LILITH THE DEMON, MEDIA EVOLUTION AND THE ORIGINS OF GENDERED CHARACTER ASSASSINATION

Abstract

This article adopts a genealogical approach to character assassination, tracing the migration of gendered reputational destruction across symbolic regimes from the Edenic demonization of Lilith to a posthuman virtual regime characterized by its permanent visibility and diffused agency. Drawing on rhetorical theories of scapegoating, liminality, and the state of exception, as well as feminist and media studies scholarship, the article argues that character assassination functions as a symbolic media infrastructure that stabilizes sociopolitical order by externalizing collective anxiety and anger. Lilith is the prototype scapegoat, a liminal subject whose transgression was the first to be coded as existential threat to humanity, thus making “sin” the outcome of female autonomy, and this is the basis of gendered reputational violence deployed against women.