Description
Book SynopsisThis book explores different forms of mediated offence in the context of Trump's America, Brexit Britain, and the rise of far-right movements across the globe. In this political landscape, the so-called ‘right to offend’ is often seen as a legitimate weapon against a ‘political correctness gone mad’ that stifles ‘free speech’. Against the backdrop of these current developments, this book aims to generate a productive dialogue among scholars working in a variety of intellectual disciplines, geographical locations and methodological traditions. The contributors share a concern about the complex and ambiguous nature of offence as well as about the different ways in which this so-called ‘negative affect’ comes to matter in our everyday and socio-political lives. Through a series of instructive case studies of recent media provocations, the authors illustrate how being offended is more than an individual feeling and is, instead, closely tied to political structures and power relations.
Table of ContentsChapter 1: Introduction to Media and the Politics of Offence.- Chapter 2: Political Offensiveness in the Mediated Public Sphere: The Performative Play of Alignments.- Chapter 3: Creating an Emotional Community: The Negotiation of Anger and Resistance to Donald Trump.- Chapter 4: Unruly Women and Carnivalesque Counter-Control: Offensive Humour in Mediated Social Protest.- Chapter 5: Visual Politics in South Africa: Old and New Modes of Exclusion, Protest and Offence.- Chapter 6: Other Bodies within Us: Shock, Affect and Reality Television Audiences.- Chapter 7: ‘Period Sex’: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and the Feminist Politics of Offence.- Chapter 8: Fans at Work: Offence as Motivation for Critical Vidding.- Chapter 9: Blocked Access: When Pornographers take Offence.- Chapter 10: Regulatory Expectations of Offended Audiences: The Citizen Interest in Audience Discourse.- Chapter 11: Negotiating vulnerability in the trigger warning debates.- Chapter 12: Gruesome Images in the Contemporary Israeli Mediated Public Sphere.
