Post-feminist Impasses in Popular Heroine Television

Alison Horbury completed her doctoral degree in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where she currently lectures in the fields of Media Studies, Gender Studies, and Communications.

• Introduction - Why Persephone?1. The Myth of Persephone & The Hymn to Demeter2. Persephone in Heroine Television: The Post-feminist Impasse 3. Persephone as Narrative Symptom: Narrative Transactions in Long-form Viewership4. Persephone as Epistemological Impasse: The Real Body of Sydney Bristow and ' 'The Woman Here Depicted ' '5. Persephone as Methodological Impasse: Feminine Jouissance in Veronica ' 's ' 'Two Stories ' '6. Persephone as Historical Impasse: ' 'Confrontation and Accommodation ' ' of the Post-feminist HeroineConclusion - The Persephone Complex

"Horbury's innovative use of the Persephone myth to explain the recurring themes and pleasures of 'heroine television' in post-feminist programming is fresh, convincing and illuminating. After historically contextualizing the myth through foundational accounts and interpretations, the book usefully draws on both literary and clinical psychoanalysis to argue its continuing relevance to contemporary culture. Judicious attention to Ally McBeal acknowledges the key place this text has had in the development of post-feminist television and its criticism, while each subsequent chapter uses an example that enables the exploration of a different facet of post-feminist culture as understood through the Persephone myth. The book offers new insights into contemporary culture that go well beyond the serials discussed, constituting an original shift in psychoanalytic methods of cultural interpretation that is sure to have an impact on debates about television and post-feminism." - Jane Arthurs, Professor in Television, Middlesex University, UK "Learned, scholarly, respectful, Horbury's work is a return in the real on which the feminine question is waged. The mysteries of Eleusis stand revealed." - Tim Themi, author of Lacan's Ethics and Nietzsche's critique of Platonism, (2014)