This article advances a synthetic framework for examining the relationship between affect and power. Combining critical discursive psychology with analyses of stance and emotion thematization, the framework enables a dialogic analysis of the macro and micro levels on which affect weaves into social life. The approach is applied in an analysis of women’s talk about their hair, which they construct as ‘black’ or ‘African’. Guided by the notion of ‘affective-discursive practice’, the article investigates the relationship between affect and meaning-making revealed in talk, as well as relations of power that arise from it. In the analysis, individuals are found to articulate their affective experiences in unlike ways and to hence position themselves differently in relation to the hegemonic discourses of beauty and race. The article discusses how the dialogic research on affect and discourse enriches our understanding of the role of feelings in the micropolitics of everyday life.
The article discusses the potential contribution of (critical) discourse analysis to cultural studies. The textual/discursive approach to media reception is advanced as a way of investigating the semiotic and sociological concerns underpinning cultural studies. The article demonstrates the expediency of exploring the socio-cultural implications of media consumption by embracing its complexity. Understood as related to the textual/discursive, affective, cognitive, ideological and embodied aspects of identity, the complexity of individuals' engagements with media is examined by means of discursive psychology. The advantages of this approach over other methods of investigating media reception are illustrated and discussed in relation to the concept of 'cultural intelligence'. Relatedly, the importance of the proper understanding of the media consumer's reflexivity is stressed, as well as an accurate operationalization of this concept in critical research.
Media reception research, cultural studies and cultural intelligenceThe article's underlying idea of applying methods of discourse analysis in cultural studies is based on the notion of the 'textual culture' (as put forward
Interested in the socio-cultural construction of the body and beauty, this study investigates the embodied experience of Black African women in South Africa. The Black female body has been problematically positioned in the discourses of beauty. In the dominant, Westernized imagery, the physical markers of blackness such as dark skin and kinky hair have been aesthetically devalued. In the African traditionalist discourses, these body features have been celebrated as beautiful and invoked as the signifiers of cultural pride. This, however, has also been considered as a form of cultural imperative that holds women accountable for how they embody their relationship with their race and ethnicity. Most recently, cultural critics notice the aesthetic revaluation of Black female beauty and ascribe it to the global popularity of the African-American hip-hop culture. In this study, we explore how the socio-cultural complexity of Black female beauty affects the ways in which individuals make sense of their bodies.
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