”Hon plockar fram dem med kärleksfulla händer” En diskursanalys av tidskriften 'Korsväg' beträffande genuskonstruktioner

Abstract

This essay takes as its point of departure the question: how does the magazine Korsväg form and regulate socially constructed cathegories related to gender? The purpose of this essay is to examine the magazine Korsväg, published by The Church of Sweden in the diocese of Gothenburg, with regards to its understanding of masculinity and femininity. The essay holds conceptual tools and methods drawn from discourse analysis, a practice shaped by the work of Michel Foucault. The essay also contains gender theory as it is developed by Judith Butler and Raewyn Connell in order to form an understanding of gender and the meaning of “social categories”. The essay then presents an investigation of the different ways that gender is understood and constructed over the last four years of Korsväg’s work (2014-2017). This investigation reveals that in Korsväg, the social category “man” tends to be described in terms of intellect, knowledge and merits, while the category “woman” is formulated in terms of corporeality, sensibility and emotions. Korsväg is thus shown to be a discourse that holds a normative understanding of gender. The essay also identifies the magazine as a discourse that carries a multiple understanding of masculinity in contrast to a singular femininity, where the latter holds only a few examples of subversive exceptions. The category “man” in particular is thus demonstrated to be constructed more widely than the category “woman”. The examination further concludes that among the different types of texts, the book reviews, included in every issue of the magazine, work as an arena for consolidating gender norms.