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MASARYK UNIVERSITY Faculty of Social Studies Department of Sociology MASARYK UNIVERSITY Faculty of Social Studies Department of Sociology DISSERTATION THESIS Brno 2020 Vanda Maufras Černohorská MASARYK UNIVERSITY Faculty of Social Studies Department of Sociology Mgr. et Mgr. Vanda Maufras Černohorská ‘Thank you for leaving all your good advice at the door’: On ASPEKT and Online Feminism Dissertation Thesis Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Kateřina Nedbálková, Ph.D Advisor: doc. Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Ph.D Brno 2020 2 I hereby declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the referenced sources and literature. In Prague, 21 July 2020 Vanda Maufras Černohorská 3 Acknowledgments Through the writing of this dissertation, a process that took seven long years, I have received a great deal of support and assistance. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor doc. PhDr. Kateřina Nedbálková, Ph.D for her intellectual guidance, valuable comments, and endless patience in times when life kept distracting me from my academic endeavour. I am also very much indebted to my advisor doc. Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Ph.D. who has thought me how to “write sociology” and provided me with continuing encouragement through the years. This dissertation as well as my own intellectual path has been greatly influenced by a 2015/2016 research visit at the Centre for Cultural Sociology (CCS), Yale University. I would like to thank Professor Jeffrey C. Alexander for enabling me to become part of an exceptionally stimulating environment, and to the CCS Workshop participants for providing me with invaluable comments and pointing me in many new directions. This remarkable academic and personal experience was possible thanks to the support of the Czech Fulbright Commission, to which I am grateful. Parts of the dissertation were published as an article in Gender, Equal Opportunities, Research (2016) and book chapters in The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Feminism (2019) and Feminist Circulations between East and West (2019). I am thankful to the anonymous reviewers as well as the books’ editors who contributed with their critical remarks and comments to the improvement of this study. This research would not have been possible without all those who have kindly agreed to take part in the interviews. I am thankful for their time and willingness to share their thoughts, ideas, and memories with me. I would like to also thank to my friends who cheered me up along the way and offered their comments, proof-reading assistance, and editing skills. Last but not least, I wish to thank my family for always having my back, and to Clément and Noam for granting me with a “room of my own” in the final stretch of the dissertation writing. 4 Abstract Title: ‘Thank you for leaving all your good advice at the door’: On ASPEKT and Online Feminism Author: Vanda Maufras Černohorská Key words: online feminism, ASPEKT, digital technologies, new media, contemporary feminist movement, Slovakia, Central and Eastern European region This study explores the relationship between digital technologies and the contemporary feminist movement, with a specific focus on the online-based feminist landscape in Slovakia. The dissertation is based on in-depth case study of ASPEKT, one of the oldest and most notable feminist organizations in Slovakia, and its relation to these new platforms and online tools. Founded a few years after the fall of the Communist regime in the Central and Eastern European region, the organization has been a vocal advocate of feminist ideas for almost three decades, providing rich study material. With its primary focus on feminist literature and philosophy, as well as publishing and educational activities, it represents a unique segment of the feminist scene that values theoretical work and consciousness-raising activities, while being actively involved in many campaigns addressing practical concerns such women’s reproductive rights or domestic and sexual violence. The study analyzes how the feminist organization ASPEKT and its members and collaborators use and approach online tools and platforms, and how their engagement in online feminism has been influenced by their values and their work’s thematic scope, their generational affiliations, as well as the socio-political and historical context they operate in. I further situate this case study in the context of a broader investigation of the Slovak online feminist scene by considering emerging “new voices” – the most notable online-based projects recently founded by members of a younger generation of Slovak feminists. I thus 5 strive to offer a nuanced analysis of the Slovak feminist movement in relation to the complex and constantly shifting terrain of the global digital sphere, which has the potential to transform civil society and mainstream discourse on both the local and transnational level. My project critically addresses existing theoretical approaches and earlier research studies of the relationship between feminism and digital technologies as well as more general theoretical concepts related to new media and network society. The research specifically contests the theoretical presumption put forward by Manuel Castells that digital technologies are leading us to greater homogenization (the “global village” argument) with communication itself as the ultimate value that binds us together. Subsequently, in my research, I move beyond the celebratory versus dystopian binary that ascribes to digital technologies either salvation or damnation qualities. Lastly, while researching online feminism with emphasis on specific historical, social, and cultural context, this study offers more nuanced alternative to those existing research studies that are analysing (usually Western-based) contemporary feminism and its relation to digital technologies without necessary reflection of its materiality. Based on the research design that combines two main sources of data – interviews and online-based materials produced within the scope of selected organization and projects, it can be concluded there is a strong relationship between ASPEKT’s approach to digital media and the context it derives from and operates in – mainly its historical evolution, thematic scope, and “feminist experience.” By emphasizing the preservation of its history, legacy, and past achievements, as well as core values related to its specialization in feminist literature and philosophy, the organization’s approaches to the online sphere contradicts some of the assumptions put forward in existing theoretical literature — namely the conceptualization of digital technologies as being dynamic and future-oriented. Such a compelling take on digital technologies, as the analysis suggests, derives from the organization’s nostalgia for the long lost authenticity of the early post-1989 years coupled with the experience of feminist organizations and activists (or women) being often left out from mainstream chronicles. The research results also contents the above mentioned theoretical presumption that new media and digital technologies are leading towards greater homogenization and detachment from the socio-political and historical context. I instead argue that digital 6 technologies present a diversifying rather than a unifying force, while being deeply rooted in the materiality and specificity of social existence and concrete social and geographical attachments. Subsequently, the dissertation critically reflects on the overly-positive narrative of the “limitless reach of new media” in the existing theoretical literature. The research confirmed that even though new media platforms and digital tools enhance greater connectivity between organizations and their supporters and improve organizations’ overall mobilization potential, this does not mean that they would be able to penetrate all possible spheres of society, reaching to groups previously untouched by the organizations’ work. Fundamentally, the presented study formulates a broader theoretical presumption that new media and digital technologies are changing not only the face of contemporary feminism, i.e. the form, but also the character of the movement and the scope of its agenda. Such a notion can be further expanded outside the topic of contemporary feminism. In the end, digital technologies are becoming inseparable components of multiple aspects of our everyday existence. They influence not only how we do things but also what we do, how we relate to ourselves and to one another, as well as how we make sense of outside world. 7 Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 10 2. DEVELOPING THE APPROACH TO ANALYSIS ................................................................................... 21 2.1. UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF NEW MEDIA & DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES...................................................... 21 2.1.1. NEW MEDIA – AN OVERVIEW ................................................................................................................... 22 2.1.2. NEW MEDIA AND CIVIL SOCIETY ............................................................................................................... 24 2.1.3. LIMITLESS REACH VERSUS THE DIGITAL DIVIDE ............................................................................................ 27 2.1.4. HABERMASIAN ONLINE SPACES AND THE ISSUE OF "CLIKTIVISM".................................................................... 29 2.2. FEMINISM IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL ACTIVISM .......................................................................................
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