Emotions, Consciousness-Raising and Feminisms in the Global South: On Building Solidarity

This book is about the role of emotions in the creation and dissipation of feminist collectives and grapples with difficult questions that have been circulating for a while in activist circles but are far from answered. This book is about the role of emotions in the creation and dissipation of feminist collectives and grapples with difficult questions that have been circulating for a while in activist circles but are far from answered. What are the emotions involved in building and sustaining solidarity? What can we learn from previous “waves” of feminist activism, and what is worth saving in social media activism today? These questions are tackled via the discourse analysis of hashtagged posts of two popular feminist hashtags in Brazil (#PrimeiroAssédio and #MeuAmigoSecreto) and interviews with Brazilian feminist actors. But instead of merely analysing the content of the hashtags or over-celebrating aesthetics, I interpret them as empirical evidence of the emotional life of varied feminisms and therefore useful to reflect upon historical build-ups and dissipation of solidarity. The unique feature of the book is making a bridge between sociology of emotions, feminist theory, and decolonial, Black, and Global South literature and praxis that articulate solidarity based on principles of difference instead of sameness. This book will be of interest to students, scholars, teachers, activists, and community members interested in the emotions involved in building and sustaining feminist solidarity from a non-Western perspective.