Berger Correa, Bárbara Claudia; (2024) Flirting Matters: Exploring Material-Discursive and Affective Intra-actions in Flirting Among Teenagers in the Context of the Chilean Feminist Movement. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

Preview

Text Berger Correa_10195081_thesis_accepted.pdf Download (2MB) | Preview

Abstract

Several years have passed since online and offline impactful feminist campaigns against sexual violence towards women like #MeToo, #NiUnaMenos in Latin American countries, and, particularly relevant for this research, Chile’s Feminist May in 2018. In this context, this thesis explores the potential impact of feminist activism on flirting among Chilean teenagers who were starting high school amid this feminist upheaval. Using a feminist posthuman lens, I conceptualised flirting as emerging from material-discursive and affective intra-actions (Barad, 2007; Ringrose, Warfield, et al., 2019; Strom et al., 2019). This approach helped overcome some of the conundrums of flirting produced by humanist conceptions that reproduce monogamous heterogendered norms. Moreover, this lens was key for designing ‘pandemic-proof’ online methods for intraviewing (instead of interviewing), aiming to co-produce accounts that highlight the material and embodied aspects of flirting. The study involved three online intraviews with ten 17 to 19 year-olds, between 2020 and 2021. The first encouraged an open exploration of whatever came into their minds related to flirting. The second facilitated a detailed examination of flirting stories sent to me in advance. The third was a semi-structured conversation where they could invite friends, which offered deeper insights into the interplay of feminism, friendships and flirting. The analysis of this data shed light on how the digital calling out of sexual violence creates fantasies and fear that constrain heterosexual young men’s flirting. It also enabled a complex investigation of how feminist ethics like “affective responsibility” shape the flirting possibilities of feminist teenagers. Moreover, this project suggested an understanding of bodily boundaries as co-created in-between bodies and objects in space, challenging the neoliberal individualist underpinnings of affirmative consent and supporting complementary approaches that stress mutuality. This thesis offers a novel conceptualisation of flirting while it deepens understandings of the impacts of feminism on young people’s sexuality, contributing to debates on flirting’s ethical challenges.

Download activity - last month

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as JSONCSVXML

Archive Staff Only

View Item