Performing Atheist Selves in Digital Publics

U.S. Women and Non-Religious Identity Online

Evelina Lundmark

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781000842920
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión

This book considers how the non-religious self is performed publicly online, and how digital culture and technology shapes this process. Building on a YouTube case study with women vloggers, it presents unique empirical data on non-organized atheism in the United States. Lundmark suggests that the atheist self as performed online exists in tension between a perception of atheism as sinful and amoral in relation to hegemonical Christianity in the U.S., and the hyperrational, male-centered discourse that has characterized the atheist movement. She argues that women atheist vloggers co-effect third spaces of emotive resonance that enable a precarious counterpublicness of performing atheist visibility. The volume offers a valuable contribution to the discussion of how the public, the private, and areas in-between are understood within digital religion, and opens up new space for engaging with the increased visibility of atheist identity in a mediatized society.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: U.S. Women and Non-religious Identity Online
• 1 Atheist Identity in the US: Civil Religion and Christian Privilege
• 2 New Atheist Discourse and Hyper Rationality: Authority, Femininity, Atheism
• 3 Precarious Selves: Digital Media and Exacerbated Vulnerabilities
• 4 Third Spaces: Evoking Resonance
• 5 Counterpublics: Resistance through Dissonance
• Index