Corpos (in)visíveis: a materialidade dos ativismos urbanos digitais

Abstract

This work addresses the use of digital technologies in support of the political organization of a specific set of activist groups and social movements. In a scenario of growing popularization of these tools, it is important to question how urban space, in a dialectical relation with digital technologies, remains relevant for the meeting and the public appearance of such collectivities. It is also pertinent to understand what possibilities digital media present for individuals who face restrictions on public access to public urban spaces. The research presented in this dissertation entailed fourteen case studies and analyzed a series of data collected from images, texts and videos shared on online platforms. This analysis aimed to observe how digital technologies have been appropriated in order to create what Hannah Arendt perceived as spaces of appearance. The concept of appearance is a prior and fundamental condition for the constitution of public sphere and political life. In this sense, the new possibilities for public debate in networked environments could possibly restructure the public sphere according to new forms of organization. The fourteen experiences were analyzed from a conceptual spectrum developed by Nancy Fraser which concerns struggles for social justice by fair distribution of resources and also struggles for identity through the recognition of aspects related to symbolic and cultural diversity of the groups involved. In this researchs context, it became clear that those groups who deal more particularly with symbolic and cultural injustices showed greater difficulty to collectively access the urban space. This is due to the fact that such injustices are primarily oriented to the materiality of their bodies. It was also possible to perceive that as the expansion of communication made viable by digital technologies have been integrated in each groups practices, it has taken place at a conflicting territory, since the environment of digital platforms is permeated by priorly established power relations. To build effective political practices, it seems critically important to fight for autonomy from the corporations who manage the environment of digital platforms and frequently collaborate with the state in order to censor populations, inhibit insurgencies and criminalize protesters. It was finally possible to observe the relevance of collective assembly in order to create plural political bodies, particularly for those groups who suffer special restrictions on their presence in physical spaces. The recognition and legitimation of those identities and bodies is essential to the claim for the urban space and for the right to the city. Therefore, the material assembly in space seems to be itself both the political gesture of affirmative collective identity and the potency for transforming the socio-spatial structure that originally threatens the integrity of their bodies.