The hashtag campaign #MeToo sparked a global debate in 2017. Since the scandalous allegations of abuse against celebrities, the keyword #MeToo has become associated with discussions about various phenomena of sexual violence and gender-specific power inequalities in different areas of society. Increasingly, aesthetic productions and discussions about the aestheticization of sexuality and gender relations are also taking up #MeToo, something that has been little studied to date. This cultural studies study explores the extent to which and how the #MeToo debate reveals conflicts and contradictory dynamics of contemporary sexual culture on this aesthetic level.
The research material includes case studies from the fields of literature, film, art and social media, for example. These deal with central topics of the debate in a controversial manner (e.g. shame, victimization, grey areas of sexual violence) and present sexual transgressions and moral boundaries in different ways. The question posed by the project relates the case analyses to a specific aspect of change in Western sexual culture: the morality of negotiation, which is understood in sexuality research as a normative paradigm of liberalized Western sexual culture. According to research findings, the #MeToo debate is currently also manifesting opposing tendencies. Against this background, the project pursues the question: How is this field of tension addressed in aesthetic productions and discussions about aestheticizations? What contradictory tendencies do the modes of representation, patterns of interpretation and evoked ideas and affects exhibit? And what conclusions can be drawn from this with regard to the diagnosed enforcement of negotiation morality?
The approach employs a psychoanalytically oriented close reading, which is used to analyze cultural unconscious-conflictual dynamics that have so far been largely ignored in relation to #MeToo. The aim is to shed light on the modes of action of contradictory social dynamics in the #MeToo debate and currently effective conflicts in the enforcement of the negotiation moral paradigm. This can contribute to a more differentiated understanding of the current transformation of sexual culture.
Original language: German