Abstract
This chapter will focus on the discursive transformation of the two women at the centre of the Knox trial: Amanda Knox and Meredith Kercher. Following Freud, Holohan argues that the original mediatised trial of Knox and Sollecito presented a narrative of sexual transgression as a way of reordering gender relations. In order for this narrative to operate, the women in the case were discursively transformed into saint and sinner roles that allowed for a titillating, yet hyper-moral, discourse to develop. While the men at the centre of the crime were largely ignored, and Kercher was rehabilitated into a virtuous victim, Knox metamorphosed into a malign sexual deviant through a hyper-moralised discourse in the British and Italian press that served to reinforce a stereotypically gendered view of female deviance.
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Holohan, S. (2016). (A)moral Representation: The Hyper-sexual Construction of Amanda Knox. In: Gies, L., Bortoluzzi, M. (eds) Transmedia Crime Stories. Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59004-6_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59004-6_4
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