School of Social and Political Science

Description

Title: An intersectional approach to the community-building aspect of hashtag feminism in Brazil

Abstract:

This talk focuses on the  community-building aspect of digital feminist mobilisations  in Brazil and its inequalities, unravelling feelings of belonging and alienation that result from social organizing around a common cause and the ways in which these feelings relate to the histories of feminist activism more broadly. While the creation of feminist collectives online often lead to a public demand for accountability and personal reflection on different levels, they also reproduce limitations in terms of building sustained change that belong to a long legacy of conflict amongst groups involved in collective struggle. Hence, I delve into theorizations of intersectionality, demonstrating how building campaigns with intersectional lenses demands more than adding different identities to the mix “and stir”. I situate intersectionality within debates about the work of coalitional politics in order to think projects of difference, bringing theory and praxis into the discussion in order to illuminate the current limitations of Brazilian digital feminist activism and community coalitions more broadly. In this talk, I will argue that hashtag campaigns repeat feminist activism’s history of radicality and co-option, but with new sets of limitations and potentials that further limits the pursuit of social justice.