Drawing on the work of Lois McNay as a feminist extender of Foucault's ideas about power and the possibility of resistance, this article offers a discussion of her theories of female agency as transferred onto Jenji Kohan's TV adaptation of Piper Kerman's prison autobiographical narrative Orange Is the New Black (2010). Situated within feminist epistemology, our approach is interdisciplinary, and we argue that the series is an instance of McNay's neo-Foucauldian framework in practice, with her three dimensions of agency integrated in a critical discourse about life in women's prisons. We contend that Kohan presents the protagonists as active subjects with potential for transformation. In our view, her narratives of resistance against the disciplinary practices of the institution can be read as political statements that promote consciousness-raising among viewers.

In the context of a new wave of women’s activism for equality, the body is once again at the centre of the discussion today, in the USA and globally. Analysing American discourses about health and illness at the turn of the twenty-first century, Tasha Dubriwny has argued that the current narratives are dominated by neoliberal and postfeminist philosophies that have thrived in a framework of biomedicalisation and self-surveillance. What happens, then, when a successful feminist artist is diagnosed with uterine cancer? How does Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues and founder of V-Day, face the fact that her life may have a painful ending? How does a woman so aware of her physical and psychological self come to terms with illness? Is she willing to put her political project aside to become a patient? Through a close reading of Ensler’s uterine cancer memoir In the Body of the World, and focusing particularly on its structure and narrative strategies, this article situates her work within the corpus of female literature about health and illness in the twenty-first century, exploring her meaning-making process in the light of the current tensions between feminism and postfeminism.

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La miniserie Gambito de dama, protagonizada por una ajedrecista huérfana, con problemas emocionales y dependencia de los fármacos y el alcohol, fue la ficción más vista en la historia de la plataforma Netflix en 2020. En este artículo se realiza un análisis feminista de ella mediante un enfoque interpretativo y una metodología cualitativa, con el objetivo de dilucidar hasta qué punto la serie rompe con el paradigma mainstream de representación femenina, caracterizado por la estereotipia sexista, el énfasis en el cuerpo y la belleza o la instrumentalización de la violencia sexual. El estudio revelará que esta ficción brinda una heroína imperfecta, que rompe estereotipos de género, aunque no exenta de algunos problemas, como la descripción de la genialidad, a caballo entre el patrón masculino y el extravío mental estereotípicamente femenino.

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