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Pain Generation: Social Media, Feminist Activism, and the Neoliberal Selfie

Online ISBN:
9781479808359
Print ISBN:
9781479808342
Publisher:
NYU Press
Book

Pain Generation: Social Media, Feminist Activism, and the Neoliberal Selfie

L. Ayu Saraswati
L. Ayu Saraswati
University of Hawai'i
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Published online:
20 January 2022
Published in print:
18 May 2021
Online ISBN:
9781479808359
Print ISBN:
9781479808342
Publisher:
NYU Press

Abstract

Pain Generation troubles the phenomenon of feminists turning to social media to respond to and enact the political potential of pain inflicted by acts of sexual harassment, sexual violence, and sexual abuse. Anchoring its analysis in theories and criticisms of neoliberal feminism, this book illustrates the complexity of how, in using digital platforms such as Instagram and Twitter that are governed by neoliberal logic, the antiracist and decolonial feminists it discusses take on a “neoliberal self(ie) gaze” in their social media activism—and the dangers of doing so. To put forward such an argument is to claim that the stakes here are high: if feminists do not recognize and seriously challenge how neoliberalism structures our activism on social media and thereby alters our online activism practices, it may undercut our work toward social justice. This book offers a fresh perspective on contemporary feminist activism by making visible the neoliberal self(ie) gaze that is pervasive on social media, even and especially in progressive and decolonial feminist spaces; by pointing out the practice of racial oscillation as a technology of the neoliberal self(ie) on social media; by proposing the term “the sharing economy of emotions” to highlight the importance of emotion, which has been overlooked in much previous scholarship; by claiming the significance of “silence as testimony” in articulating feminist agency in online spaces; and by imagining a new practice on social media called vigilant eco-love that can potentially subvert the neoliberal self(ie) gaze.

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