Direkt zum Inhalt

Niebling, Laura

Consent capital: From Romantasy’s “Alpha male archetypes” toward a new cultural theory in post-digital storytelling

Niebling, Laura (2025) Consent capital: From Romantasy’s “Alpha male archetypes” toward a new cultural theory in post-digital storytelling. New Media & Society.

Veröffentlichungsdatum dieses Volltextes: 07 Nov 2025 15:45
Artikel
DOI zum Zitieren dieses Dokuments: 10.5283/epub.78113


Zusammenfassung

The article introduces the concept of “consent capital” to analyze how writing and reading romantasy, a leading book genre on contemporary bookish platforms often criticized for its young female communities and “trivial” nature, has become a site for political discourse. Drawing on feminist research on romance since the 1980s, and theories on consent culture and cultural capital, the analysis ...

The article introduces the concept of “consent capital” to analyze how writing and reading romantasy, a leading book genre on contemporary bookish platforms often criticized for its young female communities and “trivial” nature, has become a site for political discourse. Drawing on feminist research on romance since the 1980s, and theories on consent culture and cultural capital, the analysis traces romantasy’s role in the post-digital storytelling of body politics, particularly after 2016. Through a comparative analysis of contemporary romantasy series, exemplified by a case study on Rebecca Yarros’s Empyrean series and a focus on “alpha male archetypes,” the article argues that notions of consent, bodily autonomy, and trauma have been transformed into a form of cultural capital, which is actively practiced, but also discussed and aesthetically reflected upon on social media platforms. In post-digital storytelling, it informs cultural value debates and commodification strategies on “sides” like BookTok, where romantasy’s fictional renegotiations of consent capital intersect with the current political, legal and cultural debates on “consent” in countries in the “Global North”.



Beteiligte Einrichtungen


    Details

    DokumentenartArtikel
    Titel eines Journals oder einer ZeitschriftNew Media & Society
    Verlag:Sage
    Datum27 September 2025
    InstitutionenNicht ausgewählt
    Identifikationsnummer
    WertTyp
    10.1177/14614448251375107DOI
    Stichwörter / KeywordsArchetype, Bookish Platforms, BookTok, consent capital, memes, reading industry, romantasy
    Dewey-Dezimal-Klassifikation900 Geschichte und Geografie > 990 Geschichte der übrigen Welt
    StatusVeröffentlicht
    BegutachtetJa, diese Version wurde begutachtet
    An der Universität Regensburg entstandenJa
    URN der UB Regensburgurn:nbn:de:bvb:355-epub-781137
    Dokumenten-ID78113

    Bibliographische Daten exportieren

    Nur für Besitzer und Autoren: Kontrollseite des Eintrags

    nach oben