Women’s Bodies Across Digital Narrative

Abstract

This article aims to examine and explain how narratives of the objectification of women’s bodies are produced, circulated, and contested by authors and readers in Indonesian digital fiction. This phenomenon is analyzed by integrating Paul Ricoeur’s Narrative theory and Simone de Beauvoir’s Existentialist feminism. Ricoeur’s framework is used to understand the dynamic relationship between text and reader, while Beauvoir’s perspective explains the process of constructing women’s bodies as an object within patriarchal discourse. This research is conducted within a qualitative research framework, specifically employing narrative qualitative research and digital ethnography. The research data sources consist of digital fiction titled Feminism and On the Edge of the Shadows. This study demonstrates that the construction of women’s bodies in digital fiction is significantly influenced by the interaction between narrative, author, and reader that occurs within the digital space. In this study, the researcher found that the woman’s body in the digital space remains within a social structure influenced by patriarchal values.