Transgendering the Law
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Abstract
culture’ (p. 11), but there is little throughout the book that explores the other elements of this constitution. Ultimately, Dittmer advocates textual analysis as a useful methodology for tracing certain political discourses through a particular comic’s subgenre. For cultural studies, this method may feel too dated and constrained, but Dittmer’s impressive wrangling of a number of theoretical camps certainly demonstrates the further stakes of taking superheroes seriously as objects of study and points at further generative directions. Captain America, and popular culture more generally, becomes a site to explore the ramifications of hegemony in relation to geopolitics. If the book does not match its audacious goals, it still contributes to the necessity of taking the politics of superheroes seriously, and the need to explore their social, cultural and intellectual value.