DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF GENDER STRUGGLE IN THE CHARACTER OF JOLANTAIN THE ANIME Chi: On the Movements of the Earth(Episodes 7–20) FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF LIBERAL FEMINISM

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the construction of gender struggle in the character of Jolanta in the anime Chi: On the Movements of the Earth, episodes 7–20. The anime’s historical setting in fifteenth-century Europe reveals the dominance of patriarchal institutions over the production of knowledge and the restriction of women’s access to intellectual space. This research employs a qualitative approach using Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis, which encompasses the dimensions of text, discursive practice, and social practice. Martha Nussbaum’s liberal feminist perspective is used to interpret Jolanta’s struggle as an effort to expand women’s intellectual capabilities. The data consist of dialogues, narratives, and visual elements such as expressions, camera angles, framing, and lighting that display gendered power relations. The findings show that Jolanta’s struggle is constructed through a shift in linguistic modality from a subordinative to a resistive position, supported by visual symbols that display the dialectic of epistemic repression and liberation. At the level of discursive practice, the anime depicts women’s exclusion from the process of knowledge production, while at the level of social practice, the text represents patriarchal structures that regulate who is entitled to speak, learn, and be recognized as a subject of knowledge. These findings confirm that anime, as a form of popular culture, can become an ideological arena that both represents and mediates women’s struggles to gain recognition for their intellectual capabilities