Framing the female subject: the women'ssection and `You'

Robert Alexander

Department of English, University of New Brunswick, Federicton NB, Canada

Keywords: Discourse analysis; Mass media; Foucault; Feminism

There is little new about news. Although an event reported in our newspapersmay be recent, the event is not the report. Indeed, the two are quite di�erent. AsJohn Hartley notes in his book Understanding News, `It is not the event which isreported that determines the form, content, meaning or ``truth'' of the news, butrather the news that determines what it is that the event means' (Hartley, 1982, pp.14±15). Meaning in the print media is the product of the combination of the generalsignifying characteristics of language with speci®c conventional forms of newspractice. Together, these characteristics and practices constitute news discourse. Asdiscourse, news is not the transparent, objective window on reality which it so oftenproclaims itself to be. In fact, if we adopt Michel Foucault's conception of discourseas the exercise of power, it can be argued that news discourse plays a crucial role inconstituting not only the `meaning' of the events reported but also the subjectivity,and indeed the sexuality, of the reader who consumes those accounts. Of particularinterest to me here is the manner in which news discourse frames the female subject.If, as Foucault says, discourse is `a violence that we do to things' (Foucault, 1971, p.229), then the relationship between news discourse and women may be described asone of a violence which disguises itself as a benign objectivity.To illustrate the applicability of Foucault's concepts of power and discourse to the

framing of the female subject in the press, I have chosen a series of news stories andeditorials which appeared in the Vancouver Sun between 22 and 24 November 1982(Anon, 1982a,b,c). Most of these articles are concerned with the ®rebombing ofthree Vancouver-area stores early the morning of 22 November. The stores, allmembers of a chain of video outlets called Red Hot Video, specialize in the sale ofsexually explicit video tapes. A group which called itself the Wimmin's Fire Brigadeclaimed responsibility for the ®rebombings. A subsequent police investigation would

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reveal that the bombings were primarily the work of the two female members of aVancouver anarchist group which the press later dubbed the Squamish Five.1

The ®rst news story to report the event appeared later the same day of the ®re-bombings.2 Its form is the familiar one, satisfying the basic criteria for whichMitchell Charnley in his textbook Reporting tells us the modern news story wasdesigned: `to help the reader read and comprehend fast' (Charnley, 1975, p. 164).Thus, the banner headline of this 24-paragraph story describes `with brief emphasisthe salient content a story is to present' (Charnley, 1975, p. 164): `3 video storestorched by ``Wimmin's Brigade'''. Furthermore, the opening paragraph ful®ls mostof the requirements we expect of a news lead. According to Charnley, `An e�ectivelead, especially when the facts of a story are clearly signi®cant, opens with a brief,

1 Arrested 20 January, 1983 on a highway north of Squamish, British Columbia, various members of

the group were also charged with bombing a B.C. hydro-electric substation and Litton Systems Canada, a

Toronto plant where guidance components for the American cruise missile were manufactured. Ten peo-

ple were injured in the Litton blast. The members of the Squamish Five were sentenced to prison terms

ranging from 6 years to life.2 The text of the Sun 22 November 1982 (Anon, 22 November 1982a, p. A1) story reads as follows. (I

have added paragraph numbers.) (1) Three Red Hot Video outlets in the Lower Mainland were attacked

by arsonists early today. (2) One of them in Surrey was destroyed, along with three neighboring [sic]

stores. (3) A second in North Vancouver su�ered minor damage. (4) Police found incendiary devices

inside a third in Coquitlam and removed them before they could be ignited. (5) O�cers at all three

detachments said it is likely a special coordinated group will be set up to investigate the attacks as one

crime. (6) The attacks came as the news media received letters and telephone calls from a group calling

itself the Wimmin's Fire Brigade claiming responsibility for all three attacks. (7) Their letter called the

action `another step towards the destruction of a business that promotes and pro®ts from violence against

women and children.' (8) The letter was delivered to the o�ce of the Canadian Press [CP], which imme-

diately alerted police. (9) A woman telephone caller to The Vancouver Sun said a similar letter had been

pushed through a mail slot. This letter was located later. (10) The warnings, however, came too late. (11)

CP received the ®rst letter at 1:40 a.m. (12) The North Vancouver ®re was noted at 1:31 a.m., the Surrey

blaze at 2 a.m. and the incendiaries were discovered in Coquitlam at 2:50 a.m. (13) Surrey RCMP [Royal

Canadian Mounted Police] Sgt. Larry Boan said he was told of the warning two minutes after the ®re call.

(14) The worst damage was in Surrey where the Red Hot Video outlet, a specialty shoe store and two

empty stores in a small shopping centre at 9400 Scott Road were destroyed. (15) `We suspect gasoline was

used. There was also a tremendous electrical ®re with hot wires going o� like ®reworks,' he said. (16) In

North Vancouver, the rear of the store in the 1000 block Marine was damaged and a bathroom destroyed.

The store's contents were untouched. (17) It is understood a 50-gallon drum of gasoline was found

nearby. (18) In Coquitlam a patrolling police car found a homemade torchÐa stick wrapped with cloth

material soaked in gasoline or similar liquidÐoutside the store in the 2100-block Coquitlam. Police also

found a broken window. (19) Because of the threats, o�cers looked inside and found a number of

`incendiary devices.' (20) Sta� Sgt. Bill Wazney said these included various glass containers with tapes

hanging from them apparently waiting top [sic] be touched o�. (21) He said RCMP explosive experts were

called in and the devices removed. (22) After claiming responsibility for the three attacks, the letter

received by CP goes on. `Red Hot Video sells tapes that show wimmin (sic) and children being tortured,

raped and humiliated. We are not the property of men to be used and abused.' (23) `Red Hot Video is part

of a multi-billion dollar pornography industry that teaches men to equate sexuality with violence.

Although these tapes violate the Criminal Code of Canada and the B.C. guidelines on pornography, all

lawful attempts to shut down Red Hot Video have failed because the justice system was created and is

controlled by rich men to protect their pro®ts and property.' (24) `As a result, we are left no viable alter-

native but to change the situation ourselves through illegal means. This is an act of self-defence against

hate propaganda. We will continue to defend ourselves.'

230 R. Alexander / Language & Communication 19 (1999) 229±242

sharp statement of the story's essential facts, the theme around which the story is tobe uni®ed' (Charnley, 1975, pp. 185±186 emphasis added). In this way, Charnley says,the standard news lead `is a quick roundup of the major facts of the story' (Charnley,1975, p. 186), supplying the reader in the most abbreviated way possible answers tothe questions What? Who? When? Where? Why? and How? (Charnley, 1975, p. 186).Thus, the lead of this story tells us What? (`Three Red Hot Video outlets wereattacked'), Who? (`by arsonists'), When? (`early today'), and Where? (`in the LowerMainland'). Together, these facts indicate what the reporter(s) and editor(s) whoworked on this story determined to be the `essential facts' around which the storywas to be `uni®ed'. Conspicuously absent from this agenda, however, is an answer tothe question `Why?'. Although the headline gives us an indication that a groupcalling itself the `Wimmin's Brigade' is somehow responsible for the destruction, it isnot until the seventh paragraph that the motivation of this group is revealed.The remaining paragraphs of the story elaborate the theme introduced in the lead:

the destruction of property by arsonists. Paragraphs two to four give a brief accountof the property damage arising from the ®res and tell us that police removed`incendiary devices' from the third store `before they could be ignited'. The plannedpolice response to the crime is outlined in paragraph ®ve. Paragraphs six to ten tellus of warnings of the ®rebombings issued to the media by the Wimmin's Fire Bri-gade, the group, we are told, which has claimed responsibility for the ®res. Para-graph seven o�ers a short quotation from the Brigade which provides an indicationof the motivation behind their actions. `The warnings, however, came too late' thetenth paragraph tells us, initiating the chronological reconstruction of events whichtakes up paragraphs 11±21. Here, paragraphs 10±13 give the time of the ®rst warn-ing received by the Canadian Press news agency and describe the discovery of thetwo ®res and the time at which the RCMP ®rst received word of the warnings.Paragraphs 14 and 16 elaborate on property damage while paragraphs 15, 17 and 18describe the arsonists' modus operandi. The ®nal three paragraphs of the story aredevoted to reprinting the remainder of the ®rebombers' letter in which a moredetailed account of their motivation is o�ered.Every day we read stories in our newspapers constructed in a manner similar to

this one. Although people may regard the media with some scepticism, most alsoshare the assumptions of the reporters and editors that such stories provide a basi-cally accurate, balanced, and objective account of the events they represent. Accu-racy, balance, and objectivity are, after all, what Charnley calls the `characteristicswhich distinguish [news writing] from all other forms of writing' (Charnley, 1975, p.27). These de®ning traits, he writes, `are so ®rmly built in that they not only deter-mine the characteristic form of news practice but also serve as guides to the pre-sentation and evaluation of news' (Charnley, 1975, p. 28). However, they alsodictate how we read the news.News is discourse and, as such, it serves an ordering, taxonomic function in

society. This fact is implicit in the manner in which journalism conceives its keytenets: accuracy, balance, and objectivity. Obviously accuracy means reportersshould get their names and dates straight. But it also means `correctness of generalimpression, correct perspective achieved by the way the details are put together and

R. Alexander / Language & Communication 19 (1999) 229±242 231

by the emphases they are given' (Charnley, 1975, p. 28). Similarly, balance meansthat the reporter is expected to tell not only both sides of the story, but also that heor she `try constantly to place each fact or group of facts in proper proportion, torelate it meaningfully to other elements, and to establish its relative importance tothe story as a whole' (Charnley, 1975, p. 31). News judgement thus involves aweighing of the relative value of various facts, giving some priority while margin-alizing or excluding others. In adhering to these rules, news is said to represent an`objective' picture of the events it describes. Although an embattled precept ofjournalism, objectivity nonetheless remains `the yardstick of reporting in the UnitedStates' (Charnley, 1975, p. 33), as it does in Canada, and Europe. But what is`objectivity'? Charnley writes, `Objectivity means that the news comes to the con-sumer untainted by conscious bias or external in¯uence that could make it appearanything but what it is' (Charnley, 1975, p. 33). By this description, any problemswhich the concept may pose for journalists seldom arise from the ontological orepistemological assumptions which made the thinking of `objectivity' possible in the®rst place. Criticism generally is limited to psychological factors which prohibit thereporter from ever providing a perfectly fair and objective account of an event. AsCharnley notes, `reporters, like other human beings, can never wholly escape theweight of their own psyches' (Charnley, 1975, p. 34) and this pressure inevitablyleaves its mark on every news story. Nonetheless, objectivity, it is believed, `remainsan ideal that can be approached even though it can never by fully attained'(Charnley, 1975, p. 38). It is in its asymptotic approach to this powerful presencethat journalism grounds its claim to approximating objective knowledgeÐortruthÐbetter than any other form of writing.It is precisely against such claims to objective knowledge as those on which news

discourse prides itself that the work of Michel Foucault is directed. His analyses ofpower, knowledge, and discourse demonstrate that the `truths' concerning our rea-lity, subjectivity, identity, and sexuality are discursively produced: `reality', includingthe reality which news claims to represent objectively, is (in so far as it is intelligibleto us) an e�ect of discourse. As Biddy Martin explains in her essay Feminism, Cri-ticism, and Foucault, `our subjectivity, our identity, and our sexuality...do not existoutside of or prior to language and representation but are actually brought into playby discursive strategies and representational practices' (Martin, 1988, p. 9).Such discursive strategies and representational practices are, according to Fou-

cault, acts of power which organize the ®elds of knowledge and social practiceswhich `constitute and govern individual subjects' (Weedon, 1987, p. 113). `Knowl-edge', however, has nothing to do with any absolute truth, although this is the hal-lucination which knowledge seeks to induce. Instead, as Paul Bove has noted,`discourses constitute the truth they claim to discover' (Bove , 1995, p. 56). The only`truth' then of the subject of any ®eld of knowledge is the discourse used to de®nethat ®eld. And the ®eld is `de®ned' in the most etymologically exact sense of theword: as limiting. Discursive practices are characterized, Foucault claims, `by thedelimitation of a ®eld of objects, the de®nition of a legitimate perspective for theagent of knowledge, and the ®xing of norms for the elaboration of concepts andtheories' (Foucault, 1977, p. 199). For Foucault then, discourses are acts of power

232 R. Alexander / Language & Communication 19 (1999) 229±242

which constitute knowledge by a taxonomic process of exclusion and division. Dis-courses set the boundaries of knowledge, governing by exclusion the forms ofknowledge, but also subjectivity, identity, and sexuality which are possible at anygiven time. In this way, discourses serve a normalizing function: to disobey theunspoken rules and constraints of the particular discursive structure one inhabits isto risk being condemned as `other' or as `mad' and thus excluded and silenced (Sel-den, 1989, p. 101).No domain of language use transcends these constraints, not even the scholarly

discourse which seeks to represent the complex relationships among language,knowledge, and power. For example, despite its posture of analytical neutrality, thisessay is as obedient to its own set of disciplinary `rules' as the discourse of thejournalistic texts it seeks to expose. Diane Macdonell has commented in her work ondiscourse that `neither precise argument nor thorough research can claim to o�er aneutral or natural truth' (Macdonell, 1986, p. 7). Rather, a discourse is only possibleto the extent that it leaves some things unsaid: the limits marked by what a discourseomits and marginalizes de®ne that discourse and determine the `truths' which it`discovers'. In the case of this essay, one could point out that my analysis is con-tingent upon a careful selection, juxtaposition, and recontextualization of the jour-nalistic representation of the ®rebombings. And, in its elisions, omissions, andblindnesses, one could demonstrate that the essay is no less engaged in the con-struction of its own truths, in the exclusionary de®nition of its own ®eld, and in theexercise of power than the discourses of the texts which are the objects of its analy-sis. Indeed, in distinguishing itself from journalistic discourse, my essay largelyignores the ways in which the two function in a manner which is discursively similar:as two ideological mainstays of the same society they are, broadly speaking, perhapsmore closely aligned in their assumptions and interests than scholars will sometimesadmit. For example, scholarly discourse shares at least two of the three fundamentaltenets which Charnley identi®es with journalism. Accuracy of both assertion andevidence is no less crucial in scholarly writing than it is in journalism. And, just asbalance is an essential quality of news discourse, the acknowledgement of opposingviews is fundamental to the ethical appeal and impression of reasonableness bywhich one judges scholarly works. Finally, the epistemological security which jour-nalism derives from its conceit of an Archimedean point of objectivity has its coun-terpart in the metalinguistic orientation in which discourse analysis grounds itsauthority. To argue that the only `truth' of the subject of any ®eld of knowledge isthe discourse which de®nes that ®eld does not, after all, dispense with truth; itmerely displaces it from the phenomena in which one otherwise might say that he orshe has discovered it to the process by which such discoveries areÐquite literallyÐmade. Furthermore, in attributing to discourse a capacity actually to make truths,and with them, the subjectivities of those who inhabit their discursive structures,discourse analysis implicitly privileges its own mode of knowledge, not only for itsability to de- and reconstruct truths and subjectivities, but also for the uniquely self-aware nature of that knowledge. Self-awareness is very reassuring: it implies, at once,that there is not only a self or identity of which one might be aware, but also a self tobe thus awareÐeven though those identities may be nothing other than reciprocally

R. Alexander / Language & Communication 19 (1999) 229±242 233

constituting e�ects of re¯exivity itself. Indeed, tracing the operations of this pri-mordial re¯exivity is the formidably di�cult task of deconstruction.3 Nonetheless, inits basic metalinguistic assumption of discourse as a coherent phenomena uponwhich one may re¯ect, discourse analysis implicitly attributes to its object the stabilityof a thing which will allow itself to be re¯ected. In so doing, it grounds its authorityin the discursive object it constructs, object and representation propping up eachother's identity in a complexly imbricated relationship which is easily overlooked.Obviously, to turn discourse analysis upon itself is to risk being hoisted by one's

own discursive petard. And yet, exposing the enigmatic and provisional nature of itsobjects, assertions, and truths does not invalidate the e�cacy of discourse analysis.Indeed, what would its validity be if it were somehow immune from its own conceptsand methods? Rather, however volatile its own grounds, discourse analysis adum-brates an obscure dimension in which linguistic processes tangle with social andpolitical practices and strategies, a space which is easily ignored but whose e�ectsare every bit as realÐin Foucault's terms, as `violent'Ðas those of any ®rebombblast.Turning again to the news story with Foucault's concept of discourse in mind, it

becomes evident that knowledge hereÐthe meaning or truth of the storyÐis con-stituted through a discursive act of division, exclusion, and silencing. This e�ect isachieved through the selection and combination of various elements at both theformal and linguistic levels of the story. Together, these practices frame the dis-course of the embedded text of the Wimmin's letter, rendering their interpretation ofthe ®rebombings as marginal and thus excluding it from the `truth' of the facts thestory reports. Although the letter is included, the manner in which its discourse isneutralized and contradicted by the dominating discourse of the news story, ulti-mately silences its claim to truth. The letter is rendered as the discourse of the`other'.There is, however, nothing overtly sinister about the structure of this story. It is

constructed according to the `inverted pyramid' form employed in most news stor-ies. `Principle facts at the top, least important at the bottom', Charnley's textbooktells us, the inverted-pyramid `rests on its upside-down apex' (Charnley, 1975, p.164). The inverted pyramid form was developed to allow readers to learn the majorfacts of a story quickly without having to read the story in its entirety. But the formalso establishes an agenda, a hierarchy or `order of things', organizing its repre-sentation of the world so as to privilege certain values and social practices by des-ignating them, through a positional emphasis, as the `salient content' (Charnley,1975, p. 164) of the news story. This privileging appears objective and natural asdoes the resulting fact that that which fails to conform to the norm established bynews discourse is condemned, positionally, as of marginal signi®cance and thus`other'.It is possible, if we recall the breakdown of the story I made above, to read the

process of privileging and excluding which constitutes the meaning of this story.

3 For an excellent discussion of the radically re¯exive processes constitutive of identity e�ects, see

Gasche (1986).

234 R. Alexander / Language & Communication 19 (1999) 229±242

Emphasis here is clearly placed on the destruction of private property through acriminal act: this stress is evident from the fact that two of the ®ve ®rst and thusmost signi®cant paragraphs of the story describe property damage. The criminalaspect of the event is emphasized through the priority given to the police response tothe `attacks' in paragraphs four and ®ve. Accounts of property damage also ®gureprominently in the chronological reconstruction of the event in paragraphs 11±21,which also expand upon the role of the police. Allied with the police in the attemp-ted defence of property against criminals are none other than the media themselves,whose involvement in the event is described high in the story in paragraphs six toten. Embedded in this description, we ®nd the ®rst mention of the ®rebombers'motives. The motivation the excerpt from the letter describes, however, is de-emphasized by the narrative context in which it appears, signifying only a `warning'of the imminent attack. Furthermore, the sentence `the warnings, however, came toolate', indicates that the media's role in the defence of private property is an active,although frustrated one. Thus, in this story we are assured that the wagons of bothmedia and police are circled to defend private property against the violent attacks ofthose `others' outside that circle. The discourse of these criminals is relegated to thebottom margins of the story and is thus signalled as that information `least impor-tant' (Charnley, 1975, p. 164) to an understanding of the truth of the event. Cer-tainly the image of reality we get from these ®nal three paragraphs contradicts thepicture of institutions as defenders of individuals with which we have been presentedin the preceding paragraphs. Instead, we are told of an institutionally sanctionedsocial practice that tolerates the sale of material that shows `wimmin and childrenbeing tortured, raped and humiliated' and which `teaches men to equate sexualitywith violence'. Although the writers of the letter acknowledge the transgressive(`illegal') nature of their act, their discourse nonetheless represents the ®rebombingsas `an act of self-defence against hate propaganda'.Like the text in which it is embedded, the ®rebombers' letter is also discourse and

thus engaged in de®ning its own ®eld of knowledge and constructing its own truths.These truths, however, are not grounded in any ideal objectivity as is the case withjournalism but rather in the violence of the act of ®rebombing itself, the brute fact ofwhich, their letter implies, provides an unequivocal demonstration of the accuracyof their assertions. To understand this logic, it is helpful to note that the letter bearsmany of the features which RichardW. Leeman has identi®ed with terrorist rhetoric.4

Leeman states, for example, that terrorists typically `defend their violence by con-structing a bipolar world which clearly divides good from evil' (Leeman, 1991, p. 46).

4 The labels `terrorist' and `terrorism', however, are every bit as reductive as the rhetoric of terrorists.

As Joseba Zulaika and William A. Douglass argue in Terror and Taboo: the Follies, Fables, and Faces of

Terrorism, `terrorism' is a highly ¯uid and overdetermined category, a free-¯oating signi®er with no

essential identity or meaning. Rather, its meaning is constructed by the discourse on terrorism emanating

from the media, the arts, political institutions, academia, and from violent activists themselves. `Terrorism

is ®rst and foremost discourse' (Zulaika and Douglass, 1996, p. 14), they contend. `When we examine the

epistemic status of the category itself and the shifting meanings that it holds for various audiences we

realize the radical extent to which terrorism discourse constitutes its object' (Zulaika and Douglass, 1996,

p. 16).

R. Alexander / Language & Communication 19 (1999) 229±242 235

Employing the reductive and hyperbolic language which Leeman ®nds characteristicof the rhetoric of terrorists, the ®rebombers fashion themselves in opposition to `avague monolithic other' (Leeman, 1991, p. 48)Ð`rich men' whose only concern is `toprotect their pro®ts and property'Ðagainst whose corrupt cruelty, the letter writerscontend, they have no `viable alternative' but to respond. And it is as a responseÐ`either balanced or outweighed by the violence of others' (Leeman, 1991, p. 47)Ðthat terrorists maintain that their actions are justi®ed. As Leeman explains, `Ter-rorism is legitimate because it ``responds'' to an evil, illegitimate enemy' (Leeman,1991, p. 46). Thus, although the ®rebombers admit that their actions are `illegal',such unlawfulness, they claim, is a balancedÐindeed, a relatively restrainedÐrejoinder to the greater illegality both of the products the video stores sell (the `tapesviolate the Criminal Code of Canada and the B.C. guidelines on pornography') aswell as to a capitalist-patriarchal justice system which not only permits such viola-tions, but which resists the e�orts of those good people who wish to right thesewrongs. In fact, it is precisely the stubborn illegitimacy of the `system' which com-pels the ®rebombers to act: `all lawful attempts to shut down Red Hot Video havefailed', therefore, they argue, `we are left no viable alternative but to change thesituation ourselves through illegal means'. Noteworthy here is the ®rebombers'representation of their actions as an inescapable consequence of the corruption theydescribe. So inexorable are the forces compelling the terrorists to act that little proofof their assertions is required. This is another feature of terrorist rhetoric whichLeeman identi®es: `Because truth is obvious to those who will see, terrorists pay lit-tle attention to the use of documentation, or traditional standards of evidence,' hewrites. `Most types of evidenceÐfor example, testimonial and statisticalÐare rarelyused at all' (Leeman, 1991, p. 58). Rather, representing their actions as the una-voidable, virtually natural, product of the injustice of an illegitimate system, the®rebombers construct themselves as the legitimate agents of an ineluctable necessitylatent in the violence of the system itself. By this curious discursive logic, the violentact itself is held out as evidence of the truth of the terrorist's assertions: no furtherproof is necessary for, were the system not corrupt, the implicit argument goes, RedHot Video would not exist or, if it did, the forces of good would have been able toshut it down through lawful means.One might argue that the inclusion of this letter (and thus this discourse) in the

media account of the ®rebombings provides for the accuracy, balance, and objec-tivity by which news discourse de®nes itself. Along with its structural margin-alization, however, the letter is also framed by the language of the paragraphs whichprecede it in such a way that its interpretation of the event contradicts the dominantdiscourse of the story and is thus e�ectively silenced. For example, what the ®re-bombers de®ne as an `act of self-defence against hate propaganda' is representedunequivocally in the lead paragraph of the story as an act of aggression, an `attack'.Furthermore, those responsible for the attack are identi®ed not in the terms of theirown discourseÐas women, as a women's group, or as women who feel compelled todefend themselves against the hegemony of a judicial and economic system whichprivileges the interests of men at the expense of womenÐbut simply as `arsonists',outlaws. This paradigmatic element in the discursive constitution of the truth of this

236 R. Alexander / Language & Communication 19 (1999) 229±242

event is reinforced syntagmatically by the passive construction of the headline andopening sentence in both of which the video stores are represented as the subjectacted upon by the aggressive arsonists.The use of language to frame the ®rebombers as outlaws is even more evident in

an editorial which appeared in the Sun the following day beneath the headline`Brainless Bombings'.5 An editorial is the voice of the newspaper. In an essay whichappears in a current `how-to' book on journalism, The Newspaper: Everything YouNeed to Know toMake It in the Newspaper Business, Paul Greenberg, an editorial pageeditor for the Pine Blu� (Arkansas) Commercial, describes the editorial as `the opi-nion of the newspaper as an institution rather than of an individual' (Greenberg,1981, p. 27). By a strange twist of prosopopeia, the editorial, as the `opinion of thenewspaper as an institution', stands in a blurred territory somewhere between thesubjective discourse of an opinion column and the objective knowledge of newsdiscourse. The editorial's institutional persona is, of course, reinforced by the factthat editorials are unsigned. A glance at the masthead of the 23 November 1982edition of the Sun, however, suggests that the words which the institutional voicespoke that day were those of men: ClarkW. Davey, Publisher; Frank Rutter, EditorialPages Editor, and Bruce Larsen, Managing Editor. Men perhaps, but the institutionalvoice grants their words a substance and authority available to few columnists.

5 Beneath the headline, `Brainless Bombings,' the 23 November editorial reads as follows:

Regardless of what anyone thinks of the product sold by Red Hot Video, the ®rebombing of three

of the company's stores should be condemned as the cowardly act of small-time terrorists.

The political nature of their protest does not justify or excuse the unlawful behavior of the cul-

prits. They have committed a crime and must be dealt with as common criminals.

As a commentary on their political savvy, it says nothing much for the intelligence of the arsonists

if they think real violence is the answer to the more insidious sort of violence represented by por-

nographic videotapes that exploit and degrade women, or even the best way to draw attention to it.

By taking the law into their own hands and ®ghting smoke with ®re, those who carried out the

attacks have, as well as hurting innocent people with no stake in the pornography debate, done

more harm than help to the cause they purport to espouse.

Legitimate community organizations, whose peaceful protests have had some success in bringing

the attention of the authorities to the pornographic video trade, will now feel compelled to spend

time and energy dissociating themselves from the lunatic fringe group that has claimed responsi-

bility for the ®rebombings.

Moreover, the intrusion of criminal acts can only blur the issues in a debate where clear de®ni-

tions are hard to come by, and further delay the kind of action the anti-pornography groups seek

from the provincial government, which must not be seen now as responding to terrorist blackmail.

To the government, which already stands accused of failing to act quickly enough, the porno-

graphy question is not quite as black and white as it is to those who have been exposed to its evil

side. The government clearly has a duty to protect women victimized directly or as a byproduct of

pornography, but it also has a duty not to indulge in unnecessary censorship.

Without better evidence of a cause-and-e�ect relationship between pornography and violence

against women, still a matter of some disagreement, it is hard for the government to know just

where to draw the line. Proper research and an intelligent, dispassionate debate would make the task

easier. The brainless ®rebombing of the pornography stores has only made it more di�cult.

(Anon, Sun, 23 November 1982b, p. A4)

R. Alexander / Language & Communication 19 (1999) 229±242 237

The American journalist H.L. Mencken once wrote, `An editorial, to have anyrationale at all, should say something. It should take a line' (qtd. in Greenberg,1981, p. 27). The line taken in this editorial is clear. The ®rebombers, we are told, arecowards, `small-time terrorists', and `culprits' who `have committed a crime andmust be dealt with as common criminals'. In taking this line, however, the discourseof the editorial also draws a line which corresponds with the order constructed in thenews story. This line is drawn between acceptable and unacceptable forms of dis-sent. On the one hand are the `legitimate community organizations whose peacefulprotests have had some success in bringing the attention of the authorities to thepornographic video trade'; on the other, `the lunatic fringe group that has claimedresponsibility for the ®rebombings'. Clearly, the Wimmin's Fire Brigade is margin-alized here because of their use of violence. Violence represents an irrational, crim-inal `intrusion' into an otherwise rational debate. There is also, however, a not-too-subtle, gender-speci®c aspect to the violence with which this line between violenceand non-violence is marked. We ®nd this suggestion, for example, in the languageused to describe the bombings: the `Brainless', which appears in the headline of theeditorial is a common male epithet for women and evokes thoughts of `BrainlessBroads' as in `Brainless Broads Bomb Businesses'. Similarly, in an editorial whichappeared in the Sun 24 November 1982, the sympathetic response of the B.C. Fed-eration of Women to the ®rebomb attacks is described as `hysterical' (Anon, 24November 1982c, p. A5).This gender-speci®c element is even more evident, however, if we read the 23

November editorial in the context of the newspaper as a whole. The same day as thiseditorial appeared, a story ran in the women's section of the Sun. Appearing underthe headline, `The ``gentle sex?'' Yes, it really is', this story reports a speech by Dr.Jane Faily, `a teacher, psychologist and consultant to the International Baha'iCommunity', a `gentle-looking woman', we are told, with `considerable expertise inwomen's issues'. Faily's speech dealt with the `speci®cally female system of valuesthat is di�erent from men's'. Although there is evidence in the story that Faily maynot regard these di�erences as wholly essentialÐshe talks, for example, of the moral`development' of women and menÐthe story nonetheless frames her speech, andthus the female subject it represents, as `gentle', `nurturing', and `concern[ed] for thesocial good'. `The ``gentle sex?'' Yes, it really is', the headline tells us, and the notionis enlarged upon in the ®rst two paragraphs of the story:

(Yes, women are naturally more gentle and nurturing than men, and for areason.)

Without those special qualities, the aggressive, competitive style of the otherhalf of the human race would have blown the world to smithereens long ago.(Godley, 1982, p. B5)

Presumably with a ®rebomb.Implicit in this statement of the `natural' gentleness of women is the suggestion

that women who are not gentle, such as the ®rebombers, are somehow unnatural.Appearing as it does one day after the `attack' on the video stores and the same day

238 R. Alexander / Language & Communication 19 (1999) 229±242

as the editorial on the ®rebombers, this story provides a rare perspective on themanner in which news discourse constitutes and attempts to regulate the subjectivityand sexuality of women.Foucault has argued that the `put[ting] into discourse' (Foucault, 1976, p. 11) of

sexuality is one particularly e�ective means of constituting and regulating the sub-ject. Like all other ®elds of knowledge, sexuality is discursively produced andtherefore without an `essential nature or meaning' (Weedon, 1987, p. 119). It hasbecome, however, what Chris Weedon calls `a locus of power in the modern age' andthus `a focal point in [the constitution of] subjective identity' (Weedon, 1987, p. 119).`Indeed', writes Weedon, `[sexuality] is often found to be the explanation for every-thing to do with the individual' (Weedon, 1987, p. 119).In volume one of The History of Sexuality, Foucault dismisses the notion of an

`essential' sexuality implied by various liberal and psychoanalytic schools whichregard `sex as an instinctual drive or force' (Martin, 1988, p. 8). `On the contrary',Foucault argues, it is:

the name that can be given to a historical construct: not a furtive reality that isdi�cult to grasp, but a great surface network in which the stimulation of bod-ies, the intensi®cation of pleasures, the incitement to discourse, the formation ofspecial knowledges, the reinforcement of controls and of resistances, are linkedto one another, in accordance with a few major strategies of knowledge andpower. (Foucault, 1976, pp. 105±106)

The history of sexuality then, like the history of any ®eld of knowledge, is thehistory of discourses, in this case, discourses of sexuality. These discourses circulatethrough the social ®eld, constituting and regulating the `normal' sexuality of subjects,inducing the hallucination that that `norm' which they constitute and police is `natural'.One place where this discourse is particularly evident is in the women's pages of a

newspaper. `Watch a woman when she picks up a newspaper', writes the publisherof the Lewistown, Montana News Argus in his contribution to The Newspaper:Everything You Need to Know to Make It in the Newspaper Business. `She often turns®rst to the women's page' (Byerly, 1981, p. 12). If this is in fact the case, it is prob-ably because women are the subject of no other section of the newspaper. Althoughthe content of the women's section has expanded in recent years to contain storieson such issues as wife abuse, `day care, abortion, divorce and sex discrimination'(Sandman et al., 1976, p. 446), the staple of these pages remains `recipes, fashions,beauty and homemaking tips, wedding and engagement announcements, societyfeatures' (Sandman, 1976, p. 446), and the advice column. But to what extent doesthis information constitute, rather than appeal to, the interests of women and thusde®ne their identities?Such stories, and those like the one describing the speech of the `gentle-looking'

Dr. Faily, are considered `soft news' in the newspaper business. In UnderstandingNews, John Hartley says soft stories are `often de®ned as having a ``woman's angle'''(Hartley, 1982, p. 38). In contrast to such stories, sometimes called `¯u�', is hardnews, `characterized', Hartley writes, by `con¯ict' and `violence' (Hartley, 1982, p. 38).

R. Alexander / Language & Communication 19 (1999) 229±242 239

If we bear in mind the distinctions the story on Dr. Faily draws between the naturalgentleness of women and the natural `aggressive, competitive style of the other halfof the human race', hard news is men's news. This implicit distinction marks onemore way in which news discourse constitutes the subjectivity and sexuality of boththe male and the female reader.Enter the ®rebombers, gentle women gone berserk, violently destroying private

property and with it, the boundary between soft (women's) news and hard (men's)news. This discursive aspect of their transgression perhaps explains the hard line theSun's editorial takes on the actions of the ®rebombers: not only do their `attacks'`blur the issues' (Anon, 23 November 1982b, p. A4) in the pornography debate, theyalso blur the line between hard, masculine news and soft, feminine news and thus thesexual distinctions which news discourse actively defends and regulates. The editor-ial makes it clear: a woman's place is in the woman's section and woe to any madsubject who strays from its ¯u�y con®nes. In this respect, the title of the Sun'swomen's section (`You') sounds less like an attempt to de-emphasize the gender-speci®c nature of its content than an imperative: `You'. This is `You'. The ®re-bombers are not you. Indeed, for women readers, we could without much exag-geration call all other sections of the newspaper the `Not You' pages.As oppressively deterministic as the discursive constitution of the subject and

sexuality may sound, however, Foucault's analysis of power o�ers women seekingpolitical change and sexual self-determination an opportunity to resist their con-stitution by the dominant discourse. Exercised through discourse, power `circulatesin the social ®eld and can attach to strategies of domination as well as to those ofresistance' (Sawicki, 1988, p. 185). The possibility of resistance thus arises from thefact that the discursive ®eld is neither a totality nor uni®ed: it is, in fact, marked byfragmentation and ambivalence and, as such, is always a dynamic space in whichstruggle, con¯ict, and challenge may occur. This heterogeneity exists because,despite e�orts to appear absolute, objective, `true', `natural', or `normal', discourseonly constitutes the distinctions and categories it claims to discover. These distinc-tions and de®nitions are thus necessarily free-¯oating and subject to transformation.Whatever truth value they possess arises solely from the fact that they are the pro-duct of the power exercised by the dominant discourse. But even dominant dis-courses, such as news discourse, have no timeless monopoly over truth. As such,they can do nothing more than produce the `truths' and `norms' about which theyalso claim to provide objective knowledge.Normality, as we have seen, is based on exclusion. The exclusion of a subject

position, however, does not necessarily render that subject totally silent. ChrisWeedon writes that even marginal discourses, in con¯ict with the dominant dis-course and thus `lacking the authority and social power to realize their versions ofknowledge in institutional practice...can o�er the discursive space from which theindividual can resist dominant subject positions' (Weedon, 1987, pp. 110±11). Oncethe subject recognizes `as purely discursive that which it seeks to oppose' (Megill,1985, p. 252), once `identity' and `sexuality' are seen as `products of socially andhistorically speci®c practices and relationships that are contingent and dynamic'(Sawicki, 1988, p. 184), exclusion creates its own discursive space, and the possibility

240 R. Alexander / Language & Communication 19 (1999) 229±242

of a reverse discourse which, Weedon says, `enables the subjected subject of dis-course to speak in her own right' (Weedon, 1987, p. 109). In short, Foucault's ana-lysis of discourse and power suggests it is possible to ®ght ®re with ®re.And this is precisely what the `Wimmin's Fire Brigade' did. Launched from the

space they evidently recognized as that of their own exclusion, their attack plays onan ambiguity apparent in the dominant discourse. Their act is, in a sense, one ofdiscursive resistance in which that ambivalence and contradiction in the language ofthe dominant discourse is turned against itself. In calling their chain `Red HotVideo' the owners of the ®rebombed stores drew on a familiar metaphorical asso-ciation of sex with heat and ardour. This ®gure, however, elides the associationmade in pornography of sex with violence, speci®cally the violence against womendepicted in the images marketed by the stores. In setting the stores on ®reÐcom-mitting arsonÐthe Wimmin demonstrated the literally destructive potential of ®reand thus suggested the violence only implicit in the ®gure employed in the name ofthe video stores. Their act therefore could be interpreted as the result of an analysisof `discourse in operation in a speci®c historical context' (Weedon, 1987, p. 111)which reveals `whose interests it serves at a particular moment' (Weedon, 1987, p.111), in this case, the Wimmin's letter tells us ``rich men''. In performing this ana-lysis, moreover, the ®rebombers' discourse is distinguished from that of terroristsmore generally. According to Leeman, action and langauge are often exclusivecategories in terrorist rhetoric: because the terrorist privileges act over words,`communication evolves into an irrelevant, dangerous element' (Leeman, 1991, p.58). For the ®rebombers, however, discourse is dangerous not because it can detractfrom action, but rather because it is active, playing a sometimes violent role in con-stituting and regulating our gendered identities.The disturbance which the ®rebombers' created with their actions, made evident,

but also confused the lines which news discourse draws in order to police thoseidentities. It is neither fair nor accurate, however, simply to demonize The VancouverSun for seeking to maintain these lines in its treatment of the ®rebombers. As JohnHartley notes, the press is only one particularly obvious segment of a discursive webwhich runs through our society. He writes, ``news is not a producer of ideologicalmeanings in the sense that they are originated here and nowhere else. News re-pro-duces dominant ideological discourses in its special areas of competence'' (Hartley,1982, p. 62). What should be clear from the Sun's representation of the ®rebombing,however, is the manner in which news plays an active role in the constitution of thesubjectivity and sexuality of women and men. If, as Joseph Pulitzer said, `accuracy isto a newspaper what virtue is to a woman' (qtd. in Charnley, 1975, p. 28), we mustalways remember to ask: `What is ``accuracy''?', `What is ``woman''?', and what arethe implications of the relationship drawn here between the two?

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