Sensible Dissent: Exploring the Aesthetics of Feminist Political Performances in and beyond Rio de Janeiro Carnaval

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SENSIBLE

DISSENT

Marion Pacini Student n° 12775746.

marionpacini97@gmail.com

Msc. in International Development Studies (MIDS) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Academic Supervisor: Carolina Maurity Frossard Second Reader: Frederico Ramos Roman

University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, August 2020

Exploring the Aesthetics of Feminist Political Performances

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PREFACE

“Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable. It is the connection of desire to reality (and not its retreat into the forms of representation) that possesses revolutionary force”.

Michel Foucault (1977, p.14) The beginning of this year 2020 reminded us once again of our societies inherent fragility and the unsustainability of the system which shapes most aspects of our lives, and which only has to offer for some, an exacerbated burden to carry on their shoulders. It seems preposterous today not to recognize how the logics of this system, through some of our practices and ways of thinking, engender destruction, and the number of lives it endangers. Equally, it seems inconceivable to be indulgent towards an order ceaselessly devaluing Earth and Existence. However, a strong answer does not mean a violent one, a firm resolution does not mean brutality; a venture that this work - in its own modest ways - attempts to address.

In a world where optimism, utopia, imagination and even critique are so often discarded in politics and society as useless unrealistic efforts instead of a ‘patient labor giving form to our impatience for liberty’ (Foucault, 1984, p.47), I cannot thank enough the inspiring and

benevolent people which crossed my way throughout this research. All the activists, artists and women which contributed to this research by honestly sharing their experiences and opinions made me see on another angle how knowledge is also feeling, and attempting to understand other people’s ways of feeling. They further confirmed that feminism also finds itself in the willingness to truly listen and understand the one that is different from ourselves. While it will never be possible to feel, sense, live and experience the same way another person does, it is purposely this willingness for tolerance and the cherishing of difference that possess all the art and magic of human relations.

I am thankful to my supervisor for her support and supervision throughout the process leading up to this thesis, her reading suggestions, and her capacity to attentively guide me while never underestimating my ideas.

I am grateful to my friends and family for the emotional support they have never failed to transmit throughout these odd times, and the hours of listening to ‘the distribution of the sensible’ theory they had to endure.

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ABSTRACT

Inspired by feminist literature on the political dimensions of bodies and affects and

connecting it to a Rancièrean configuration of Aesthetics and Politics; this research attempts to reconsider how social movement studies have dominantly been approached. Following the importance of feminist resistance in spaces such as Brazilian Carnaval, this thesis based on a fieldwork study in Rio de Janeiro, proposes a conceptual approach to study feminist politics of dissent, treating sensory experience as a vibrant site of political contestation. The research question guiding the empirical analysis: How do the aesthetics of feminist street activism create spaces of community and dissent in and beyond Carnaval, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil?, and the ethnographic methods mobilized to support the theoretical elaboration, enabled to highlight how the scene of feminist street activist groups performing in Rio de Janeiro engage in a diversity of aesthetics practices, which, through the transposing of feminist claims into the sensuous, can provide the sensorial charge and affective force to inspire and develop concrete alternative worlds, ultimately challenging dominant unequal social order. The collection and analysis of diverse protesting aesthetics practices (signs, slogans, banners, songs, symbols, social media posts…) and interviews with activists and participants to carnivalesque events, enabled to identify and develop feminist claims made by carioca feminist street activists. For instance, denouncing femicide, rape culture, the intersectionality of violence, governmental authoritarianism and control over women’s lives and bodies, in the various forms it can take. It was found that making these claims are inseparable from the crafting of a community based on solidarity, inclusivity, and the memory and sense of legacy of long-lasting past feminist struggles. It was concluded that the dynamic process of creating dissensual ‘partitions of sensible’, hence the construction of a community of shared senses, the enactment of spaces of dissent, and the interplay between both; constitute and signal important starting points to reflect on the challenging of dominant exploitative, misogynist, racist and homophobic ingrained perceptual frameworks which permeate society.

Key Words : Urban social movements; Gender inequalities and violence; Feminist activism

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Chapter I: Introduction

1) Problem Statement and Societal relevance: Gender Inequality and Feminism

Gender inequalities in society remain a central concern when aiming to achieve a fairer world, as underlined in the Sustainable Development Goal number 5, ‘Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’:

“Insufficient progress on structural issues at the root of gender inequality, such as legal discrimination, unfair social norms and attitudes, decision-making on sexual and reproductive issues and low levels of political participation, are undermining the ability to achieve

Sustainable Development Goal 5” (United Nations General Assembly, 2015).

Violence against women and girls know no economic, social or national boundaries; in public as much as in private spheres; physically, sexually, symbolically, psychologically,

institutionally; and exacerbated by the intersection of gender with other

inequalities/oppressions (e.g., sexuality, gender identity, ethnicity, indigeneity, immigration status, disability, age…). All oppressions existing simultaneously to produce unique

experiences of violence, rendering it even more complex to tackle (UN Women, 2019, p.3).

Alarming numbers pullulate all over the world. In Brazil, the 5th country with the bigger rate

of femicides, in average, in the past 10 years, 12 women were murdered every day, black women between 18 and 30 years old being the biggest number of victims of feminicide. Black women represent 90% of the 73 rapes perpetrated every day in 2017 (Cerqueira et. Al,

2019). According to the last data of the Gender Violence Map, the murder rate of black women increased of 54% in 10 years while crimes against white women, decreased of 10% during the same period again demonstrating that violence against women cannot be treated solely through the question of gender, as questions of racism and homophobia (with 12.112 cases of violence against trans-people and 257.764 cases of violence against homosexuals or bisexuals registered in 2017), are also imbricated in the violent power dynamics which dictate society (Gênero e Número, 2017; ONU Mulheres Brasil, 2015).

Although advances in terms of reducing gender inequalities through feminist and women’s movements, are observable, women still find themselves in a clear situation of inequality in

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society, due to strong structural and patriarchal conditions which maintain in constant

vigilance feminine agency, body and sexuality; revealing the punitive social context on which is based our society (Butler, 1990; Grosz, 1994). Accordingly, some scholars have shown how feminist speeches have been “persistently disciplined into a logic of domination via

irrelevance” (Wingrove, 2016). Feminism is hereunderstood as social, political and

intellectual projects and movements for social justice and equality founded on the observation that gender and gendered racial inequalities shape all aspects of social and economic life (Bell et. al, 2019; Benschop and Verloo, 2016; Calás and Smircich, 2014). Feminism is also

conceived as the liberation movement attempting to tear down the power dynamics of

prejudicial gender roles, norms and expectations which limit human existence. Generally, it is a project whose purpose is to free people from the grips of oppression and inequality, and liberate minds from archaic and violent mindsets through the deconstruction of dominant social structures that have settled ways of doing, thinking, feeling, seeing, and saying;

legitimizing privilege, and all the symbolic, physical and institutional violence that goes with it. Feminism is important for all of us. In every country, every street, every mental corner where fascism is comfortably sitting, internalized through almost untraceable historical contingencies which define the hegemonic unequal order in which we live in. It is principally the overwhelming omnipresence of gender violence and sexisms and their macabre

consequences which justify its crucial role.

Intensified feminist protests have brought women to the streets all over the world, to reclaim their rights and place in society, and discuss room for improvement. The great paradox between an apparent increased consciousness regarding social injustice in society, and

persistent struggles for the right to live in dignity, are expressed in the words of the singer of a Samba group interviewed in the context of this research, when she asks:

“Why is femicide always increasing? If we talk so much about it, if we fight so much against it why is it increasing?” 1_{(Amina, Interview 1, 29/02/2020).}

Why is femicide still treated with a disconcerting triviality in the media? Why is it given the seriousness it deserves only to feed racism when the murderer is not white? (Chollet, 2018,

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p.67) Why is there so much mobilization but women’s cause remains secondary in our governments’ concerns? How can the system of thought and perception which directs

domination, and renders violence suffered by women as minor, insignificant and invisible, be challenged? How do we get rid of sexism, of racism, of homophobia in our speeches, acts, hearts and minds?

The need to articulate with feminists social movement’s expressions of dissent (understood as disagreement, disapproval2_{) and challenging orthodoxies of knowledge, is crucial. Exploring} in-depth feminist literature, and social movements studies of politics of dissent, a gap in the scholarship on analysis of feminist collective action was identified. Although feminist insights on the political and affective body and the importance of affects and bodily experiences are essential for an understanding of the hegemonic and hierarchical social positioning of bodies, (and intrinsic possibilities of disruption of that order), there has been a profound neglect of mobilizing this knowledge to approach political collective action beyond what has been traditionally understood as being political. Political voices may be expressed and articulated in very different ways, generate symbols, meanings and relationships, which exceeds the rationality to which our democratic politics are usually linked to.

In parallel, radically innovative conceptual works, such as Jacques Rancière’s configuration of aesthetics and politics, ‘the distribution of the sensible’, bringing a new light on how we envision politics, democracy and dissent, by emphasizing the political dimensions of

aesthetics, senses and perception, has been limited in adequately including the importance of corporeality and body politics in that framework. It is prejudicial, as the idea of embodiment , as “the perceptual experience and mode of presence and engagement in the world” is

particularly attentive to the lived experience of social actors “through attunement to sensory perception, evaluative sensation, emotional mediation, and effective circulation” (Csordas, 1990, p.12). Approaching the deployment of ‘the art of protest’ as the enactment of dissent and collective creation of dissensual spaces, it is particularly relevant to address embodiment in this process.

It is imperative to study how different disruptive interventions are made and communicate ideas and issues, which are latent or invisible. It is important to identify and understand these alternative forms of political expression, how they are formulated, how and why they are

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political; since it signals and informs on the conditions for new partitions of the sensible, and perceptual frames that can challenge patriarchal, capitalist and racism systems of thoughts which permeate society and further exacerbate multi-dimensional inequalities.

b. Knowledge gap and Academic Relevance: Using Rancièrean aesthetics and politics with a feminist lens in the field of Social Movement Studies

Despite the necessity to go beyond the visible and the sayable when approaching collective political action, when studying social movements, the prevailing paradigm is Political Process Theory (PPT) (Buechler, 2000, p. 54; Porta & Donatella, 2006, p. 16; Kriesi, 2004). PPT scholars mostly use concepts such as ‘repertoires of action’, ‘strategy’, and ‘tactics’ (Porta & Donatella, 2006; Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Rucht, 1990) to relate social movements ‘doing’ politics. First introduced and conceptualized by Tilly (1986), the notion of repertoires of contention has become the most used analytical tool to identify and make sense of selected and performed specific routines of claim making in their pursuit of shared interests, comprising the “whole set of means [a group] has for making claims of different types on different individuals” (p. 2).

Nevertheless, it has been argued that this kind of analytical tool used in the PPT model, although allowing for a precise analysis of some practices, restricts which political actors and which practices it enables to view. Under a critical feminist perspective, Bice Maiguashca’s (2011) demonstrated that PPT serves to discipline the theory and practice of dissent in ways that need to be interrogated and challenged. She explains that this adversarial model of dissent “binds the practices of dissent to a highly rationalist, instrumental model of agency” by

limiting the protagonists engaged in political action and the ranges of actions and practices coming into view. In contrast to hegemonic model of PPT, feminist social movement scholars such as Sasha Roseneil (1995), Cheryl Hercus (2005) and Mary Katzenstein (1989)

highlighted an approach that “militates against prejudging what counts as political action, encouraging us instead to be more open-minded about what it looks like and where to find it” (Maiguashca, 2011, p.536). Maiguashca (2011) adds that PPT analytical preoccupation and conceptual framing of protest as the cornerstone of movement practices has led to a narrow rendition of politics of dissent and that it “unnecessarily limits our political imagination more generally as it unintentionally circumscribes what counts as political action” (p.537).

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Maiguashca’s considerations emphasize the need to include a perspective that enable to escape the traditional theoretical barriers that prevent us to see beyond what dominant

hegemonic system of thought let perceive as political actors and political practices, as well as a larger range of where these practices take place. A perspective that does not consider the political as a separate sphere of society and enables to account for power relations in the studied ‘phenomenon’, as much as potentially embedded in the way this phenomenon is studied. Hence, an approach that opens the way to identify counter-hegemonic expressions of dissent and accounts for potential dimensions of practices that exceeds the ‘expression of dissent’, but are still valuable in the collective action. She suggests Praxis and principled pragmatism as open-ended conceptual starting points to elaborate on individual and collective feminist action. I am not arguing against Muaiguashca, as I agree that the conceptual essence of these notions highlighting a particular mode of doing politics. are indeed helpful to

approach activist practices. Nevertheless, I wish to highlight how drawing on a Rancièrean configuration of aesthetics, politics, democracy and dissensus and feminist literature on embodiment and performance, can efficiently widen our political im otific of what can be political actions and political voices. Such perspective simultaneously would address these politics within the dominant order that invisibilized, muted and annihilated the legitimacy of their political dimension and social existence in the first place.

The conceptual lens proposed, it will be argued, enables to approach the importance of the political dimensions of bodies and affects, foregrounding the vitality of protest for the democratic process, by accounting for the intensification of the role of digital technologies and platforms in social movements (for communication, mobilization, information, and generally human interactions), without undermining the very sensible role that embodied protest can have in creating communities and formulating of dissent. Indeed, it will be demonstrated that analyzing the entanglement of both digital activism and more embodied forms of protest are crucial for adequately grasping the diversity and multi-facets of political voices and practices.

Hence, this research contributes to the academic debate on feminist social movement studies, by approaching social movements politics of dissent drawing on aesthetics and the realm of sense perception with a feminist lens, with the purpose of understanding how the notions of community and dissent can work together to challenge the hegemonic patriarchal and racist order .

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Accordingly, this project pursued a case study, based on a rigorous fieldwork ethnography in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, that took place from January to April 2020. Two important geopolitical contextual elements that took integrant part in this research process and outcomes were the succession of Carnaval period, annual event and cultural celebration mobilizing crowds, implying a massive occupation of the public space, and the Covid-19 outbreak, which included in its diverse implications, recommendations on restricting the use of the public space and avoiding social gatherings. Following an observed presence of feminist activism during Carnaval, this research investigates the aesthetics of feminist street activism

performative politics of dissent in and beyond Rio de Janeiro Carnaval (beyond as the performativity of dissent highlights that political practices are not restricted to a secluded spatio-temporal frame, here the context of Carnaval). The social and academic relevance of such enterprise is signaled by the importance to gain knowledge on the multifaceted ways of doing politics, here feminist politics and the multi-dimensional spaces created in the process. This leaves us with the research question:

How do the aesthetics of feminist street activism create spaces of community and dissent in and beyond Carnaval, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil?

Correspondingly, it will explore and reflect on feminist politics through the aesthetics of activist instances enacting dissent, not as isolated elements that can be categorized, but through the body as integral to the sensorial experiences linked to aesthetics dissensual

materialities. The unique Brazilian spatio-temporal, geographical, political, social and cultural context in which the fieldwork research took place, and the use of ethnography methods in the research process especially highlighted the need for a particular attention to the interrelation of this context and the feminist politics of dissent enacted within it. The uniqueness of the context far from being a limit, is enriching by its complexity and the diversity of symbols, meanings and affects mobilized by people. Diving into the sensible realm in which these politics take place, can only illuminate us on the role of feminist collective action to disrupt dominant unequal order and tackle “legal discrimination, unfair social norms and attitudes, decision-making on sexual and reproductive issues and low levels of political participation”3

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among other unfair patterns permeating society. Furthermore, the fusion of protest practices and the artistic essence involved in the context of Carnaval, figures an interesting

characteristic when exploring the aesthetics of politics and the politics of aesthetics in the context of social movements. Attempting to define what is meant by art exceeds the scope of this thesis. Avoiding interminable discussions about the status of art, and meta-philosophical questions about the value of aesthetics, this thesis shares Bennett’s (2012) vision of

recognizing the art-bound character of some aesthetics practices, while studying it as “means of apprehending the world via sense-based and affective processes—processes that touch bodies intimately and directly but that also underpin the emotions, sentiments and passions of public life” (p.3).

This research’s objective commits to challenge the way knowledge is produced, by shedding light on the essence of other forms of political expression, other ways of being political, other ways of knowing, sensing and feeling. There are always more different ways of connecting, of expressing, and sharing emotions, generating meanings, other ways to partake in the creation of new sensible spaces, avoiding us to fall into despair. Again, investigating on the feminist struggle, (as part of struggles for social justice), is of particular importance. Being engaged in politics as ceaseless contestation, battling over power and hegemony, as well as performing the conflict between the logic of domination and the logic of equality and creating

communities of dissent, constitutes and embodies the central tasks of democratic struggle. This research is further motivated by seeking consistency about acknowledging the influence of direct-action politics in the creation of academic knowledge, and encourage social dissent as an invigoration of democratic politics, by adopting a broader conception of politics, and shedding light on some political and artistic gestures expressing a vital impetus to challenge social, cultural, political, sexual, and psychic rules.

Chapter II aims at further developing these points, by providing the conceptual framework and tools which were used as a lens to approach the fieldwork study on the aesthetics of the performative politics of dissent of feminist street activism in Rio de Janeiro. It articulates between the feminist notions of the political and affective body and Rancière’s distribution of the sensible theory. The elaboration on the configuration of sensory experience and perception will be connected to the performative and democratic character of protest, to understand the multi-dimensionality of the creation process of a dissensual community. Chapter III

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choice of methods, ethical considerations and assessed limitations. Chapter IV, as the analytical part, delivers a contextual overview on feminism in current Brazilian political context, and reflects on contemporary Carnaval politics. It follows by explaining the research results demonstrating the performativity of aesthetics of feminist politics of dissent in and beyond Carnaval, including the various feminist claims enacted through this process. Chapter V concludes.

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Chapter II. Theoretical Framework

It should be noted that Rancière’s conceptual body is so extended, and the use he makes of the term aesthetics so complex, that the following theoretical explanation could not render

integral justice to his intricate work. Aesthetics is used in this research in its broader sense, as a general dimension of human experience, coming for the Greek word ‘aisthesis’ meaning both feeling and understanding (Berleant, 2015). He speaks of ‘aesthetics of politics’ referring to the kind of aesthetics that politics is or does; in the ways that the sensory fabric of a

community is defined through the boundaries that establish what is visible, audible, sayable within a community. Conversely, Rancière addresses a ‘politics of aesthetics’, hence the kind of politics that aesthetics is or does; by which particular aesthetics acts can “create new modes of sense perception and induce novel forms of political subjectivity” (Rancière, 2004, p.9). In that sense, aesthetics in the realm of the sensible are essentially performative, as the re-configuration of sensory experience can bring transformations by making count people that were unaccounted for in the equation of hierarchical dominant order.

The following section, informed by feminist literature, will highlight the relevance of emphasizing the role of the body when studying the aesthetics of politics and the politics of aesthetics.

1. The political and affective body and the realm of the sensible

In feminist scholarship, territory of prolific debate both internally and externally, there has been diverse insights highlighting the multi-dimensionality of gender inequalities and the complex interplay of forms of domination which maintain these inequalities and create new ones. One central feminist concern, both as an academic and political movement, has been the challenging of Cartesian dualism, and the divide between the sensuous and intelligible, at once insurmountable. Disregard for the role of emotion in political life has long been a policy in the history of philosophy, seeing affects as the block to desirable rational thought (Mason-Grant, 1997, p.212). Burkitt (1999) assumes that the body has been discarded for so long in social sciences because it “tended to be thought as unruly and unpredictable, the seat of emotions and passions, things which cannot be calculated or represented in any regular way”. Feminist scholarship has been insisting that this dualism is part of the power relations which have

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relegated women and minority groups in general to the irrational and the emotional, while ‘men’; and by men, referring to the hegemonic supposedly ‘neutral’ liberal citizen white, middle class, heterosexual cis-men; has traditionally been associated with the mind, and the rational, disembodied element of modern forms of power and government (Burkitt, 1999). This turning to the body and affect have been recurring themes in feminist theory. Grosz saw bodies as necessarily constructed as such through systems of meanings and power and showed how the psyche is formed through an encoding of bodily sensations, pleasures and

experiences; with the subject emerging as “irreducibly corporeal in its formation” (Mason-Grant, 1997, p.212-213). In a similar vein, Butler in her Foucauldian reading has been one of the most critical thinkers in this academic discipline, challenging the notion of male and female as irreducible, unitary entities based on the biological constitution of the body. She argues that the body is constructed in the realm of power through acts called out by the signifying system in which it is embedded. In that sense, masculinity and femininity are created by bodily performances, produced, regulated, maintained and animated through the power of disciplinary mechanisms lodged in various discourses, including the law (Deveaux, 1994).

These issues are closely linked to the topic of emotions in social sciences and political philosophy; affects being understood as directly connected with the physical body, in opposition to the cognitive, intelligible and cultural. As outlined by McAfee and Howard (2009), some works by Jaggar (1983), Spelman (1989 and 1991), Lloyd (2002), Grosz (1994) have shown that reason is both embodied and emotion-laden, and that emotion constitutes an important epistemological resource. Feminist political theorists have argued that

understanding the role of emotion and affect is crucial for grasping a number of political phenomena: motivation for action (Krause 2008), collective action and community formation (Beltrán, 2009, Butler, 2004 and 2015), racism and xenophobia (Ahmed, 2014, Anker, 2014, Ioanide, 2015). As well as how some emotions have a political significance, like shame (Ahmed, 2014), precarity and grief (Butler, 2004), anger (Spelman, 1989), fear (Anker, 2014), and love (Nussbaum, 2013).

As much as studying the body and its links to the legitimation of different regimes of domination is fundamental to uncover dynamics of social control and disciple (Bordo 1993; Foucault 1975; 1980) , the understanding of the body as a subject that creates meaning and performs social action beyond prior normative control, has highlighted its inherent potential to

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resist domination. ‘Body politics’, which essentially works as “a heuristic for considering the disputed status of the (female) body within both neoliberalism and feminism today” has allowed feminists for some time now, to claim back the situatedness and positionality of bodies, challenge the mind/body dualism central to Western political philosophy, and shed light on the cruciality of questions of gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, nationality on to the structuring of the political (Souza, 2019). Sasson-Levy and Rapoport’s (2003) research, assumes the significance of human bodies as sites of protest and argues that a “repositioning” of the body is critical for an understanding of social movements and their relationship to the gendered social and national-political order. The general tendency has been to emphasize motivational and cognitive factors influencing social activists while neglecting that “the body produces, elaborates, and articulates political ideology”, further suggesting that “the female body as a text of alternative and subversive knowledge can challenge deep social and cultural structures” (p.399). Indeed, bodily sites can be seen as important features in a person’s identity project; which inform on the role of the body for social subversion and self-empowerment and the construction of counter-hegemonic identities (Giddens 1991).

Following Rancière’s definition of political activity as “ whatever shifts a body from the place assigned to it or changes a place’s destination” (Rancière, 1999, p.30), Quintana’s (2019) research shows how crucial is the question of the body and corporeality to the aesthetics dimensions of emancipation, arguing that “emancipation does not imply a shift in terms of knowledge, but in terms of the positions of bodies “ (Rancière, 2009a, p.575-576). “Rancière’s aesthetic understanding can be viewed as a torsion of a body that affects its vital arrangements, which thereby open paths for political emancipation » (p.212). Disruption appears not directly as a shift of knowledge, but a shift of the place of bodies, which defines what is legitimately recognized as knowledge.

Traditionally Western Philosophy places aesthetics at its periphery, recapitulating the paradoxes of metaphysics and epistemology. Hein (1990) argues that feminist theory by reversing this pattern and placing aesthetics as its center can be radically innovative and can discover new areas for exploration. Nevertheless, aesthetics in feminist research, has mostly ignored Rancièrean aesthetics and instead focused on attempting to establish a feminist aesthetic theory. As remarks Hein (1990) the call for feminist aesthetics in the sense of “whether or not there is a feminine aesthetic-gender characteristic elements, use of imagery (e.g., “central core” images) or other gender specific stylistic devices”, is quite controversial because an

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affirmative answer, would reinforce the metaphysical essentialism that contemporary feminism has repudiated. She further argues that:

“Feminism by its nature depends upon an aesthetics of experience because feminist theory must revert to experience for its formulation. There is nowhere else to go, since theory in its masculinist mold is suspect. But experience is contingent and the language of theory, as we have seen, is inadequate to give expression to women’s perspective. If experience is to be more than the inscription of what is momentarily given and gone, it must be aesthetically embodied, i.e., given shape through imagery and symbolism. That is how we are carried from experience to reflection” (p.284).

The fissures within the social and semiotic spaces of the concepts and terms of feminism and woman, as well as the fault lines across national, cultural, racial and ethnic frames that contain these meanings, show the difficulty to theorize on feminist challenging of the dominant order. In that sense, Harding (1986) recommends that we abandon the faith that coherent theory is desirable and instead declare our fidelity to “parameters of dissonance within and between assumptions of patriarchal discourses,” a route that will enable the creative contribution of a consciousness that is “valuably alienated, bifurcated and oppositional,” and whose psychic, intellectual and political discomfort we should cherish. Investigating aesthetics and feminism can yield positive and practical consequences because it illuminates and corrects certain imageries that have exerted powerful influences upon our conventional understanding of the world (Hein, 1990).

Aiming to explore a theoretical vocabulary that echoes feminist daily emancipatory acts while pointing to the centrality of the experience and perception of ‘women’s bodies’ and ‘women’s protesting bodies’ in society, the next sections will develop on the rule of the aesthetic order and possibilities for disruption; the notion of ‘community of senses’ being particularly interesting when exploring feminist dissensual logic against dominant order, and the performativity of such community of dissent.

2. The distribution of the sensible and the configuration of sensory experience: Community of senses and disruption

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“Any social order—the distribution of parts and positions in a community—produces and is produced by an aesthetic order—the distribution of the sensible—which shapes how

differently placed individuals see and what they can say, what gets recognized as speech and what is heard as mere noise, and thus who has the talent to speak in sensible terms” (Ghertner, 2015).

Rancière (2004) defines ‘le partage du sensible’, translated as the ‘partition of the sensible’ or ‘distribution of the sensible’, as “the system of a-priori forms determining what present itself as sense experience” (p.13). In that sense, ‘Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the

properties of spaces and the possibilities of time’ (p. 13). As clarified by Ghertner (2015) this a priori is not founded on a transcendental sublime, as it would be for Kant, but “rather in social structures that appear or are handed down as though they are fixed and natural”. Aesthetics take roots in the “sensuous immediacies of the individual” while simultaneously connecting it “to a greater whole —the “community of feeling subjects”.

Rancière clarifies:

“I do not take the phrase “community of sense” to mean a collectivity shaped by some common feeling. I understand it as a frame of visibility and intelligibility that puts things or practices together under the same meaning, which shapes thereby a certain sense of

community. A community of sense is a certain cutting out of space and time that binds together practices, forms of visibility, and patterns of intelligibility. I call this cutting out and this linkage a partition of the sensible” (Rancière, 2009, p.31).

Essentially, “what through social and perceptual training strikes one as individual taste— rooted in one’s own inner faculties—is, in a hegemonic order, the affective material that secures our sometimes-unwitting promotion of a common good defined through hegemonic norms” (Ghertner, 2015). In Mouffe’s (2007) terms: “what is at a given moment considered to be the ‘natural’ order – together with the ‘common sense’ that accompanies it – is the result of sedimented hegemonic practices; it is never the manifestation of a deeper objectivity outside the practices that bring it into being” (p. 3). ‘Hegemonic practices’ being “the articulatory practices through which a certain order is established, and the meaning of social institutions is fixed” (p.4).

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Rancière configuration of “democratic politics” is directly linked to the disruption of this hegemony, as it entails that democracy is not a regime per se, but is instead the practice of politics itself, where politics consists of the conflictual encounter of two heterogenous logics: le logic of domination and the logic of equality (Chambers, 2013).

The democratic act occurs by excellence, when the demos does something that exposes the arbitrariness of the dominant partition of the sensible. This is the partition that rendered some people visible as political actors, while excluding others (Bennett, 2010, p.105). In this matter, politics are not acts to maintain the political order or respond to already articulated issues, but is “the name of a singular disruption of this order of distribution of bodies” (Bennett, 2010, p.106). ‘Politics’, through the claim for equality of those excluded from the existing political sphere, is then all about disputing the configuration of places and roles within a community (Rancière, 2006, p. 49)”. “The demos more or less spontaneously construct a “polemical scene” within which what was formerly heard as a noise by powerful persons begins to sound to them like argumentative utterances. These scenes always tell the same story: the story of the equality of speaking beings” (Bennett, 2010, p.106). The

reconfiguration of the relations of the visible and the sayable (relying on the sensible) exposes “the ultimate secret of any social order, that is, that there is no natural principle of domination by one person over the other” (Bennett, 2010, p.105). The political act ‘stages dissensus’ between the two opposing logics and the democratic process is then the “process of perpetual bringing into play, of invention of forms of subjectivities” (Rancière, 2006, p. 62). Rancière explains that the democratic act occurs when “the demos does something that exposes the arbitrariness of the dominant partition of the sensible” (Bennett, 2010, p. 105).

The democratic rupture opens a public sphere which “is a sphere of encounters and conflicts between the opposed logics of police and politics” (Rancière, 2006, p. 55). As Rancière (2006) said, the police order presupposes that there is one “pure principle of government, i.e. the principle of inequality based on differences within society, which determine who is entitled to govern and who is not” (p. 48). In contrast, politics means the practices, which, by defending the reality of equality, reveal the contingency of all systems of political

government, and reaffirm that there is never only “one pure principle of government”. ‘Politics’ are

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“able to reveal this contingency by playing on the contradictions between public and private identities, and between real equalities and real inequalities. In this way it generates, via a process of subjectification, supplementary political subjects which resist classification to the public or private sphere.” (McDonnel, 2014, p.50).

Such dispute occurs through specific acts, when people who have no assigned role within the public sphere take seriously their equality with those who do, thus disrupting the police logic. The protagonists act politically “staging the double relation of exclusion and inclusion

inscribed in the duality of the human being and the citizen’ (Rancière, 2006, p. 61). A crucial point here is that the political subject is supplementary to the two identities of ‘human being’ and ‘citizen’, and only becomes subject through the political action of staging the

contradiction between them. The political actor becomes subject in the action itself and in the space between these two identities. This process of political subjectification involving

disputes over equality bringing to light underlying contradictions inherent in the existing political order is central to democracy (Rancière, 2015).

3. Aesthetics practices fomenting dissensus

This configuration of politics points to the centrality of dissensus in democracy, and the very limits of any rational consensus, as no rational solution “could ever exist” to solve these conflicts” (Mouffe, 2007, p.9). The uncontested hegemony of liberal thoughts, dominantly characterized by a rationalist and individualist approach is “unable to adequately grasp the pluralistic nature of the social world, with the conflicts that pluralism entails”. “Properly political questions always involve decisions which require making a choice between conflicting alternatives” (Mouffe, 2007, p.8).

Regarding the concept of dissent, the term’s etymology, comes from the Latin word dissentire—which means to “differ in sentiment”—pointing to the centrality of affect and emotion in the creation of collective dissensual materialities. The term dissent in itself has an inherent performative dimension as “the expression of dissent” enacts dissent itself (Durán-Almarza, n.d). Dissent can itself be conceived as a particular type of affect, which, as Sarah Ahmed (2004) would put it, accumulates affective value through circulation, as dissent is “collectively created and re-created in the affective ebb-and-flow of performative intra-actions” (p.120). Dissent is then based on singular experiences but involves sharing a

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common feeling of disagreement and rejection of the existing political order. It is not just a critique, as it implies undoing consensus, and render excluded or invisibilized actors and struggles, visible. It is first of all a collective process seeking alternative conceptions or ways of living (Jørgensen & Agustin, 2015, p.12).

The performative dimension of dissent and aesthetics, and the role of art to foment dissensus is best understood through Mouffe (2007) and Rancière (2004), implications of critical art to affect the distribution of the sensible and contribute to social change, by encouraging new subjectivities and making visible “what the dominant consensus tends to obscure and

obliterate”, giving voice “to all those who are silenced within the framework of the existing hegemony” through numerous and diverse aesthetics practices (Mouffe, 2007,

p.5). According to her, “In our post-democracies where a post-political consensus is being celebrated as a great advance for democracy, critical artistic practices can disrupt the smooth image that corporate capitalism is trying to spread, bringing to the fore its repressive

character. And, in many ways, they can also contribute to the construction of new subjectivities” (p.6).

It should nonetheless be mentioned that some scholars have argued that art has ‘lost its critical power because any form of critique is automatically recuperated and neutralized by capitalism’ (p.7), as art and marketing have become blurred, and artists and cultural actors have become themselves included in the capitalist production. Indeed, art has and can work as an ideological support for the status quo, and ‘nowadays artistic and cultural production play a central role in the process of capital valorization’ (Mouffe, 2007, p.1). Despite this bitter recognition, she argues that this situation can still open new forms of opposition, and that, while not meaning either a naïve idealization of the artist as an instigator of social change, artistic practices, (that I broaden to aesthetics practices considering the arguable blurred boundaries between art and life4_{), can still attempt to disarticulate the existing order, by} instigating new forms of experiencing, and perceiving. Critical aesthetic practices do not contribute to the counter-hegemonic struggle by deserting the institutional terrain but by engaging with it, with the aim of fostering dissent and creating a multiplicity of spaces where the dominant consensus is challenged and where new modes of identification are made available (Mouffe, 2013).

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4.Performative aesthetics of embodied and digital protest

Following the conceptualization of democracy “as the symbolic institution of the political in the form of the paradoxical power of those who are not entitled to exercise power”; protest, and its enactment, being possible through our inalienable right to assemble, can be understood as a significance of democracy in its most essential form, “a rupture in the order of legitimacy and domination” (Rancière and Panagia, 2000, p.124) . Butler (2015) defines performance as “a form of agency expressing a political voice” that communicates resistance and solidarity (p.18). Even if the social movement does not express a specific demand, “performativity enacts the power of individuals and groups united in a common message” (p.18).

She argues that “Protest is an operation of democratic power which can be performative; it is both an act and an enactment. Protest is a collective struggle which calls into question ‘the inchoate and powerful dimensions of reigning notions of the political’ (p.9).

Analyzing the different dimensions of the aesthetic constitution of ‘the art of protest’

discloses how, as Butler (2015) says, democracy is constituted through “a complex interplay of performance, images, acoustics, and all the various technologies engaged in those

productions” (p.20). It also reveals, the variety of ways in which voices can be politically articulated, especially considering the intensification of digital technologies and platforms. Indeed, this thesis shares McGarry et. Al (2017) understanding of social media as not only a tool to spread information, but also as a dynamic mechanism, which grant people with the possibility “to communicate visually and engage in a non-material space” (p.16). Hence, social media is understood as a space that complements, or extend the physical and material manifestations of protest in the public space (street marches for example). Especially since social movements are increasingly able and willing to engage with virtual spaces to expand their visibility and disseminate their ideas and interests. However, although social medias open some possibilities for participation and communication in an inclusive, deliberative and participatory manner based upon the open and collaborative networking characteristics of such platforms (Jenzen and Korkut, 2017, p.22; Loader and Mercea, 2011), this point has to be carefully handled. As remarked by Loader and Mercea (2012), digital technologies per se are not ‘inherently democratic’ (p. 3) since there are still inequalities of access to social media

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platforms, inequalities in terms of visibility on these platforms, censorship5_{, and that these} platforms are also motivated by corporate interests. Social media platforms, are also prone to the proliferation of “fake news” and misinformation, as well as ‘information cocoons’, created by the algorithm-led ‘personalized experience’, which can lead to fragmentation, group

polarization and extremism; including politicians who use these platforms to communicate specific interests in a manipulative way detrimental to the democratic process (Unwin, 2012; Sunstein, 2018).

Nevertheless, regarding activism and social movements, Gerbaudo (2014) argues that social media still constitutes “a source of coherence as shared symbols- an act of/a sort of centripetal focus of attention – which participants can turn to when looking for other people in the

movement” (p.266). Social media expands the boundaries of who can participate by unfolding new paths for communication and mobilization, while creating “more decentralized,

dispersed, temporary and individualized forms of political action which then subvert the notion of the collective as singular, unified, homogenous, coherent and mass” (Kavada, 2016, p.8). In its larger sense public spaces are thus “a stage on which protestors express solidarity and challenge the legitimacy of political and economic structures and provide conditions where citizenship can be performed” (Jenzen and Korkut, 2017).

Paying attention to how users can navigate in the interface between material and digital spaces, for instance diving in digital technologies, even during the protest action, can

demonstrate how aesthetics of protest render the distinctions between the material and digital spaces negligible. Instead, it is recommended to shift our focus to reflect on the interplay between material and digital spaces as a democratic space enabling political voice to be heard, since meaning becomes “dispersed, diverse and driven” at this interface (Rose, 2016, p.12) . In order to understand how the aesthetics of protest are expressed, what they communicate, how they demand a response and why they are significant for political voice, Jenzen and Korkut (2017), in their book The aesthetics of protest take certain approaches examining “slogans, art, symbols, slang, graffiti gestures, bodies, colours, clothes, and objects that comprise a material and performative culture, with a high capacity to be replicated digitally and shared across social media networks, ideological terrain, state borders, and linguistic frontiers” (p.18). The aesthetics of protest carry symbolic connotations attached to “identities,

5_{For example Instagram’s community guidelines ‘nipple ban’, censoring female nudity have come} under strong criticism in the past years (Faust, 2017).

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affect, attitudes, and new meanings and knowledge”. They are a dynamic process responsive and sensitive to the rapid social change engendered by protest movements which deserve our attention. The authors preconize a methodology enriching by its diversity and flexibility to account for the multidimensionality of the aesthetics of protest. There are the aesthetic forms of protest in its present (through the crowd, the chants, speeches, banners, actions of

protestors and police etc.), but then there is also all the realm of the “aesthetics of the trace of demonstrations in analogue and digital media, in the imagination and memory, and in their systems of distribution and wider cultural contexts” (p.18). The ‘phenomenon’ and its ‘image’ are in an entangled relationship, each feeding the other to embody a collective act of protest. It can be difficult to understand these dimensions separately, especially because the observer contributing to the ‘reportage,’ or recording, is in itself part of the phenomenon, by sharing the production of knowledge surrounding the protest, at the time of the protest and

subsequently. In that sense protest is enacted and embodied through the experience of certain kinds of reality circulating through action and mediation.

The next chapter will outline and develop the methods and ethical reflections which enabled to empirically approach the research topic and guarantee a quality of the research process, also acknowledging inherent limitations.

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Chapter III. Research Design and Methodology

1) Research questions Main Research Question :

How do the aesthetics of feminist street activism create spaces of community and dissent in and beyond Carnaval, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil?

Sub Questions:

1) How do the different entities involved in feminist street activism in Rio de Janeiro and

the practices within they engage contribute to the construction of a ‘community of senses’?

2) How do the practices of feminist street activist groups in Rio de Janeiro create spaces

of dissent in and beyond the spatio-temporal context of Carnaval?

3) How do the enactment of spaces of community and dissent work together to generate

the conditions to challenge dominant unequal social order?

2) Feminist Ethnographic research methods 2.1) Feminist epistemology

As Harding and Norberg (2005) signal ‘‘research processes themselves [re]produce power differences’’, including power differences between different ways of knowing. An

epistemology: “is the system of thought that we use to distinguish fact from belief. An epistemology is itself a belief system about what constitutes knowledge, evidence, and convincing argument, and how scholarship contributes to these. Our epistemology has significant authority in our research” (Ackerly & True, 2008, p.695).

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Feminism, as a critical research process, informs that it is possible and crucial to be attentive to and reflect on the epistemologies informing our research. Feminist methodology is rooted in the idea that feminist values can inform empirical inquiry while acknowledging that no method is inherently feminist. It should not be presupposed that feminist methodologies resolve problems inherent to traditional approaches to epistemology, such as the nature of knowledge itself, epistemic agency, justification and objectivity. Nevertheless, this research assesses feminist ethics to be an essential tool when conducting research in International Development Studies. Although, there is not one single feminist epistemology (arguing that it is the case would imply that women experiences are embedded in some kind of unitary knowledge, a presupposition which post-structural and intersectional feminist scholars have demonstrated to be highly flawed and essentializing, cf. II.1), a merging point of feminist researchers are the various efforts to include women‘s lives and concerns in accounts of society, to strive to minimize the harms of research, and to support changes that will improve women‘s status (DeVault, 1996, p. 29). It involves a deep questioning of the naturalization of power relations challenging not only the researcher’s own positionality at every stage of the research process, but also deeply questioning the “truth claims” of traditional positivist scientific research methods. Such feminist epistemology offers methodological strategies linked to feminist political praxis. It appeals to women’s embodied social experience as a privileged site of knowledge, and “refers to a way of conceptualizing reality that reflects women’s interests and values and draws on women’s own interpretation of their own

experience” (Jaggar 1983, p.387). Haraway (1988) argues that “feminist objectivity is about limited location and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting of subject and object. It allows us to become answerable for what we learn how to see” (p. 153).

At work, it is this feminist sensibility of paying attention to power differentials that guides methodological choices. Feminist research ethics is both an ethical practice, and a research practice improving the quality of this research (Ackerly & True, 2008, p.694). Following feminist research ethics led to reflect on potential ethical dilemmas at every stage of the research, and enabled to ensure not only voluntary participation, informed consent, safety in participation, confidentiality and trust; but also highlighted the responsibility to constantly destabilize my own epistemology (notably taking the time to grasp all the subtleties of the spatial context). Importantly, “a de-stabilizing epistemology should not prevent us from doing research; it should enable us to do it better. We have an ethical commitment to noticing the power of epistemology, particularly the power of privileged epistemologies (including our own)” (Ackerly & True, 2008, p.694).

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Therefore, a feminist informed research implies the necessity to take responsibility in interrogating power dynamics and forms of exclusion and inclusion, both in society, and as reflexivity in our research process. The need for reflexivity and acknowledging my partiality, I cannot avoid recognizing that I am speaking from a specific body. As a Western white cis-women, I am also situated within these power structures in a specific way. Although I speak Portuguese, I was still a gringa, conducting a two months research in Brazil. Nevertheless, I cannot claim to know precisely how this position affected my relations with people on the field and what difference it makes for the production of knowledge, as I am not sure how I could precisely know how (cf p. 36-39 for further explanation). However, I think that power dynamics can be countered through the respect and careful attention to the opinions and statements of the participants, as well as particular contemplation to bodily reactions, and ‘interpersonal atmosphere’. To clarify, although participants were well informed about the research project, and gave their consents for participation, it is not to say that ‘in the name of research’ situations of discomfort for the participants were allowed. Whenever there was the slightest doubt that my presence as a researcher, or that an interaction could be disturbing or disagreeable, I would not dare to pursue. Beyond formal academic requirements of ‘good research’, it was assessed that preserving some boundaries through reciprocal understanding and mutual respect on a ‘human’ level was necessary to intuitively mitigate power dynamics in research. It should also be made clear, that although the research results are enlightening on many points, this research does not claim that the produced knowledge has universal

applicability to all women or men.

2.2) Data collection methods

a) Sampling methods

As for all the research process, the context largely determined the use of certain methods. Of course, researchers always make choices, but the research situational context guided the choice of the most appropriate methods of both data collection and analysis. The research topic was established on the field and followed a mix of non-probability sampling methods, namely purposeful, snowball and accidental sampling methods (Patton, 2002).

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The sampling could be said to be threefold as it concerns a selection of groups/organization contacted in this research, a series of events that were attended and randomly selected participants in the events (cf. Appendices 1,2,3). Nevertheless, the three dimensions are highly linked, as the events depended on these groups/organizations. It was right before Carnaval, and many blocos6_{were already organizing events and performing in the}

streets. Feminist activism during Carnaval was first approached by reviewing the existing literature on the topic. The bloco carnavalesco, being one of the main popular expressions in Brazilian street carnival seemed to be a good starting point. Following the key words

“feminist/feminine blocos ’, “feminist activist groups”, “feminist/feminine musical groups” – “in Rio de Janeiro Carnaval”, names of the groups that would appear in Brazilian academic literature and online media were listed. These groups were contacted to inform them that I was doing a research on (at that time) “feminist musical activism during carnival”. This sampling method falls unto what Patton (2002) calls purposeful sampling and define its logic as “selecting information-rich cases for study in depth” enabling to “yields insights and in-depth understanding rather than empirical generalizations”. This type of method is

particularly appropriate and effective when “exploring anthropological situation where the discovery of meaning can benefit from an intuitive approach” (p.230).

This purposeful sampling, was followed by snowball sampling method, where the first few groups part of the sample, recommended others, which recommended others etc. For

example, one bloco that was particularly salient in this literature, was the Bloco das Mulheres Rodadas, one of the first explicitly feminist blocos. Mulheres Rodadas were contacted on Instagram, and they invited me to an event (Appendix 2, Event 2.) where they were playing in the street, where one of the informants communicated me another event. Furthermore, some organizations were identified on the basis of social media affiliations with pre-selected

groups; for example, Mulheres Rodadas sharing a post (reposting) of Atenta e Forte, or Todas por Todas, or another feminine bloco. This snowball sampling method both physical and digital, enabled to identify lesser known organizations, but also organizations whose aim exceeded the initial focus of the research7_{. Hence, it led not only to significantly broaden the} research perspectives, but also enabled a more comprehensive set of listing, although not

6_{Blocos are free participatory musical ensembles, often itinerant as a parade, taking place in the public} space and mobilizing crowds.

7_{For instance the organizations Não é Não, Atenta e Forte or Todas por Todas are not blocos, musical} groups, or performers, but they do take integrant part of the protest performance through other means.

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claiming to be exhaustive, due to the limited scope of this research. Noteworthy to mention, accidental sampling method was also used, as Calcinhas Bélicas, were first encountered while randomly going off the subway in Largo do Machado. The women of these exclusively feminine fanfare group were practicing for their cortejo and playing music in the street. All the groups were contacted through social media to inform them of the nature of the research, and eventually plan interviews in the case they were interested and available timewise. Indeed, in this period of the year surrounding Carnaval, these groups are particularly active and busy, and it was seen as imperative following ethical concerns, that the purpose of the research would not justify using up too much of the time of activists.

Regarding the attended events, the method of selection was similar. First, investigating on social media some planned events, and while going to events, performers, organizers or people from the public, would recommend me other events, directly informing me of the date and place of the next event. This was particularly helpful, since some street performances are not official, and sometimes only announced on social media at the last minute. The snowball sampling on social networks was pursued during the all data gathering research process, until 20th of April 2020. After 3 months of fieldwork study (2 months on the field (which includes

material and digital spaces) and one month on digital spaces exclusively; it was judged that the sample, although not exhaustive, was representative enough of the different activists’ group interests relating to gender-racial inequalities, and of the network they constituted, to stop the sampling process.

The combination of these sampling methods was convenient, and particularly adequate considering the exploratory nature of this research. Indeed, it enabled to connect more easily with participants in line with the research purpose, while at the same time not being limited by characteristics encompassed in the initial problem statement, and leaving space to the

informants to discuss themselves what groups/organization needed to be included in the research, and recommending what significant events should be attended in their opinions.

This research ended up with a list of 11 groups/organizations (Appendix 1), whose activities were followed both physically and digitally and a list of 13 events attended (Appendix 2). Eight representants of the groups/organizations were interviewed in five interviews, as well as 9 participants interviewed during the events (Appendix 3).

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The shortcomings of these non-probability sampling methods, (like any sampling method in a certain sense) is that it can exclude some unaccounted inequalities. In this case, events that are not as mediatized, or that are not directly related to the network that was encountered, and which can lead to argue that some voices and opinions were not accounted for, as it relies on “what is available to the researcher”. For instance, other groups from other musical genres, which mobilize other aesthetics, and offer a different sensorium; with probably diverse meanings and social connotations, such as funky carioca, maracatu or bateria unificada were not included in the sample.

b) Participant observation

Participant observation as one of the quintessential ethnographic qualitative methods of data collection proves to be useful at multiple stages of the research process, “ (1) to identify issues that need to be explored with other data collection methods”; “ (2) ongoing, as process

evaluation”; and “ (3) following other types of data collection, to triangulate earlier findings and directly observe the specific phenomena that participants have spoken about” .This methods allows “to assess actual behavior in real time; information gathered in this way can strengthen interpretation of information collected through interviews” (Goldman & Borkan, 2013, p.2) or through other data collection methods.

Participant observation was conducted during the various events attended on the field between the 18th_{of January and the 18}th of March. However, the participant observation further pursued

on digital spaces (cf. III.3). Notes, pictures, videos and sound-recordings were taken during the observation, to keep a record of some visuals and sounds mobilized in the events.

c)Semi-structured in-depth Interviews

In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with members from the

groups/organizations selected in the sample, sometimes as personal interviews, sometimes with several members of the group (all interviews are referenced in Appendix 3). The questions followed some guiding lines structure-wise around the groups’ histories and compositions, and the more organizational aspects of the performances, followed by more general questions on feminist struggles during Rio de Janeiro’s street carnival. The