Suffering as the counter-discourse: the construction of an affective community through feminist podcasts in China

This study explores the discursive strategies and affective dynamics of suffering in Chinese feminist podcasts using Wodak’s historical-discourse approach. By analysing Stochastic Volatility and After School, two prominent feminist podcasts in China, it examines how discursive strategies of nomination, predication, and intensification/mitigation are deployed to articulate women’s suffering of marginalised embodied experiences, feminist identities, and social vulnerabilities. Framing these narratives of suffering as feminist counter-discourses, this study argues that these podcasts provide intimate spaces for circulating women’s affective experiences, including collective expressions of pain, ambivalence, resonance, and anger, thereby constructing a feminist affective community. Notably, feminist podcasts amplify structural critiques of patriarchal oppression and highlight the political potential of women’s personal suffering and affective experiences within China’s digital feminist landscape.