This book investigates the new language of vulnerability that has emerged in feminist, queer and antiracist debates on media, taking a particular interest in the historical legacies and contemporary forms and effects of this language. Contributors such as Jack Halberstam and Sara Ahmed examine how vulnerability has become a battleground, how affect and vulnerability have turned into a politicised currency both for addressing and obscuring asymmetries of power, and how media activism and state policies address so-called vulnerable groups. Taking on such heated topics as trigger warnings and diversity policies, the book will be of interest to scholars and students in media and cultural studies, affect theory, gender studies, queer theory and critical race studies.

List of figures
1 Vulnerability as a political language - Anu Koivunen, Katariina Kyrölä and Ingrid Ryberg
Part I: Vulnerability as a battleground
2 Negotiating vulnerability in the trigger warning debates - Katariina Kyrölä
3 Trigger happy: from content warning to censorship - Jack Halberstam
4 Feminist hurt/feminism hurts - Sara Ahmed
Part II: Vulnerability and visibility
5 Little Pink: white fragility and black social death - Ylva Habel
6 Visibility and vulnerability: negotiating transgender representation and encounters with translatina worlds in The Salt Mines and Wildness - Laura Horak
7 White vulnerability and the politics of reproduction in Top of the Lake: China Girl - Johanna Gondouin, Suruchi Thapar-Björkert and Ingrid Ryberg
8 Spectacularly wounded: white male vulnerability as heterosexual fantasy - Susanna Paasonen
Part III: Vulnerability and cultural policy
9 The invulnerable body of colour: the failure and success of a Swedish Film Diversity initiative - Mara Lee Gerden
10 Naming, shaming, framing? The ambivalence of queer visibility in audio-visual archives - Dagmar Brunow
11 Abortion prevention: lesbian citizenship and filmmaking in Sweden in the 1970s - Ingrid Ryberg
12 The caring nation: Don't Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves as a reparative fantasy - Anu Koivunen
Index

Editors

Anu Koivunen is Professor of Cinema Studies (Department of Media Studies) at Stockholm University, Sweden
Katariina Kyrölä is Lecturer in Gender Studies at Åbo Akademi University, Finland
Ingrid Ryberg is Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies at Gothenburg University, Sweden