Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Gender: contributions to an effective understanding of changes

2015; University of Minho; Volume: 3; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

2184-0458

Moisés de Lemos Martíns, Maria Manuel Baptista, Zara Pinto-Coelho, Sara Vidal Maia,

Youth Education and Societal Dynamics

Over the last 20 years, gender relations and how they are experienced, represented and put into practice have undergone deep changes. It is vital to understand this process more deeply and clearly, especially with regards to the power and control dynamics involved, and within the scope of Portuguese-speaking countries. In the backdrop of these reconfigurations and interests, the Revista Lusofona de Estudos Culturais (Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies) publishes in its 5th issue a set of contributions of renowned researchers and junior researchers alike, from all over the world (United Kingdom, United States of America, Brazil and Portugal). Additionally, it offers the Portuguese readers an opportunity to read the works of Rae Connell, Jasbir Puar and Sue Thornham in their native language. The set of articles comprised in this issue seeks to contribute, from an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary perspective, to a deeper and critical understanding of the changes taking place across the different social domains with an impact on gender relations and identities. The contributors resort to different theoretical frameworks to conduct their own research, and seek to understand the diverse issues related to aspects of motherhood, affective and sexual relations, ageing, social activism, science and academia, economy and public policy. Sue Thornham opens the journal issue, offering a discussion of the film We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011), directed by Lynne Ramsay, a Scottish director whose work often focuses on motherhood. She brings to the discussion the “new momism”, which emerged in the United States in the 1990s. According to the researcher of the University of Sussex, Ramsay’s film is a criticism of the post-feminist celebration discourse of a new way of full-time mothering. This discourse portrays motherhood as the liberated woman’s enlightened choice and as an integral part of personal feminine fulfilment. As she inscribes her discussion in the framework of the cinema of feminist resistance and maternal melodrama, the author argues that in Ramsay’s film the mother-son dyad, contrary to previous films, is seen through the mother’s eyes. We Need to Talk about Kevin transports us to a world whose terms and boundaries are set by the son, in a cultural horizon that insists on the possibility of choice, while showing that this choice is