New Feminist Movements and the Challenge of Micro-Politics in Italy: The Case of ‘Femminismo a Sud’

Abstract

The present paper aims at analyzing new feminist cyber-activism, focusing on re-articulating space and materiality as a political subjectivity. In particular, my main purpose is to examine how the current feminist practice of crossing public-private spheres in Italy is located in blogs as the political intersection between means and aims. Such a practice deals with the re-configuration of semiotic strategies used to discuss how the body is the subject-object of feminist political agenda. Moreover, the stress on politics portrays a constant struggle concerning ‘marginal’ and ‘central’ positionings in feminist movements able to re-define their alliances. Micropolitical narratives of the blog “Femminismo a Sud” show racism, pornography and war through/as agentic and subjugated bodies. Metaphors as places of struggle and the public production of sexual pleasures become a core point for claiming political action. The entire discussion will be based on a quali-quantitative methodology suited to meet different research interests about the interrelation of contents, rhetorics and bodies.

Keywords: cyber-activism, intersectionality, body, sexuality, network, feminism