The phallic girl goes to Italy: Amanda Knox, post-feminism and phallicism between the national and international spheres

Abstract

The article takes as its subject the trials of Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede for the murder of the English student Meredith Kercher in Perugia on 2 November 2007. Through a Foucauldian discourse analysis, the article explores the discursive strategies that are employed – through the interplay of the media and the legal system – to reinsert the disruptive figure of ‘the woman who kills’ within normative and sanctioned forms of femininity and female sexuality. Furthermore, the analysis shows how the Knox case is central for understanding Italian culture, which is characterised by an anxiety towards, and rejection of, a novel facet of young femininity in post-feminist culture: the phallic subjectivity and sexuality incarnated by Knox.