I would like to analyze an example of how social media is being used in current social movements in Latin America: the feminist manifestation started by “Las Tesis” in Chile. I argue that this feminist protest has been very powerful because it has managed to attach the social media used by citizens with affect forces.
The manifestation of “Las Tesis”, known as “A rapist in your way”, aimed to express the gender violence on women’s bodies. They sang the lyrics of a song that manages to articulate different scenarios where similar types of violence are perpetrated. The act of rape, the brutal violation of the consent and decision making in one’s body, is a domination dynamic that can be linked with the structural violence reproduced by the State and its oppressive institutions. A segment of the song goes like this: “The oppressive state is a macho rapist.”
These lyrics were created to generate discomfort, uncomfortable feelings to the public. Every woman singing probably has her own personal experience of gender violence; this performance became the opportunity for these women to communicate a global but very intimate struggle.
Dafne Valdés, one of the founders of “Las Tesis”, told to the media that the premise of her collective is to transform feminist theories into performances, into artistic expressions that can spread their message to a wider public[1]. Therefore, the usage of social media in this manifestation is vital, because it is one of the main strategies to appear on the screen of millions of people. The video of “Las Tesis” went viral, and it was mimicked in many cities around the globe.
I argue that one of the main reasons that this feminist hymn became so powerful is the way that this collective managed to link their performance with affect. According to Gregg and Seidworth (2010), affect emerges “in the midst of in-between-ness: in the capacities to act and be acted upon.” (1) The body performance, the female voices singing a catchy and contentious lyric, the simple and symbolic dance movements, are all good examples of tools that rise as a bridge between the capacities of action – a group of women demanding gender justice and the ending of the governments repression – and to be acted upon – people that watch the video from their own smartphones and connect with the feminist message –. And, from a different perspective, each woman singing is being acted upon the woman singing next to her, upon the song itself, upon the cameras that assure her that she’s being watched all over the world.
I think that this in-between-ness was completely necessary for this video to become viral, even to the point of trespassing the boundaries of countries that are not currently striking, but that can relate to the message of violence against women. “A rapist in your way” is a clear example of how bodies have the potential to affect other bodies.
References:
[1] El Comercio (2019). “¿Quiénes son Las Tesis, el colectivo feminista detrás de “El violador eres tú”? Available following the link: https://elcomercio.pe/mundo/latinoamerica/protestas-en-chile-quienes-son-las-tesis-el-colectivo-feminista-detras-de-el-violador-eres-tu-lastesis-noticia/?ref=ecr
Seigworth, Gregory and Melissa Gregg (2010) ‘An Inventory of Shimmers’. Introduction to the Affect Theory Reader. Durham: Duke University Press.
anthropology of infrastructure 2019 