Moving images,transforming media: The mediating communitas of HallonTV and DYKE HARD

Abstract

This article investigates the queer feminist Swedish media projects HallonTV and DYKE HARD in order to argue that media production is constitutive of political movements as such. Particular attention is paid to an integral dimension of the constitution of such a political collectivity, namely its affective features. It is concerned with how a sense of ‘community’ comes to be ‘experienced’ by those who are involved, first-hand, in the development and extension of its messages to a wider public. Theoretically, the article proposes that these features will be better appreciated through both a harnessing of the discourse theoretical framework of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as well as a reworking of the anthropologist Victor Turner’s idea of communitas.