Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines how readers of the American feminist magazine, Ms., negotiate belonging and build a sense of solidarity with other readers through their magazine’s extensive (hence unique, in the world of women’s magazines) Letters to the Editor section. Drawing on the findings of my textual analysis of 660 readers’ letters over a five year period (1993-1998), this paper reveals how Ms.’s “writerly-readers” (Barthes, 1976) use their letters to engage in the on-going dialogue that is feminism and in so doing, forge connections to other readers. Positing that it is through epistolarity, not the shared act of reading, that this particular textual community is constituted, I question what it means to be part of a self-selecting community brought together out of allegiance to a cause, and an often conflicted “yearning for connected-ness” (Probyn, 1996). In drawing attention to the centrality of the Letter to the Editor in Ms., this paper aims not only to raise an awareness of the non-participatory reality of most women’s magazines, but to highlight how Ms.’s unusual way of addressing readers and of soliciting and featuring their correspondence compels and enables readers to become active participants in the making and shaping of the text. In discussing the methodological dilemmas encountered in undertaking this analysis of letters, this paper also raises our awareness of the need for feminist scholars to bring to light that which has traditionally remained hidden below the surface as we conduct our probings into the Communication field’s borderlands.