Conference presentation: Affect amplifiers

Helena Suárez Val is presenting “Affect amplifiers: feminicide, feminist activists and the politics of counting and mapping gender-related killings of women” at the XVII Encuentro de Geógrafos de América Latina in Quito, Ecuador (9-12 April 2019).

Link to programme: https://egal19.puce.edu.ec/cronograma

 Abstract: Since 2015, I have been carrying out a digital mapping of cases of feminicide - understood as the violent deaths of women related to gender - where cases are geolocated and information is displayed about each woman killed in Uruguay (feminicidiouruguay.net). In writing about violence against women, I once described the Uruguayan feminist movement as “indignant, sad and fierce” (Suárez Val 2014), and feminist activists have mobilized these and other emotions into online and offline actions, denouncing and protesting against the indifference of society, the erroneous and sexist treatment of cases in the media, and the inaction in the political sphere regarding violence against women. The stark contrast between feminist activists and the indifferent and apathetic atmospheres of society, the media and politics reveals the emotional and affective struggles at play. In this paper I put into dialogue theories of affect and emotions, conceptualizations of feminicide, and feminist scholarship on the use of quantitative and geographic methods, to propose that digital mappings of feminicide act as feminist affect amplifiers: interactive visual artefacts through which data -modulated through feminist emotions and affects- are recirculated to the world to provoke social changes.

Suárez Val, H. (2014). Indignadas, tristes, feroces. No Te Olvides, 18. Available at http://ladelentes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/indignadas-tristes-feroces.html