welfarism within contemporary neoliberal governmentality. Utilising the instrument of body shaming and other related techniques delivered to audiences and readerships through distinct genres of factual /entertainment popular media, the lecture demonstrates how poverty and disadvantage come to be understood as 'female failure' to be rectified through not just assiduous workfare programmes but also body maintenance and behavious modification for 'aspirational femininity'.

Angela McRobbie is Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths University of London, Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and Fellow of the British Academy.

She began her academic career at Birmingham University Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the mid 1970s. Her most recent books are Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries 2015, and The Aftermath of Feminism 2008. She is currently completing a short book titled Feminism and Neoliberalism.

Veranstaltet vom Forschungsverbund Gender & Agency und dem Referat Genderforschung der Universität Wien mit Unterstützung durch die DLE Gleichstellung & Diversität.