Contesting boundaries when you look at the construction of collective identification. Abstract

Drawn from a study associated with the construction of collective identification in DIVA mag between 1994 and 2004, this informative article considers the contestation that is discursive of boundaries necessarily, however never ever straightforwardly, erected along the way. Analysing first a range of articles and second (and much more significantly) debates about who ‘we’ have been in and between visitors’ letters, this article is targeted on the ‘trouble’ posed by bisexuality in this period. Visitors draw on and competition a cluster of interrelated characterisations of bisexuals: as undecided, as being a type or types of pollutant, and also as insufficient facsimiles of ‘real lesbians’, also pretty much available characterisations of ‘us’. These arguments are always handled editorially, and constantly ‘end’ with telephone telephone calls for acceptance. This doesn’t completely recover the ambiguity with which bisexuality is managed, nonetheless, therefore the article concludes by talking about the s that are dilemma( faced because of the thought community.

Introduction

The work offered right here originates from an investigation associated with the construction of collective identification in DIVA, Britain’s very very first conventional commercial magazine that is lesbian in its very very first decade on the net (1994 2004). Dramatically, DIVA continues to be the actual only real commercially successful, nationally distributed magazine that is lesbian 1 celebrating in 2014 its twentieth birthday celebration, an unprecedented milestone for a lesbian mag within the UK, commercial or perhaps. Continue reading →