The New Politics of Online Feminism [Paperback]

InThe New Politics of Online Feminism, Akane Kanai argues that for young feminists online culture often poses more dilemmas than it solves. Moving beyond a narrow characterization of online feminism as a site of activism and resistance, Kanai attends to the feminist quandaries of being politically conscientious as life online becomes inseparable from the offline world. Kanai suggests that for online feminists, avoiding complicity with patriarchy, racism, and other oppressions has never been more important, yet the self has remained the central site of agency and transformation—casting politics in terms of individual scrupulousness, diligence, and improvement. Under these circumstances, a feminist lens becomes about benchmarking, comparing, and anxiously avoiding the public mistakes that others make in online life. Kanai foregrounds the importance of moving beyond the polarities of correct and incorrect feeling to enable the everyday practices of listening to and learning about experience and difference.USThe New Politics of Online Feminismis an ethnographic account of how young people in online feminist subcultures produce and perform feminist knowledge in search of living an ethical life.Akane Kanai is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick and author ofGender and Relatability in Digital Culture: Managing Affect, Intimacy and Value.“The New Politics of Online Feminismis a timely and deeply moving book that gives an in-depth look at the political and affective dynamics of engagement in online feminist cultures. Akane Kanai’s analysis of the benefits and pitfalls of digital cultures and her engagement with the difficulties, struggles, hopes, and aspirations that animate participation in online feminist knowledge production make this a model book for anyone doing qualitative research on digital culture.”“Kanai makes unique contributions to both the theorization of digital feminist knowledl³>