Affect bleeds in feminist networks: an “essay” in six parts

Abstract

This essay is one of many attempts to document and process a year-plus long feminist digital media project: ev-ent-anglement. The essay has an irregular construction in six sections to hold and honor the practices, concerns, and findings of the project that all aim to mark the power and violence left usually unregarded after the common and willy-nilly, usually corporate-abetted, movement of digital fragments of ourselves. The ev-ent-anglement, including this essay as one iteration, attempts to mark that every simple cut/paste in a digital environment has an unseen but sometimes felt consequence: a violence and a power. It asks: could this gesture have different meanings or purposes in other formats, environments, and communities? Is affect in Montreal similar to #affect in #Montreal? The essay suggests that perhaps with a dataset made with and for feminist social networks, with a dataset made to feel, our cut/pastes might maintain and pass on some of their original affect. That is to say, principled collections and ethical cuts within coherent datasets might allow for affect to both move and stay within feminist networks.