ABSTRACT
This chapter is principally concerned with those aspects of discursive formation that Foucault (1969) terms ‘surfaces of appearance’ and ‘enunciative modalities’; that is, it focuses on the relationship between what is said about the achieving or ‘smart’ girl and who says it, and the relationships between these and the wider discursive contexts. I am particularly interested in the ways smart identities are produced and endorsed in local contexts, and how girls use their authority to position themselves within wider discursive hierarchies. I am also interested in the ways in which participants online and off engage with media techniques, as well as the discourses they carry, as evidence of the nature and limits of criticality and agency. It is important to recognise that many of the participant statements are not just about achieving girls; they are statements about texts about achieving girls. Post-structuralist audience studies recognise that being called upon to interpret a text is not a simple matter of ‘truthfully’ representing a received impression; commentaries and interpretations are performances of readings which strive to appear ‘right’ (Allington 2007, 46) and are a means for defining identities and positions within reading communities (Merrick 1997, 55). In this chapter, I attempt to explore girls’ statements and negotiations as those authorised to pronounce both on media texts and on achieving girlhood itself. I move between their statements and claims about television and about what they commonly term ‘smart’ girlhood, to television texts themselves to show how some narratives and performances are endorsed, how girls mobilise both school and popular discourses in establishing their authority. As Nyström observes (2014, 88) observes, interactions between peers as well as with teachers work to validate pupils’ identities with regard to their abilities.
