Abstract

Zines and blogs written by the young women in this study are an important form of inquiry that, if considered by educators, may push us to critically question discourses of young womanhood, questions of subjectivity, and the way we engage with texts. I use readings of Antigone to shape a reading of this discourse. I argue following Judith Butler (2000), that her act speaks to the loss of her particular brother, as well as the ungrievable losses resultant from her tragic family life. Her story invites us to question boundaries of public and private, and suggests a space between them that was inaccessible to Antigone. Similarly, young women who publicly articulate their stories in zines and blogs access a hybrid space, between public and private, where they conduct important subjectivity work. Through hermeneutic readings of these texts, I explore the ways in which their authors articulate the importance of hybrid spaces between public and private as where they can do this work. Like Antigone, whose action challenges binaries, young women who posit their personal stories in public reflect on the past in a way that suggests melancholia, or an unwillingness to part with the past completely as they moves toward the future. I conclude by arguing that when academics and educators approach these texts as hermeneutic readers, they engage in a critical process of understanding with these young women that invites consideration of new feminism articulated in these works