In recent years,
post-feminism has become an important element of popular media culture and the
object of feminist cultural critique. This article explores how post-feminism
is domesticated in Russia through popular self-help literature aimed at a
female audience. Drawing on a close reading of self-help texts by three
best-selling Russian authors, the article examines how post-feminism is made
intelligible to the Russian audience and how it articulates with other symbolic
frameworks. It identifies labour as a key trope through which post-feminism is
domesticated and argues that the texts invite women to invest time and energy
in the labour of personality, the labour of femininity and the labour of
sexuality in order to become ‘valuable subjects’. The article demonstrates that
the domestication of post-feminism also involves the domestication of
neoliberal capitalism in Russia, and highlights how popular psychology,
neoliberal capitalism and post-feminism are symbiotically related.
The labour of femininity is closely related to the labour of sexuality,
which constitutes another key aspect of the postfeminist subjectivity. Advice
concerning sexuality occupies a central position in the self-help books. Sexual
pleasure emerges as a new telos to
which to aspire (Salmenniemi
and Vorona, forthcoming). Sexuality is construed to be essential for
a good life and a healthy selfhood. Female readers are therefore ethically
obliged to explore, work on and manage their sexuality and that of their male
partner. This explicit treatment of sexuality in self-help books is a
post-Soviet phenomenon. Sexuality was rarely discussed in public in the Soviet
Union: the official approach emphasised sexual restraint and restricted access
to information about sexuality (Rivkin-Fish, 2005). In the official Soviet
discourse, the female body was represented as a productive body harnessed for
the economic prosperity of the state, and as a reproductive body in the service
of the nation, but not as a source of pleasure. Sexual pleasure was viewed as
potentially dangerous and subversive, diverting attention away from political
commitments. For these historical reasons, sexuality is an issue that requires
intensive recoding and legitimation in the Russian self-help books:
A real woman sees sex as a healthy part of
life. She allows herself not to feel guilty about having sex or wanting to have
sex. She likes her body. She can enjoy herself … (Sviyash, 2012)
Believe me, to love sex and all pleasure
connected with it is absolutely normal for all living creatures. … To love sex
means that you love yourself and life. (Pravdina, 2002)
The self-help texts introduce a sexually liberated
woman as a normative figure, rather than the mother figure traditionally
dominant in the Russian symbolic order. Being sexy is construed as a form of
women’s empowerment and freedom in the new capitalist society. The texts
domesticate the new postfeminist sexual ethics of ‘compulsory sexual agency’ (Gill, 2008: 40) by encouraging women to become
active, pleasure-seeking sexual agents. As we have emphasised in previous
sections, the self-help texts are also structured on the logic of ‘compulsory
heterosexuality’ (Rich, 1980). Sexuality is discussed in
exclusively heteronormative terms and women are construed as ‘innately’
heterosexual. Homosexuality is mentioned only in passing and is presented as a
temporary deviation that has ‘psycho-physiological roots’ and can be ‘cured’
with ‘the right man’ (Shatskaya, 2012: 510)…
Full article at: http://goo.gl/48JT8B
By:
Suvi Salmenniemi,
Suvi Salmenniemi, Department of Social Research, University of Turku, Assistentinkatu 7, Turku, 20014, Finland. Email: if.utu@asutus
More at: https://twitter.com/hiv_insight
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