The FEMENist Connection: Ruptures and Agency in FEMEN France

Authors

  • Marine Gheno Department of MLCS University of Alberta

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29173/md24836

Abstract

FEMEN embodies many ambiguities as a feminist group using its members' bare breasts to inscribe messages and attract media attention. Now settled in France, a context wherein the women’s movement has a long history of activism and theory, these ambiguities are particularly visible through strong criticism from feminist figures. In this article, I argue that FEMEN actions are both beneficial and detrimental to feminism as they present the media with eroticized militant women while empowering such representations of women. In the vein of popfeminism and girl power media culture, FEMEN contributes to a transformation of contemporary feminist activism in continuity with feminist claims to agency, and in rupture with feminist criticisms of neoliberal commodification of women.

 

Author Biography

Marine Gheno, Department of MLCS University of Alberta

Doctorante, département de langues modernes et d'études culturelles, Université de l'Alberta

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Published

2015-06-09

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 1,2 (2015): CONNECTIONS

Section

Articles

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