Explores the perils and promise of feminist social media activism
Social media has become the front-and-center arena for feminist activism. Responding to and enacting the political potential of pain inflicted in acts of sexual harassment, violence, and abuse, Asian American and Asian Canadian feminist icons such as rupi kaur, Margaret Cho, and Mia Matsumiya have turned to social media to share their stories with the world. But how does such activism reconcile with the platforms on which it is being cultivated, when its radical messaging is at total odds with the neoliberal logic governing social media?
Pain Generation troubles this phenomenon by articulating a “neoliberal self(ie) gaze” through which these feminist activistssee and storify the self on social media as “good” neoliberal subjects who are appealing, inspiring, and entertaining. This book offers a fresh perspective on feminist activism by demonstrating how the problematic neoliberal logic governing digital spaces like Instagram and Twitter limits the possibilities of how one might use social media for feminist activism.
Price: $94.00
Pages: 224
Publisher: NYU Press
Imprint: NYU Press
Publication Date:
18 May 2021
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781479808342
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Feminism & Feminist Theory, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Race & Ethnic Relations
"Deeply researched and meticulously reasoned, Pain Generation offers an incisive and thought-provoking new direction in thinking about the context, challenges, and possibilities for feminist activism in the neoliberalized digital space. The book provides us with a thorough, intimate, and nuanced analysis of an uneasy and complex relationship between feminism and neoliberalism as they are entangled with each other in social media. And by so doing, it not only exposes the underlying neoliberal structure of social media that controls and limits feminist activism, but also helps us imagine an alternative pathway for more critical, reflective, and reflexive social media practices for doing feminist activism online."
L. Ayu Saraswati is Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Hawai'i, Mānoa. She is the author of Pain Generation: Social Media, Feminist Activism, and the Neoliberal Selfie and Seeing Beauty, Sensing Race in Transnational Indonesia, which won the 2013 National Women’s Studies Association Gloria Anzaldúa book prize. She is also the co-editor of Introduction to Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches and Feminist and Queer Theory: An Intersectional and Transnational Reader.
