The new digital literacies as sites for the construction of political activism about sexuality and gender

Abstract

Theorizing the so-called new digital literacies as socio-cultural practices, it is argued that such sites have contemporarily become spaces for political activism and for the construction of transgressive meanings about public and private life, through which sub-political actions are constructed. Next, social life in such literacies is theorized as typical of Web 2.0 in the sense that it involves specific modes of action and of thinking, which question authorship, since they are collaborative and participative, at the same time that they position us amidst the Multitude and their innovative, de-structured and unexpected discourses. Such discourses are crucial because they may collaborate with the re-invention of social life, rehearsing the future. Finally, two spaces of affinity in Web 2.0, centered on sexuality and gender, are analyzed through the characterization of the interactional moves in such social practices and through the way they expose ourselves to alternative futures: a crucial demand of our times.

digital literacies; Web 2.0; Multitude; political activism; gender; sexuality