Echo of Experience: a feminist response to racialization of sexual crime in the hybrid media event

Abstract

The article explores echo as a feminist strategy in the hybrid media event. The article interrogates how evidence from experience in digital culture can operate as an (unessentializing) echo that expands the discursive space and provides an avenue for anti-racist response with contextual and historical dimensions. The case study focuses on a hybrid media event of sexual crime and violence involving asylum seekers and the public debate surrounding the event. The article explores responses to the case with the concept of echo, inspired by Joan Scott’s seminal work on fantasy echo. It is argued that the echo produces temporal cues that can ideally open up a reflexive space on digital media to discuss sexual abuse and sensitive cases that undo the essentialist bind and at the same time reveal longer historical trajectories connected to the contemporary debate.