Table Of ContentThe Antigone Discourse: Zines and Blogs as Articulations of Young Women's Subjectivites
Jessica Lee Hochman
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
under the Executive Committee
of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
2011
© 2011
Jessica Lee Hochman
All rights reserved
Abstract
The Antigone Discourse: Zines and Blogs as Articulations of Young Women's Subjectivites
Jessica Lee Hochman
Zines and blogs written by the young women in this study are an important form of inquiry that,
if considered by educators, may push us to critically question discourses of young womanhood,
questions of subjectivity, and the way we engage with texts. I use readings of Antigone to shape
a reading of this discourse. I argue following Judith Butler (2000), that her act speaks to the loss
of her particular brother, as well as the ungrievable losses resultant from her tragic family life.
Her story invites us to question boundaries of public and private, and suggests a space between
them that was inaccessible to Antigone. Similarly, young women who publicly articulate their
stories in zines and blogs access a hybrid space, between public and private, where they conduct
important subjectivity work. Through hermeneutic readings of these texts, I explore the ways in
which their authors articulate the importance of hybrid spaces between public and private as
where they can do this work. Like Antigone, whose action challenges binaries, young women
who posit their personal stories in public reflect on the past in a way that suggests melancholia,
or an unwillingness to part with the past completely as they moves toward the future. I conclude
by arguing that when academics and educators approach these texts as hermeneutic readers, they
engage in a critical process of understanding with these young women that invites consideration
of new feminism articulated in these works.
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Of Emergent Adults and Ancient Heroines: The Need for a New Discourse
on Young Womanhood
1.1 The Emergence of Emergent Adulthood 1
1.2 Challenging Hegemonic Discourses of Girlhood 8
Subjectivities and Hegemonic Discourses 8
Hegemonic Developmental Narratives 11
Post-Feminist Discourses 17
Chapter Two: Description of Methods 21
2.1 The Practice of Understanding through Hermeneutic Reading 21
Author in Context 24
2.2 Methods of Inquiry 27
2.3 Addressing Challenges and Limitations 30
Chapter Three: Developing the Antigone Discourse 38
3.1 Introduction 38
3.2 Butler and Binaries 42
3.3 Antigone’s Inquiry 44
Essentializing Antigone 47
3.4 A Space Between: The Melancholy Move to Adulthood 58
Prior Tragedies 59
Melancholia and the Social 61
Particular Losses 64
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Chapter Four: Texts in Context: Zines and Blogs 69
4.1 Introduction 69
4.2 Two Texts: Zines and Blogs 80
What Are Zines and Blogs? 73
4.3 Mediated Publics as Discursive Spaces 79
Building Community Through Persistent Practices 79
Engaging with Invisible Audiences 83
4.4 Inquiry as Meaning Making 86
Blogging Ophelia 89
Zines: Not a Girl Power Counternarrative 94
4.5 Zining and Blogging Beyond Boundaries 99
Chapter Five: Between Public and Private: Zining and Blogging Practices 104
5.1 “I Am a Stranger”: Antigone as an Emerging Adult 104
5.2 Hermeneutic Work in Third Spaces 106
A Process of Understanding: Hermeneutic Engagement with Texts 106
Mediated Publics and As Third Spaces 108
Engaging Texts: Hermeneutic Methods 110
Blogger profiles 113
Zinester profiles 116
5.3 Zining and Blogging Toward Third Space 118
“Shout it out” Acts through Language 119
“I’ve dealt with a ton of doubt”: Ambivalent Engagements in Third Space 121
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“It begs questions”: Articulating and Questioning Identities 123
Explaining the Need to Explain 126
5.4 Hybrid Spaces: Zines and Blogs Challenging Boundaries 130
Hybrid Spaces 130
“Struggling to carve out a place”: Toward Hybrid Spaces 132
“I’m Split in Two”: Bridging Online and Offline 135
“Slipping into the Fantasy”: Destabilizing Reality and Fantasy 138
5.5 Third Spaces as Prepolitical 141
Chapter Six: Melancholic Questioning: Challenging Dominant Narratives and Post-
Feminism
6.1 Introduction 144
6.2 Melancholic Interventions 144
Melancholic Questioning 145
From Childhood to Adulthood 149
“We’re going to have to have some other kind of great moment” 151
“It’s just another fantasy”: Problematizing Gender 155
“I’m just melancholy about the whole situation”: Unspoken Losses 160
“It can be really hard when things change”: Questioning the Melancholic Position 163
6.3 “The Specter of Feminism”: Antigone’s Death and Post-Feminism 164
Antigone and Feminism: Two Corpses, One Tomb? 166
Post-Feminism and Hegemonic Discourses 169
Young Women and Post-Feminism 173
“I hate feminism”: Stephanie on Post-Feminism 174
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“Seeing it in my family”: Lizzie on the Loss of Feminism 177
“I usually just drop hints”: Unspoken Feminism 179
6.4 “I wish this issue came to some sort of conclusion, but it does not.” 180
Chapter Seven: Recognition and Reading: A Pedagogical Practice 182
7.1 Introduction 182
7.2 Hope in the Age of Post-Feminism 183
“The hope is what holds it all together” 185
7.2 Teaching Antigone: Educational Implications 187
School’s Mediation 190
Melancholia in the Classroom 194
Counternarratives in the Curriculum 197
Teachers as Readers 199
The Hermeneutic Educator 201
7.3 Antigone’s Legacy 204
References 208
Appendix A Evolution of Codes 226
Appendix B Table of Bloggers 229
Appendix C Table of Zinesters 230
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Acknowledgments
This work would not have been possible without the encouragement and guidance of my
committee: Megan Laverty, John Broughton, Lalitha Vasudevan, Helene Foley and Doris
Santoro. Each of you brought unique perspective to this project.
In particular, I owe a debt of gratitude to Professor John Broughton, who opened the door to
cultural studies for me and who continues to help me find new ways to explore important
questions. I am grateful for a decade’s worth of your intellectual generosity.
I especially thank Professor Megan Laverty, for her insightful comments, her patience, and her
support. Your careful readings moved me toward clarity in thought and on the page.
Professor Doris Santoro, a careful reader and interlocutor, thank you for your guidance,
mentorship and friendship.
Dean Tula Giannini, thank you for your abiding faith in me.
Thanks to Jenna Freedman, Zine Librarian at Barnard College Library, for providing access and
guidance.
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Dr. Jere I. Hochman, Ed.D., who thirty-seven years ago dedicated his Masters’ thesis to me,
thanks for planting the seed.
To thank my parents for a lifetime of love and encouragement hardly seems adequate.
Nevertheless, thank you Susie and Jeffrey Hochman for teaching me the most important lessons
by example.
To Alex and Mirabelle Threadgold, constant sources of laughter, love and delight. You are my
best teachers.
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Dedication
For Bettye Rose Levy Pankewer, my grandmother, a feminist in my memory.
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Description:describe this ambiguous time and offers some description and analysis of his . another literary protagonist, Antigone, rendered by Sophocles in 441 BCE.
