Anna Lisa Tota (a cura)
Gender and media

Are we the words we listen to, or the images we look at? Some of the many dimensions of our identities (such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, generation, social class) are indeed influenced by every sort of discourse we actually face daily. This book explores the possibility to read images in terms of a public ethics, trying to understand what is their real impact on the democratic fabric in civil society. Is there a sustainable imaginary, which by no means favours racist and sexist attitudes? And if the answer is ‘yes’, how can we forbid television programmes or films we don’t like – since we do not know the different meaning the could take depending of the viewer? If the freedom of the reader is the only thing that counts, is a racist image really a menace? And finally, what is the role played by the media? These are the issues raised by the essays in this volume. He basic assumption is that our identities are also shaped through the different forms of symbolic mediation: in other words, we are also the novels we read, the pictures we observe, the songs we listen to and the films, soap operas, spots we look at – but also the scientific theories we learn.