Resumen

En los últimos años, activistas feministas en varios países de

América Latina han creado mapas digitales de feminicidio:

las muertes violentas de mujeres relacionadas con el género.

La intersección del activismo y el mapeo ha sido explorada

desde la académia y por activistas que han abordado la natu-

raleza performativa, participativa y política de los mapas, y

por académicas feministas que han analizado —y promue-

ven— la reivindicación del mapeo y de los Sistemas de Infor-

mación Geográfica (GIS por sus siglas en inglés) por y para

las mujeres y el pensamiento y la acción feminista. En este

ensayo, uso el caso del mapa Feminicidio Uruguay y tomo

ideas del nuevo materialismo para proponer un novedoso

abordaje metodológico para estudiar esta intersección. Un

abordaje que podría revelar una comprensión más compleja

de la agencia de las cosas digitales creadas en la apropiación

desobediente de objetos cotidianos, como Google Maps.

Palabras clave:

activismo feminista, mapeo digital, metodología, vitalidad, agencia de las cosas

114

Inmaterial 05. Helena Suárez Val

Abstract

In recent years, feminist activists in various Latin American

countries have been creating digital maps of feminicide

—the gender-related violent deaths of women. Te intersec-

tion of activism and mapping has been explored by scholars

and activists who have addressed the performative, parti-

cipatory and political nature of mapping, and by feminist

scholars who have analysed and advocated for mapping and

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to be reclaimed by

and for women, and for feminist thinking and action. In this

essay, I use the case of the Feminicidio Uruguay map and

draw from some of the ideas of new materialism in order to

put forward a novel methodological approach to study such

an intersection. An approach that might reveal more com-

plex understandings of the agency of digital things that are

created in the disobedient appropriation of everyday ob-

jects, such as Google Maps.

Keywords

Feminist Activism, Digital Mapping, Methodology, Vibrancy, Agency of Tings

Inmaterial 05.

Vibrant maps. Exploring the reverberation of feminist digital

mapping

Feminicidio Uruguay

In 2015 I started registering cases of feminicide in Uruguay in the form of an

interactive Google map, on which I place a marker every time a gender-re-

lated violent death of a woman takes place. Each of the markers shows the

name of the woman, the date when the case happened, a short description of

what happened and a link to a newspaper article referring to it. Google Alerts

e-mails me every time a case is reported in the online Uruguayan media out-

lets. Occasionally, I have found out about a case from the social media posts

of friends or relatives of a victim, or by watching the news on the TV screen

in some bar. Since 2017, every time there is a new case of feminicide, I take a

screenshot of the map centred on the relevant marker. I publish this on Face-

book, Twiter and Instagram with a link back to the map, and share the posts

on several online feminist spaces. Put together, the Feminicidio Uruguay map

and social media accounts are my contribution to a range of actions coordina-

ted by the wider feminist movement in Uruguay.

When a case of feminicide becomes known, the Coordinadora de Feminis-

mos del Uruguay/Feministas en Alerta y en las Calles call a street mobili-

sation to take place a couple of days later, spreading the word by creating a

Facebook event or by circulating a ‘plaque’ with details. A growing number of

people have been joining these spontaneously organised protests, taking to

the streets of Montevideo to denounce this form of violence. Alongside each

protest, the collective Caída de las Campanas performs a sonic irruption into

public space —an urban intervention that resignifies the sound of bells used

in Christian rituals to signal mourning and protest (Delgado, 2016).

Sometimes, feminists coordinating actions in real life (IRL) learn about a

new case from the map’s updates. Conversely, I have sometimes been promp-

ted to update the map afer receiving a notification on my social media feed

about a rally or the announcement of a new performance. Te various for-

mats and supports for the recorded information about the case, the ensuing

performance announcements or calls to action, and the audio-visual and

textual records of these events spread via social media, for days afer.

Inmaterial 05.

Vibrant maps. Exploring the reverberation of feminist digital

mapping

Introduction

¹ Te Office of the United

Nations High Commissioner

In recent years, feminist activists in various Latin American countries have

for Human Rights (OHCHR)

been creating digital maps of feminicide —the gender-related violent deaths

in Central America adopts this

definition of femicidio/feminicidio

of women¹.As part of my own feminist activism², in 2015 I started a Google

in the Model Protocol for the

Map in order to record feminicide cases occurred in Uruguay: Feminicidio

investigation of femicide/femi-

nicide in Latin-America (Bernal

Uruguay (feminicidiouruguay.net). Tis map is part of a range of long-run-

Sarmiento et al., 2014).

ning feminist actions aiming to raise awareness about the issue, in Uruguay

² Given my personal involve-

and the region.

ment as a researcher activist, I

use the first person as part of an

auto-ethnographic approach,

Tere is a lot of media being made in —and making— the processes and

“starting research from [my] own

actions of recording and protesting cases of feminicide described above: news

experience” (Ellis and Bochner,

2000, p.741) and “thinking the

reports on media outlets; Google alerts; a version of a Google map, based on

social through my self ” (Probyn,

a data spreadsheet; screenshot images; a range of social media posts, shares,

1993, p.3).

hashtags, comments and “emoji reactions” (Stinson, 2016); street demons-

trations; sound interventions; audio-visual recordings; texts… Teeming with

emotions, intentions and desires, these “vibrant things” (Bennet, 2009),

digital and non-digital media disobediently appropriated by feminist activists,

acquire a self-propelling vitality, “continually doing things” (Bennet, 2009,

p.112; emphasis in the original) as they move through human and computer

networks and formats, being re-used, re-signified and re-shared.

As a researcher activist, I am interested in asking of all these things, but most

particularly of the map: what do you do? Following Deleuze and Guatari, I

could ask about the rhizomic affects (Fox, 2015, p.306) that are produced by

the aforementioned things (and the rhizomic affects that these things provi-

de): How does it all work as an assemblage (Deleuze and Guatari, 1988)? Or,

using Karen Barad’s agential realist lens, I could ask: what are the intra-actions

enacted in, through and by this entanglement (Barad, 2007)? Moreover, as a

feminist activist, I am especially concerned with understanding how gender

discourses and practices intra-act with/in these configurations. In this article,

I am interested in thinking through the research methodologies and potential

avenues of enquiry that could be put to use to explore the political effects of

the emergent materiality of these appropriated media. Tus, in what follows

I shall consider the theoretical and methodological approaches that could be

applied to studying the gendered repercussions of digital mapping as a strate-

gy employed by feminist activists around the issue of feminicide.

Te intersection of activism and digital mapping has been explored by

scholars and activists who have addressed the performative, participatory and

political nature of mapping (Crampton, 2009; Plantin, 2015; iconoclasistas,

2016) and by feminist scholars who have analysed and advocated for the

reclaiming of mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) by and

118

Inmaterial 05. Helena Suárez Val

for women, and for feminist thinking and action (Pavlovskaya and St. Martin,

2007, p. 602; Kwan, 2002; Elwood, 2008; McLafferty, 2002, 2005). In this

essay, I draw from some of the insights of new materialism (Barad, 2007;

Braidoti, 2013; Latour, 2005; Fox and Alldred, 2015) in order to put forward

a novel approach to study such an intersection. Tis approach aims to reveal

more complex understandings of the agency of digital things created by the

disobedient appropriation of everyday objects, in this case Google Maps.

I will start by situating my work within a new materialist framework and dis-

cussing Jane Bennet’s conception of vibrant mater (2009). Tinking through

Barad’s notion of entanglement (2007), I shall take up Bennet’s “invitation”

to turn things over and over until they are made strange (2009, p.vii) and

follow not only “the trail of human power[, but also] the scent of a nonhu-

man, thingly power, the material agency of natural bodies and technological

artefacts” (p. xiii). I then will move on to examine how reverberation —a term

effectively employed by Adi Kuntsman “to describe the affective and political

work of violence” (in Karatzogianni and Kuntsman, 2012, p.1)— can be used

to track the rhizomic affects travelling and making these trails. I outline Rita

Segato’s understanding of feminicide as expressive violence to reveal the term’s

vibrancy. My intent is to show how these ideas elicit specific questions that

could productively be asked of a digital map of feminicide: What affective sig-

nals reverberate in, from, and through it? Which of these signals are more or

less vibrant? Along which trails do these signals flow? What material things,

both human and non-human, do they bounce off, pass through or mark?

How are they distorted, intensified, muffled, or stopped in these encounters?

(Kuntsman, 2012, p.2) To conclude, I propose that, together, these ideas

could end up forming the backbone of a methodology to research this type

of activism, one that will allow for more complex understandings of the ways

in which vibrant digital maps of feminicide intra-act in and with the world,

producing reverberating affects and effects.

Orientation

Bennet’s invitation to follow draws on Derrida’s sense of the term, which

“points to an intimacy between being and following: to be […] is always to

be following […], always to be in response to call from something” (Bennet,

2009, p.xiii). By now, the map and I are intimately linked, both responsive to

the call of a new case of feminicide. As being and following blend, I am too

close to the map... I am not sure where to begin.

I shall begin with the readings that provided a way into this research. Firstly,

two texts on methodology: Rebecca Coleman and Jessica Ringrose’s Deleuze

Inmaterial 05.

Vibrant maps. Exploring the reverberation of feminist digital

mapping

and research methodologies (2013); and Nick Fox and Pam Alldred’s Inside the

Research-Assemblage: New Materialism and the Micropolitics of Social Research

(2015). Coleman and Ringrose’s description of methods as performative

and as having a role in making reality and making a difference (p.113) points

to the similarities and crossovers between research and activism. Fox and

Alldred’s description of the opportunities offered by “new materialism […]

to address the concerns of those involved in analysing social research data

and applying it either to explain or to change the world” (s.1.5) resonated

with my desire to explain and change the world, and hinted at the poten-

tial of following a new materialist approach, focusing “upon the materiality

of affects and of the actions, interactions, subjectivities and thoughts they

produce” (s.2.7). Finally, Emma Renold and David Mellor’s “multisensory

mapping” of gender in the space of the nursery (2013), and more particularly

their atention to vibrancy, revealed the productivity of mobilising Bennet’s

proposals as part of a methodological approach. Trough these readings, I

started understanding the map itself as research-assemblage —gathering and

displaying of data on feminicide—, and I also understood that I wanted to

follow the map.

A useful starting point for my enquiry was Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatari’s

understanding of nomadic science, described as a science that follows (Coba-

rrubias and Pickles, 2009, p.40; Karatzogianni, 2012, p.53). “[F]ollowing is

something different from the ideal of reproduction. […] One is obliged to

follow when one is in search of the ‘singularities’ of a mater, or rather of a

material, and not out to discover a form […] And the meaning of the Earth

completely changes” (Deleuze and Guatari, 1988, p.372). As well as resona-

ting with Bennet’s aforementioned call to follow, this idea of following led me

into two directions. On the one hand, it pointed towards the way in which

the map could be studied: unfolding a kind of research that, “poaching from

a variety of systems of thought” (Karatzogianni, 2012, p.53), follows the

reverberations within, radiating from and crossing through the map. On the

other hand, it signalled towards a question: could the map itself be a following

science? Or, on the contrary, would it be what Deleuze and Guatari call royal

science, “involving reproduction, iteration and reiteration” where “[r]eprodu-

cing implies the permanence of a fixed point of view that is external to what is

reproduced” (1988, p.372, emphasis in the original)? If the former holds true,

how is it so?

120

Inmaterial 05. Helena Suárez Val

First direction: following the research

In order to disrupt my closeness to the map, to intentionally disorient myself

and become able to follow, I took up Bennet’s invitation to make things stran-

ge. I followed multiple meandering routes, in search of intersections between

notions of vibrancy, reverberation and feminicide, as well as between those of

map, activism, digital media and gender. As I found crossing points, through

feminist theories, digital sociology, the sociology of social movements and

the sociology of emotions, neuroscience, Information and Communication

Technologies (ICT), human geography and visual cultures, new ways of

thinking about the map emerged.

Vibrancy

“We are vital materiality and we are surrounded by it,

though we do not always see it that way.”

(Bennet, 2009, p.14; emphasis in the original)

Bennet articulates the notion of vibrant mater in an ecological impulse,

understanding it as a political project to “promote […] more atentive en-

counters between people-materialities and thing-materialities” (2009, p.x), an

atention that might change the ways in which political events are analysed.

In her view, material vibrancy is not an external force, but rather the intrinsic

affective power of all “[o]rganic and inorganic bodies, natural and cultural

objects” (p.ii), the capacity of things “to act as quasi agents or forces with

trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own” (p.viii), their efficacy

“in excess of the human meanings, designs, or purposes they express or serve”

(p.20). Vibrancy is the power of things to make a difference (p.32). Tis

positioning of vibrancy in the context of a political project prompted me to

think about the ways in which the map -itself a political project-, might be a

vibrant thing.

It is important to note that, while the idea of thing-power may seem to refer to

a stable individuality, Bennet’s aim is to “theorise a materiality that is as much

force as entity, as much energy as mater, as much intensity as extension”

(p.20). To do so, she draws on Deleuze and Guatari’s concept of assemblage

to describe agency as distributed, emerging in and from the interaction of

a multiplicity of human and non-human vibrant materials (Bennet, 2009,

p.21-24). Also worth mentioning is the fact that Bennet also conceives cul-

tural forms, such as gender, as “artifacts […], themselves powerful, material

assemblages” (p.1), by which she understands that they have their own

thing-power. Discussing the political implications of her proposal, Bennet

Inmaterial 05.

Vibrant maps. Exploring the reverberation of feminist digital

mapping

suggests that “the appropriate unit of analysis for democratic theory [be] the

(ontologically heterogeneous) ‘public’ coalescing around a problem” (p.108).

Here she conceives public both as “groups of bodies [I would substitute it for

things] with the capacity to affect and be affected” (p.101) and “as an ‘in-

tra-action’ of humans and nonhumans, signifying the ‘inseparability of «ob-

jects» and «agencies of observation»’” (Barad, 2001, referenced in Bennet,

2009, p.152;), that is to say, as an entanglement. According to this conception,

the map, its users and myself, as well as other elements, would be the entan-

gled public coalescing around feminicide.

For Barad, “[r]eality is composed not of things-in-themselves or things-be-

hind-phenomena but of things-in-phenomena” (2007, p.140). Barad’s phe-

nomena are entanglements, which, unlike assemblages, are conceived not as a

coming together of pre-existing things, but as “highly specific configurations”

(2007, p.74) of “the mutual constitution of entangled agencies [that] emerge

through their intra-action” (p.33). Entanglements are always implicated in

discursive practices enacting different boundaries, properties and meanings

(p.139). In this sense, research itself is as an intra-acting discursive practice,

because it performs, concurrently with other practices, agential cuts that “ma-

terialise the boundaries between human and nonhumans, culture and nature,

science and the social” (p.140). Essay-as-research entangled with map-as-re-

search entangled with map-in-public.

Barad points out the difficulty of studying something that changes in each in-

tra-action (2007, p.74). As described above, the map is entangled in intra-ac-

tions with/in many things, always (in) a “process of mediation” (Kember and

Zylinska, 2010, p.2). Some things appear more human: feminist activism;

gender and feminicide as practices and discourses; media outlets; humans,

and human bodies; (gendered) ideas of space and nation. Others appear

more non-human, solid and non-solid: the various devices and screens where

the map is coded, decoded and displayed; the network routing the data,

including mobile towers, WiFi antennas, transatlantic cables; electricity, light

and radio waves; Google and Facebook’s algorithms and hardware. Moreover,

I personally face the added difficulty of being (at least) doubly entangled with

the map, both as a map-maker and as its researcher (Coleman and Ringrose,

2013, p.6).³ Nevertheless, I find it exciting to take up both Bennet’s invita-

³ Tis essay produces such a spe-

cific agential cut. Different cuts of

tion to atend to vibrancy, thing-power and affects, and Barad’s challenge to

my entanglement with the map

responsively atend to intra-action and entanglements, diffractively “reading

would materialise me as woman

or as gendered subject, Uruguayan

important insights and approaches through one another” (2007, p.30). As

citizen, geek...

Sybille Lammes writes, “digital mapping interfaces [are] mediators in trans-

formative practices” and, in order to explore their agency, it is important to

acknowledge their “thingy-ness”, to conceive them “as neither object nor sub-

122

Inmaterial 05. Helena Suárez Val

⁴ borrow weird from Jusasi

ject” (2016, p.5). Trough these ideas, the map can be conceived as a vibrant

Parikka’s “weird materialities”

thing, in potentially powerful intra-actions with other human and non-hu-

(Parikka, 2012 cited in Casema-

jor, 2015, p.10).

man agencies -including cultural forms such as gender-, as we surround each

other, all with our own weird material-discursive vibrancy.⁴

Reverberation

Tings that reverberate may have a “continuing and serious effect”

(Oxford University Press; definition of reverberate)

When talking about sound, vibrant is synonymous with reverberant (Oxford

University Press; definition of vibrant), so when I came across Adi Kunts-

man’s work on the term reverberation in relation to online violence, I pricked

up my ears and I followed (2012, p.1).

In her introduction to Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion, Kuntsman

invites us to explore how “digital ‘structures of feeling’ work together, or

side by side, with broader political forces” (Williams, 1977, referenced in

Kuntsman, 2012, p.3) and to study the digital using the language that cultural

studies, sociology, and feminist and queer theories have put forward to think

about emotions, feelings and affect (Kuntsman, 2012, p.4).

Inspired by popular music studies’ analyses of urban soundscapes, Kuntsman

introduces the concept of reverberation to analyse digital culture. Reverbe-

ration is about “multiple movements of multiple sounds [signals],⁵ coming

⁵ In Philip Tagg: “‘Reverberation’

is understood here phenomeno-

from multiple origins and bouncing off multiple surfaces, ofen simultaneously

logically as a continuous series

and in contradiction to each other” (2009, p.234; emphasis in the original).

of decreasingly loud signals from

the same original source” (1994,

In this sense, it could be described as a rhizomic flow: “branching, reversing,

p.10; emphasis added).

coalescing and rupturing” (Fox, 2015, pp.306-7). Kuntsman opposes rever-

beration to the notions of “‘representation’, ‘narration’ or ‘impact’” (2012,

⁶ Here Kuntsman links circula-

p.1), seeing it instead as an invitation to atend to the multiple effects invol-

tion to Sara Ahmed’s concept of

ved, over time, as emotions and feelings (or affects) circulate⁶ through “bo-

affective economy where “affect

does not reside positively in the

dies, psyches, texts and machines” (p. 2). Read in Barad’s terms, reverberation

sign or commodity, but is produ-

is a kind of measuring agency (a measure of the multiplication and distribu-

ced as an effect of its circulation”

(Ahmed, 2014, p.45).

tion of affect), its agential cut enabling us to atend to intra-actions between

vibrant things, both human and non-human (Barad, 2007, p.348). To me,

this means that representation, narration and impacts should be understood

7 Tis chimes with Rebecca

Coleman’s suggestion that, while

as different measuring agencies. In this sense, they could be applied as thinking

it is not necessary to fully replace

tools, provided one is always aware of the ways in which they co-constitute

the politics of representation

model, atention should be paid

the object of study, making it appear to have a specific shape and related pos-

to “how the workings of power

through images have shifed”

sibilities for intra-action.⁷

(2013, p.17).

Inmaterial 05.

Vibrant maps. Exploring the reverberation of feminist digital

mapping

By keeping this focus on material aspects, I aim to heed Rosi Braidoti’s

warning against “hasty renditions of the digital web as rhizome[, which frame

Deleuze and Guatari’s work within] the cult of the inorganic, the celebration

of the sublimely fake and the purposefully inauthentic” (2006, pr.2). For

Braidoti, “[t]echnology is at the heart of a process of blurring fundamental

⁸ Te intra-actions entangling

feminicide, feminism and capita-

categorical divides between self and other[, combining] cyborgs, monsters,

lism deserve further exploration,

insects and machines into a powerfully posthuman approach to what we used

outside the scope of this essay.

to call ‘the embodied subject’” (pr.3). However, she has also pointed out that

Several scholars have examined

the feedback between feminicide,

such a powerful potential is at the heart of global capitalism’s search for profit,

patriarchy and capitalism (see

through the reverberation of “ever-shifing waves of genderisation and sexua-

Segato, 2016; Monárrez Fragoso,

2010; Olivera, 2010; Encinas,

lisation, racialisation and naturalisation of multiple ‘others’” (pr.4).⁸

2016) while others have also

explored and critiqued the

“dangerous liaison” (Eisenstein,

Feminicide

2005) between feminism and

capitalism/neoliberalism (see

Fraser, 2013).

#MachismoMata

#NiUnaMenos

#TocanAUnaTocanATodas⁹

⁹ Tese hashtags were circulated

by the feminist movement in

Uruguay in relation to cases

In her analysis of feminicide in Ciudad Juárez (Mexico), Rita Laura Segato,

of feminicide. Tey translate

as “machismo kills”, “not one

much like Braidoti, argues that neoliberalism produces and reproduces di-

(woman) less”, “if they touch one

fference “by means of a progressive expansion of hierarchical distances to the

(woman), they touch us all”.

point of exterminating some as an uncontested expression of success” (2010,

p.87). In this sense, she identifies the murdered women -poor and mesti-

zas- with the emblematic other, who is eminently suppressible (p.87). Te

shameful impunity for these crimes in Ciudad Juárez is guaranteed by “[t]he

extreme asymmetry that results from local elites’ unregulated extraction of

wealth” (p.84).

In order to elucidate how feminicide works, Segato suggests thinking it throu-

gh a model she developed, whereby rape is understood as a form of expressive

violence,¹⁰ its end being “the expression of being in control of somebody else’s

¹⁰ Segato developed this model

in “La estructura de género y el

will” (p.75). According to this model, violence speaks its message via two axes.

mandato de la violencia” (2003)

Along the vertical axis, the aggressor evidently addresses his victim; along

the horizontal axis he addresses his peers, too: “Tose who give meaning to

the scene [of feminicide] are other men, not the victim” (pp.76-77). Tus,

following Segato’s model, feminicide “results from a commandment arising

from the gender structure to guarantee the tribute that qualifies each new

member for access to the virile brotherhood” (p.77). In Segato’s view, this axial

arrangement “is the actual architecture of gender relations” (2006, p.5; my

translation). In such an architecture, feminicide has its own terrible vibrancy,

as women’s bodies become the site for the violent reverberation of the com-

munication of masculinity, in its most distorted and intensified expression.

124

Inmaterial 05. Helena Suárez Val

¹¹ As Aleida Luján Pinedo points

Yet, vibrancy is also found in the many conversations at local, national and

out, also following Barad, the

regional levels, taking place across and between the feminist movement and

concept of feminicide is itself

the legislative bodies in Latin America, as they debate the definition of femi-

co-constituted in its entangled in-

tra-action with concepts such as

nicide,¹¹ the specificity of its local manifestations, the pros and cons of writing

patriarchy, sex-gender system, sex,

it into the legislation and the different ways in which it should be approached

gender, woman, violence or gender

violence (2015). Such a complexi-

-they discuss, for example, if the term should cover all violent deaths of wo-

ty has engendered debates along

men or whether more nuanced classifications should be put in place, as advo-

multiple lines, whose outcomes

I cannot discuss here for reasons

cated by Segato (2006). In Uruguay, when the feminist movement coalesced

of space. For more information

and burst into the spontaneous street protests mentioned above -relying on a

about these discussions, see

Terrorizing Women: Feminicide

concerted effort to monitor news, record cases, and spread information about

in the Américas (Fregoso and

Bejarano, 2010).

cases via digital media- the debate gained momentum and started reverbe-

rating through the media,¹² therefore reaching the public debate. By the end

Afer a relentless year of

murders and street protests (40

of 2017, two bills had been debated and approved in parliament: a proposal

cases were recorded in 2015 and

typifying feminicide as “crimes against women because of hate, contempt

there were actions every month)

(Suárez Val, 2015), the term

or undervaluing due to their condition as women” and designating it as an

feminicide started being used in

aggravating circumstance to homicide, and a broader bill puting forward a

the Uruguayan media. By way

framework to define and tackle all forms of gender-related violence against

of example, in January 2016, the

women. Feminist and human rights activists expressed both support and re-

newspaper Diario El País ran the

following headline to report the

servations about the content and the reach of these bills.¹³ Strong objections

murder of Yenny Chico: “First

feminicide of the year”.

to the notion of feminicide were also raised by conservative voices, on the

grounds that it might constitute a form of discrimination against men (see,

¹³ In contrast to the first bill’s

for example, Sarthou, 2015).

punitive approach, the second

bill, in line with the UN’s Model

Protocol, defines different types

In this panorama we can identify the vibrancy of feminicide as a powerful

of gender-related violence (sym-

bolic, physical, psychological,

term, as it reverberates in the entangled landscapes of news media, politics

patrimonial, etc.) to facilitate an

and activism; circulating in and through protesting bodies, theoretical texts

integrated approach to eradica-

ting it, including a budget (see

and legislation. And digital maps.

Parlamento del Uruguay, 2016).

Many feminist activists did not

support the purely punitive

Second direction: following the map

approach, as they thought that

such a bill was but a political

Following the ideas of vibrancy and reverberation, I came up with a series

quick fix (Sputnik, 2017).

Activists also called on the

of questions I wanted to ask of a digital map of feminicide: What affective

parliament to reconsider changes

signals reverberate in, from, and through it? Which are more or less vibrant?

that had reduced the second bill’s

original scope (Amnistía Interna-

Along which trails do these signals flow? What material things, both human

cional Uruguay et al., 2017).

and non-human, do they bounce off, pass through or mark? How are they

distorted, intensified, muffled, or stopped in these encounters? (Kuntsman,

2012, p.2).

Inmaterial 05.

Vibrant maps. Exploring the reverberation of feminist digital

mapping

On the thingyness of the map (or, what materialises in/through

the map-as-entanglement as it reverberates and intra-acts)

In this section, I will use the map of feminicide in Uruguay (Suárez Val, n.d.)

¹⁴ Tis realization came to me as I

to look at how the map’s thingyness takes different shapes depending on the

followed lines between feminici-

manner in which it is approached (and on what the map itself approaches).

de, maps and law.

¹⁵To represent every detail, the

Te map-as-entanglement is representation and orientation in permanent

map became the same size as the

empire, and therefore useless as

tension (de Sousa Santos, 1995, p.472).¹⁴ Boaventura De Sousa Santos

a tool for orientation (Borges

points out that “the map distorts reality through […] scale, projection and

referenced in de Sousa Santos,

1995, p.459).

symbolisation” (p.459), for decisions are made about how much detail is

shown, which features are highlighted (and which are lef less distinct) and

16 When someone asks me

“What are you up to?” whilst I

which graphic signs are used (pp.460-462). In Barad’s vocabulary: as scale,

am updating the map, my answer

projection and symbolisation enact agential cuts, phenomena materialise on

is always as follows: “I’m doing

the map.” Tis phrasing might

the map as particular forms of reality. What is represented is a distribution of

result from my entanglement in

cases of feminicide in Uruguay on a Google map.

English and Spanish (in Spanish

hacer means both “to make” and

“to do”). However, I think, with

Google Maps is as close to Borges’s emperor’s map¹⁵ as it gets, for it materia-

Coleman, that this is more about

lises the world in an already vibrant amount of detail. When I do the map,¹⁶

my body “doing with the image”,

as I feel and live with the map

markers are added in the locations where women were killed because they

(Coleman, 2013, p.13). Another

were women. Te image that emerges shows women who were young, old,

interesting slide: in Spanish “to

update” translates as actualizar,

white, black, poor, middle-class, hetero, lesbian, trans…; women who worked

which suggests that feminicide

at home, in offices, in rural setings, as sexual workers…; who were mothers,

is actualised (materialises) in the

map through our intra-acting.

who wanted to get abortions, who had not figured it out yet. Tey were bur-

ned in houses, lef in ditches, shot on streets, stabbed in restaurants. Te men

¹⁷ Ever since I started doing the

map, all known perpetrators have

who killed them were or had been their partners,¹⁷ for the most part. Some

been men. Some cases rest un-

were related to the security forces. Too many had already been denounced

resolved. In the illustrated case,

K. G. commited suicide months

by the women whom they ended up killing, women who were supposedly

afer her partner sprayed her with

under state protection. Te claim that the map is an “unofficial, and, likely,

petrol and set her on fire.

incomplete record” (Suárez Val, n.d.; my translation) materialises an(other

¹⁸ In the previous legal fra-

state) absence: the lack of official statistics on feminicide.¹⁸ De Sousa Santos

mework, gender-based violence

indicates that “[a] given phenomenon can only be represented on a given

was limited to “domestic violen-

ce”, therefore, the state did not

scale. […] As in nuclear physics, the scale creates the phenomenon” (1995,

disaggregate data about some

p.460). Simultaneously, mapping feminicide creates and reveals the pheno-

violent deaths of women that

would fall within the definition

menon and its scale. Feminicide is not only violently inscribed on the body of

of feminicide -murders of sexual

its victims. By marking -and making strange- the familiar inverted heart-sha-

workers or transgender women,

for example. Some efforts were

pe of Uruguay’s “logo-map” (Anderson, 1991, p.250), the markers on the

made, in the form of ad hoc

map show how feminicide is inscribed on the Uruguayan social body. Detail

reports (see, for example, Minis-

terio del Interior del Uruguay,

on the map intensifies.

2016). With the approval of

the aforementioned laws, more

detailed information will become

available from government

sources

126

Inmaterial 05. Helena Suárez Val

Tose areas in the map where there are markers become louder, more vibrant.

Zooming into a case, noise increases with the automatic appearance of more

labels for streets, landmarks, points of interest. Words vibrate and bounce

off each other. For example, a case recorded on 3 April 2017 took place near

streets named Independence, Happy Fate and Guyunusa¹⁹ (see Fig.2). Tese

¹⁹ Guyunusa was an indigenous

woman, from what is now

words chime with the case. In its proximity, they entangle with feminicide, ma-

Uruguay. She died in 1834 in

king meanings resonate, change, reverberate. Tey add vibrancy. Te graphic

France, where she was taken,

together with three indigenous

sign marking the spot, the familiar Google Maps marker, vibrates between

men, as part of an exhibit (Rivet

being a “referential/cognitive sign” and an “emotive/expressive sign” (de Sousa

2002). In Uruguay, feminists

have embraced her as a symbol of

Santos, 1995, p.462), loaded with meanings and affect. I (or you; anybody can

resistance.

do this) capture a screenshot, and share it, together with hashtags and links, on

various networks. It produces comments, reactions and shares, as it reverbera-

tes through social media. Te resulting cacophony signals a different cognitive

orientation towards the meaning of violent deaths of women: “single isolated

case” becomes “case of feminicide” becomes “activist cause”.²⁰ Furthermore, as

²⁰ Or, in some encounters, it

becomes “those man-hating

Ahmed has shown, orientation is also linked to emotion, feeling and affect, to

feminists!” As Kuntsman points

touching and being touched (Ahmed, 2006, p.2014).

out, the map circulates within

a “regime of suspicion, where

digitalised evidence is always

Humans in the map

already suspected of being pho-

toshopped, made-up, fabricated

-and as such, these testimonies

As an image on a screen, the map is a thing that can be touched (physically,

fail to move, cause annoyance or

mockery instead of compassion”

through touch-screens or mouse-clicks; digitally, by marking it with femi-

(2012, p.3).

nicide sites). Te map can also touch, “creating an immediate emotional

response” (Kuntsman, 2012, p.3). Screens are “expressive surfaces” ( Jones,

2017) and both them and the images they display, are “affective, intense

and interactive, as well as being representational” (p.32). Teir materiality

emerges, as described by N. Katherine Hayles, from the inter(and intra)

action between a work’s²¹ physical elements, “the user’s interactions with

²¹ Hayles is writing here about

electronic literary texts, but her

the work and the interpretive strategies she develops -strategies that include

reasoning can be applied to the

physical manipulations as well as conceptual frameworks” (2002, p.33). Te

map.

different ways in which the map is touched -zooming, clicking, swiping and

scrolling- alter the map’s materiality (see Lammes, 2016). Te orientation

and the feelings towards feminicide also change, as the map proposes -in the

sense of “lending of weight, an incentive toward, a pressure in the direction of

one trajectory of action rather than another” (Bennet, 2009, p.103)- a spe-

cific conceptual and emotional framework, which can be accepted, rejected,

or modified. But as well as touching the map, humans are also in the map. A

blue dot marks a device’s current location: a visual cue of the fact that you are

²² Other representations

tangled in this entanglement. In this way, the map reveals that subjectivity

entangled in the map include,

for example, the Uruguayan

is “always and already entangled and touching” (Warfield, 2016, p.2) with

“imagined community” (Ander-

expressions of feminicide.²² Tere is also another way in which the map can

son, 1991) with its constitutive

values, traditions, etc.

touch you: as you look at the map on a (retina?) display, the map makes an

128

Inmaterial 05. Helena Suárez Val

²³ We need to remember the

impression²³, you become affected by it.²⁴ Even if you look away, the image

‘press’ in an impression. It allows

captured in your retina lingers behind your eyelids, its affective signals mo-

us to associate the experience of

ving through reverberating circuits in your neural network, to be encoded in

having an emotion with the very

affect of one surface upon ano-

“memory neurons”, “keeping information about the past available for future

ther, an affect that leaves its mark

decision making” (Ribeiro and Nicolelis, 2010, p.45). Te map inscribes you,

or trace” (Ahmed, 2014, p.6).

the map is now in you.

²⁴ People who see the map ofen

exclaim: “¡Qué fuerte!”, literally

“How strong!”, a colloquial

According to Hayles, “inscription technologies” are devices which “must ini-

formulation meaning something

tiate material changes that can be read as marks” (2002, p.24). Upon intra-ac-

is powerful, incredibly sad, and/

or hard to believe.

ting with the map once, twice, many times, human bodies might be inscribed

with the concept of feminicide -the inscribed signal bouncing through them,

reverberating into human networks, re-inscribed and remediated (p.5), as it

cycles through news item to map marker, to screenshot, to hashtag, to shared

post; and then through placards, street marches, sound performances…

towards law amendments and, ultimately, social change.

Artificial intelligence

Fig.3 Screen capture (11/08/2013) showing

YouTube suggestions for the search terms

“See how...”. Te first suggestion reads “See

how someone puts it into someone”, and the

second one, “See how (they) rape women”.

Tis image was captured and posted on

Facebook in the context of the digital art/

activism project Ver Comentarios (Bianchic,

Delgado, and Suárez Val, 2016).

As I turned and turned the idea of inscription through reverberation, I reali-

sed that I had been following reverberation in only one direction: from the

Tere is at least one other in-

map towards and through the human.²⁵ In what follows, I will take another

teresting “human” direction: tra-

cing reverberation back towards

direction.

moments of data gathering

and inscription onto the map. I

Te map is data (about feminicide in Uruguay); but it is also made of digital

explored this question in my MA

data mater which “consists of physical inscriptions, […] bits […] stored in

dissertation Affect amplifiers: fe-

minicide, feminist activists and the

the form of magnetic polarities on hard drives, electric charges on flash me-

politics of counting and mapping

mory cards, or microscopic pits on the surface of optical disks” (Casemajor,

gender-related murders of women.

2015, p.7). Te map is disassembled into bits relayed across the network in

²⁶ Te reference is to “relations-

packets, passing through routers which decide the most efficient paths to take

hips (between companies)”. I

found it useful to think with the

depending on “time, politics and relationships” (Code.org, 2015)²⁶. Teir de-

omission.

cisions “change over time as [their] knowledge changes” (EURIM, 1999, p.1).

Inmaterial 05.

Vibrant maps. Exploring the reverberation of feminist digital

mapping

Te map-as-entanglement reverberates in a myriad of directions, as electricity,

light and radio waves, before its bits are “re-assembled in the proper order at

their final destination” (EURIM, 1999, p.2). It is significant that routers learn

as bits pass through them, and that this learning involves an understanding of

human politics and relationships. I wonder what else routers could learn in

their intra-action with bits about feminicide and gender structures.

A more complex kind of “learning machine” in this entanglement are the

algorithms behind Google, Facebook and other digital companies, which

collect, analyse and interpret (all/our/any) data, and decide which bits to

foreground for us. As Deborah Lupton remarks, “[a]lgorithms and other

elements of sofware […] are generative, a productive form of power” (2013,

p.4). Algorithms learn from us, and make decisions which materialise diffe-

rent worlds for us, through our expressive screens. In their discussion of the

limits and challenges of algorithms, Marijn Janssen and George Kuk describe

how “the algorithmic materiality is a complex socio-technical assemble [sic.]

of people, technologies, code developers and designers” and link algorithms

to Foucault’s conception of power and governmentality²⁷ (2016, p.375). As we

²⁷ Te “contact between the tech-

nologies of domination of others

saw above with Hayles, discourse, practices, power and bodies, intra-act in/

and those of the self ” (Foucault,

through the materiality of technology. Tis includes gender technologies²⁸:

1988, p.19 cited in Deveaux,

1994, p.245; emphasis added).

algorithms are gendered.

²⁸ Afer Teresa de Lauretis (1987).

Te gendered, sexualised and racialized aspects to algorithms’ learning and

decision-making processes have been the recent focus of controversies about

Google Search (Burgess, 2017b) and Facebook’s offensive-content removal

policies (Constine, 2016), amongst others. Notably, in 2013 the UN used this

premise as the basis of an anti-sexism campaign displaying real (and really)

sexist autocomplete suggestions whenever terms such as “women shouldn’t”

or “women need to” were writen in a search engine (Huffington Post UK,

2013). In Uruguay, a few weeks before that campaigned was launched, a small

artistic collective -in which I participated- had already noted the phenome-

non and decided to start their own, much smaller, campaign (Fig.3).

Tus, if algorithms can learn to perform gender-based violence (in ways

that have real consequences for embodied humans), surely, they should be

able to learn how to combat such violence. Wired UK recently reported that

“tech giants are using artificial intelligence to prevent suicide and self-harm”

(Burgess, 2017a). Tey hope to achieve this by programming algorithms to

identify content and search terms that suggest that a potential action might

be taken by a given user, who is then provided with suitable search results

or links. Visions of Big Brother come to mind, yet, this suggests algorithms

could possibly be programmed to address sexism, or even to detect poten-

130

Inmaterial 05. Helena Suárez Val

tial acts of gender-related violence. Tere is, however, another way to think

through this.

Te thing-in-phenomena that is Feminicidio Uruguay, an entanglement of

data, emotion, bodies, discourse and practice, is part of a vibrant series of

similarly entangled things: a map showing streets in Montevideo named

afer women (DATA.UY, 2017); other maps of feminicide in Latin America

(Ramírez, n.d.; Salguero, n.d.; Geografía Crítica, 2016); or maps of women’s

activism (Red Latinoamericana de Mujeres Defensoras de Derechos Sociales

y Ambientales, et al., 2017). Not to mention a plethora of websites, social

media pages and accounts, podcasts, mobile chat groups and other cyber-

feminist²⁹ actions pushing towards and beyond a “feminist internet” (see

²⁹ Here, cyberfeminist refers

to a “feminist appropriation

Feminist Principles of the Internet, 2017). As vibrant, multiplying feminist

of information and computer

bits -entangled into unpredictable light, electricity and radio waves- reverbe-

technology” (Paasonen, 2011,

p.335). I use this term to gesture

rate through Google and other tech giants’ infrastructures, would their very

towards the map’s insertion in

gendered materiality not be configured and reconfigured in their intra-action?

the entangled genealogy of cy-

berfeminism, an important angle

Are the “master’s tools” (Lorde, 1983) immune to affect, or could feminist

of enquiry that I cannot develop

activists’ disobedient appropriation of everyday technology alter the very

here for reasons of space.

material structure of the internet?

Conclusion

“[T]here is an emerging acknowledgement that, in part,

the batle for new worlds is a batle over space

and the production of spatial imaginaries.”

(Cobarrubias and Pickles, 2009, p.37)

In this essay, I have explored the potential uses of the notions of vibrancy, re-

verberation and intra-action to develop a novel methodology to research the

effects, and affects, of digital maps disobediently appropriated by feminist ac-

tivists to record cases of feminicide. Trough an exploration of my own map

of feminicide in Uruguay, I have shown how digital maps can be understood

as co-constituted in data, practices, discourses, emotions, light, electricity,

radio waves, cables, routers, neurons, algorithms, human and non-human bo-

dies… -things-in-phenomena, things with their own vibrant thingly power. I

have presented how thinking with vibrancy helps to highlight various aspects

of these maps’ reverberation through bodies -both human and nonhuman-,

which follow the affective signals emited from/through the map, shaping

intra-acting elements in the entanglement.

I find it necessary to note some important issues that fall outside the scope of

this essay but which could be further developed. Tey include: problemati-

Inmaterial 05.

Vibrant maps. Exploring the reverberation of feminist digital

mapping

zing the very use of digital maps as a tool, given mapping’s inherent belonging

in capitalist, colonial and patriarchal entanglements;³⁰ exploring the reverbe-

³⁰ Tis tension is explored, for

example, by Sebastián Cobarru-

rations traversing feminism and feminist activism, in the (never unidirectio-

bias and John Pickles (2009).

nal) intra-action with/in platforms created and maintained by powerful mul-

³¹ Some scholars have compe-

tinationals;³¹ following the potentially essentialising and/or heteronormative

llingly argued that “networked

reverberations of the patern of feminicide that emerges in the map; and, not

communications technologies

[…] are profoundly depolitici-

least, examining the potential role of the map in the communication between

zing” (Dean, 2005, p.1). Others,

perpetrators described in Segato’s model of expressive violence.

however, have focused on

pointing to the “promise” as well

as the “pitfalls” of digital feminist

More atention could also be paid to another important potential direction of

activism (Mendes, Ringrose, and

research: the reverberations of the map across the landscape IRL. As the map

Keller, 2018).

materialises a location as a “site of feminicide”, and then, in concert with other

actions, as a “site of protest”, “site of performance” or “site of memorial”: how

is the materiality of the landscape itself altered? In order to extend a metho-

dology, one possibility would be to explore how notions of vibrancy, rever-

beration and entanglement could be thought through “material geographies”

(Tolia-Kelly, 2013).

Taking new materialist approaches as a starting point, in this work I have

explored fresh lines of thought to stimulate creative methodologies for resear-

ching -and practising- digital activism around feminicide in Uruguay and

Latin America. Te proposed approach reveals the usefulness of atending

to the vibrancy and reverberation of things as a means to reveal both their

affects and effects. Bearing this in mind, I want to conclude with a strong re-

commendation, which springs from these ideas: activists’ disobedient doings,

especially their appropriation of digital objects, could benefit from integra-

ting an alertness to the vibrancy of mater, and a sensitivity to how emotions,

practices and discourses reverberate and leave their imprint towards/through

not only human, but also non-human bodies.

I thank Rebecca Coleman, Nirmal Puwar, Noortje Marres and two anonymous

reviewers for their critical reading and insightful feedback on this essay.

132

Inmaterial 05. Helena Suárez Val

References

Ahmed, S., 2006. Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies,

12(4), pp.543-574.

Ahmed, S., 2014. Te Cultural Politics of Emotion. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Amnistía Internacional Uruguay, et al., 2017. Comunicado por Ley Integral que Garantice a las Mujeres una

Vida Libre de Violencia de Género. Cotidiano Mujer, [online] Available at: <htp://www.cotidianomujer.org.uy/

sitio/91-campanas/declaraciones/1726-comunicado-por-ley-integral-que-garantice-a-las-mujeres-una-vida-li-

bre-de-violencia-de-genero> [Accessed 2 November 2017].

Anderson, B., 1991. Census, Map, Museum. In: Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of

Nationalism. London: Verso. pp163-185.

Barad, K., 2001. Scientific Literacy -> Agential Literacy = (Learning + Doing) Science Responsibly. In: M. May-

berry, B. Subramaniam and L. Weasel, eds. Feminist Science Studies: A New Generation. New York: Routledge. pp.

226-246.

Barad, K., 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Mater and Meaning.

Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Bennet, J., 2009. Vibrant Mater: A Political Ecology of Tings. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Bernal Sarmiento, C., Lorente Acosta, M., Roth, F. and Zambrano, M., 2014. Modelo de protocolo latinoamerica-

no de investigación de las muertes violentas de mujeres por razones de género (femicidio/feminicidio). Entidad

de las Naciones Unidas para la Igualdad de Género y el Empoderamiento de las Mujeres (ONU Mujeres); Oficina

del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos (OACNUDH). [online] Available at:

<htp://www.unwomen.org/es/digital-library/publications/2014/8/modelo-de-protocolo-latinoamericano>

[Accessed 8 March 2015]

Bianchic, E., Delgado, P. and Suárez Val, H., 2016. Ver Comentarios. [video online] Available at: <htps://www.

youtube.com/channel/UCwGtGRuKJ8TLbPxVH9AjZOg> [Accessed 22 December 2017].

Braidoti, R., 2006. Affirming the Affirmative: On Nomadic Affectivity. Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging

Knowledge, [online] 11/12. Available at: <htp://www.rhizomes.net/issue11/braidoti.html#_fnref1> [Accessed

21 April 2017].

Braidoti, R., 2013. Te Posthuman. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA, USA: Polity Press.

Burgess, M., 2017a. How Tech Giants Are Using AI to Prevent Self-Harm and Suicide. WIRED UK, [online] Available

at: <htp://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-safety-self-harm-suicide-ai-instagram> [Accessed 6 March 2017].

Burgess, M., 2017b. Just like Humans, Artificial Intelligence Can Be Sexist and Racist. WIRED UK, [online] Avai-

lable at: <htp://www.wired.co.uk/article/creating-transparent-ai-algorithms-machine-learning> [Accessed 11

January 2016].

Inmaterial 05.

Vibrant maps. Exploring the reverberation of feminist digital

mapping

Casemajor, N., 2015. Digital Materialisms: Frameworks for Digital Media Studies. Westminster Papers in Communi-

cation and Culture, 10(1), pp.4-17.

Cobarrubias, S. and Pickles, J., 2009. Spacing Movements: Te Turn to Cartographies and Mapping Practices in

Contemporary Social Movements. In: B. Warf and S. Arias, eds. Te Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.

New York: Routledge. pp.36-58.

Code.org., 2015. Te Internet: Packets, Routing and Reliability. [video online] Available at: <htps://www.youtu-

be.com/watch?v=AYdF7b3nMto> [Accessed 23 April 2017].

Coleman, R., 2013. Sociology and the Virtual: Interactive Mirrors, Representational Tinking and Intensive

Power. Te Sociological Review, 61(1), pp.1-20.

Coleman, R., and Ringrose, J., eds., 2013. Deleuze and Research Methodologies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Constine, J., 2016. Facebook Spares Humans by Fighting Offensive Photos with AI. TechCrunch, [online] Available

at: <htps://techcrunch.com/2016/05/31/terminating-abuse/> [Accessed 31 May 2016].

Crampton, J. W., 2009. Cartography: Performative, Participatory, Political. Progress in Human Geography, 33(6),

pp.840-848.

DATA.UY., 2017. A Tu Nombre. [online] Available at: <htp://atunombre.uy/> [Accessed 23 April 2017].

De Lauretis, T., 1987. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Teory, Film, and Fiction, A Midland book.

Indiana University Press.

Dean, J., 2005. Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics. Cultural Politics, 1(1), pp.51-74.

Deleuze, G., and Guatari, F.,1988. A Tousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated from French by

B. Massumi. Oxford: Athlone Press, Athlone Contemporary European Tinkers Series.

Delgado, H., 2016. Irrupción sonora en la vida cotidiana. [interview online] Available at: <htp://vouyart.com.uy/

entrevistas/irrupcion-sonora-en-la-vida-cotidiana-entrevista-a-hekatherina-delgado/> [Accessed 8 March 2018].

Deveaux, M., 1994. Feminism and Empowerment: A Critical Reading of Foucault. Feminist Studies, 20(2), pp.223-247.

Diario El País (Uruguay), 2016. Primer feminicidio del año: una mujer fue asesinada de varias puñaladas. Diario El

País (Uruguay), [online] Available at: <htp://www.elpais.com.uy/informacion/primer-feminicidio-mujer-asesi-

nada.html> [Accessed 12 January 2016].

Ellis, C., and Bochner, A. P., 2000. Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity: Researcher as Subject. In:

N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln, eds. Handbook of Qualitative Research. 2nd ed. Tousand Oaks, CA, US: SAGE

Publications.

Encinas, A., 2016. Feminicidio, capitalismo y colonialismo en Latinoamérica. El salmón contracorriente, [online]

Available at: <htp://www.elsalmoncontracorriente.es/?Feminicidio-capitalismo-y> [Accessed 21 March 2016].

134

Inmaterial 05. Helena Suárez Val

EURIM, 1999. Internet Technology Explained: Hosting, Caching and Mirroring. Background Paper, Network Go-

vernance Working Party, November. [online] Available at: <htp://www.eurim.org.uk/activities/netgov/9911pa-

perinternetech.pdf> [Accessed 19 March 2016].

Feminist Principles of the Internet, 2017. GenderIT.org. [online] Available at: <htp://feministinternet.net/en/

about> [Accessed 15 April 2017].

Foucault, M., 1988. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Edited by L. H. Martin, H. Gutman,

and P. H. Huton. Amherst: University of Massachusets Press.

Fox, N. J., 2015. Emotions, Affects and the Production of Social Life. Te British Journal of Sociology, 66(2),

pp.301-318.

Fox, N. J., and P. Alldred, 2015. Inside the Research-Assemblage: New Materialism and the Micropolitics of Social

Inquiry. Sociological Research Online, [online] 20(2). Available at: <htp://www.socresonline.org.uk/20/2/6.

html> [Accessed 8 March 2018].

Fraser, N., 2013. Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis. Brooklyn, NY: Verso Books.

Fregoso, R-L., and Bejarano, C. eds., 2010. Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas. Durham and London:

Duke University Press.

Geografía Crítica, 2016. Violencia feminicida Ecuador a 2016. Google Maps. [online] Available at: <htps://www.

google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1GJGbiCYkTZUS2ryoq3tCiW4txBs&ll=-1.421683061887858%2C-78.9

1224145000001&z=6>

Hayles, K. N., 2002. Writing Machines, [mediawork pamphlet]. Boston, MA, US: MIT Press.

Huffington Post UK, 2013. UN Women Uses Real Google Searches to Illustrate Reality Of Global Sexism.

Te Huffington Post, [online] Available at: <htp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/10/21/un-google-sexis-

m_n_4134756.html> [Accessed 21 October 2013].

iconoclasistas, 2016. Manual of Collective Mapping. iconoclasistas. [online] Available at: <htps://issuu.com/ico-

noclasistas/docs/manual_mapping_ingles> [Accessed 8 March 2018].

Janssen, M., and Kuk, G., 2016. Te Challenges and Limits of Big Data Algorithms in Technocratic Governance.

Open and Smart Governments: Strategies, Tools, and Experiences, 33(3), pp.371-377.

Jones, M., 2017. Expressive Surfaces: Te Case of the Designer Vagina. Teory, Culture & Society, 34(7-8), pp.29-50.

Karatzogianni, A., 2012. WikiLeaks Affects: Ideology, Conflict and the Revolutionary Virtual. In: A. Karatzogianni

and A. Kuntsman, eds. Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion: Feelings, Affect and Technological Change.

London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp.52-73.

Karatzogianni, A., and Kuntsman, A., 2012. Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion: Feelings, Affect and Technolo-

gical Change. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Inmaterial 05.

Vibrant maps. Exploring the reverberation of feminist digital

mapping

Kember, S., and Zylinska, J., 2010. Creative Media between Invention and Critique, or What’s Still at Stake in

Performativity?. Culture Machine, 11, pp.1-6.

Kuntsman, A., 2009. Figurations of Violence and Belonging: Queerness, Migranthood and Nationalism in Cyberspace

and Beyond. Oxford: Peter Lang.

Kuntsman, A., 2012. Introduction: Affective Fabrics of Digital Cultures. In: A. Karatzogianni and A. Kuntsman,

eds. Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion: Feelings, Affect and Technological Change. London: Palgrave Macmi-

llan UK. pp.1-17.

Kwan, M-P., 2002. Feminist Visualization: Re-Envisioning GIS as a Method in Feminist Geographic Research.

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 92(4), pp.645-661.

Lammes, S., 2016. Digital Mapping Interfaces: From Immutable Mobiles to Mutable Images. New Media & Society, pp.1-15.

Latour, B., 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Teory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lorde, A., 1983. Te Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. In: G. Anzaldúa and C. Moraga,

eds. Tis Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table, Women of Color

Press. pp.98-105.

Luján Pinelo, A., 2015. Un Acercamiento Filosófico al Concepto Femicidio/Feminicidio. Feminicidio.net, [online]

Available at: <htp://www.feminicidio.net/articulo/acercamiento-filos%C3%B3fico-al-concepto-femicidio-femi-

nicidio> [Accessed 11 February 2017].

Lupton, D., 2013. Digital Sociology: Beyond the Digital to the Sociological. In: N. Obaldiston, C. Strong, and H.

Forbes-Mewet, eds. The Australian Sociological Association 2013 Conference Proceedings: Reflections, Intersections

and Aspirations, 50 Years of Australian Sociology. Melbourne: TASA, [online] Available at: <htp://hdl.handle.

net/2123/9729> [Accessed 22 April 2017].

McLafferty, S. L., 2002. Mapping Women’s Worlds: Knowledge, Power and the Bounds of GIS. Gender, Place &

Culture, 9(3), pp.263-269.

McLafferty, S. L., 2005. Women and GIS: Geospatial Technologies and Feminist Geographies. Cartographica: Te

International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 40(4), pp.37-45.

Mendes, K. D., Ringrose, J. and Keller, J., 2018. # MeToo and the Promise and Pitfalls of Challenging Rape Culture

through Digital Feminist Activism. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 25(2), pp.236-246.

Ministerio del Interior del Uruguay, 2016. Día Internacional de la Eliminación de la Violencia contra la Mujer.

Observatorio Nacional sobre Violencia y Criminalidad. [online] Available at: <htps://www.minterior.gub.uy/

images/datos_25112016.pdf> [Accessed 8 March 2018].

Monárrez Fragoso, J. E., 2010. Te Victims of Cuidad Juárez Feminicide: Sexually Fetishized Commodities. In:

R-L. Fregoso and C. Bejarano, eds. Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas. Durham and London: Duke

University Press. pp.59-69.

136

Inmaterial 05. Helena Suárez Val

Olivera, M., 2010. Violencia Feminicida: Violence against Women and Mexico’s Structural Crisis. In: R-L. Fregoso and

C. Bejarano, eds. Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas. Durham and London: Duke University Press. pp.49-58.

Oxford University Press, Oxford Dictionaries | English. Online [online] Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available

through: <htps://en.oxforddictionaries.com/> [Accessed 22 April 2017].

Paasonen, S., 2011. Revisiting Cyberfeminism. Communications, 36(3), pp.335-352.

Parikka, J., 2012. New Materialism as Media Teory: Medianatures and Dirty Mater. Communication and Critical/

Cultural Studies, 9(1), pp.95-100.

Parlamento del Uruguay, 2016. Proyecto de Ley Integral de Violencia Basada en Género. [online] Available at:

<htps://parlamento.gub.uy/noticiasyeventos/noticias/node/86302> [Accessed 18 October 2016].

Pavlovskaya, M., and St. Martin, K., 2007. Feminism and Geographic Information Systems: From a Missing Ob-

ject to a Mapping Subject. Geography Compass, 1(3), pp.583-606.

Plantin, J-C., 2015. Te Politics of Mapping Platforms: Participatory Radiation Mapping afer the Fukushima

Daiichi Disaster. Media, Culture & Society, 37(6), pp.904-921.

Probyn, E., 1993. Sexing the Self: Gendered Positions in Cultural Studies. London : Routledge.

Ramírez, I., n.d. Ellas Tienen Nombre. Ellas Tienen Nombre. [online] Available at: <htp://www.ellastienennom-

bre.org/> [Accessed 23 April 2017].

Red Latinoamericana de Mujeres Defensoras de Derechos Sociales y Ambientales, ACKnowl-EJ, and Censat Agua

Viva, 2017. Mujeres Latinoamericanas Tejiendo Territorios. Environmental Justice Atlas. [online] Available at:

<htp://ejatlas.org/featured/mujeres> [Accessed 23 April 2017].

Renold, E. and Mellor, D., 2013. Deleuze and Guatari in the Nursery. In: R. Coleman and J. Ringrose, eds. Deleuze

and Research Methodologies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp.23-41.

Ribeiro, S. and Nicolelis, M., 2010. Network Reactivation. In: R. Stickgold and M.P. Walker, eds. Te Neuroscience

of Sleep. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. pp.44-51.

Rivet, P., 2002. Los Últimos Charrúas. Translated from French by M. Sanz. [online] Available at: <htp://puebloso-

riginarios.com/textos/charruas/charrua10.html> [Accessed 23 April 2017]

Salguero, M. n.d. Feminicidios en México (2016-Mar 2017). Google Maps. México. [online] Available at: <htps://

www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=174IjBzP-fl_6wpRHg5pkGSj2egE&ll=23.942983359872816%2C-

101.9008685&z=5> [Accessed 6 July 2017].

Sarthou, H., 2015. Indisciplina Partidaria, La Columna de Hoenir Sarthou: FEMINICIDIO. Voces, [online] Avai-

lable at: <htp://www.voces.com.uy/articulos-1/indisciplinapartidarialacolumnadehoenirsarthoufeminicidio>

[Accessed 19 March 2015].

Inmaterial 05.

Vibrant maps. Exploring the reverberation of feminist digital

mapping

Segato, R. L., 2003. La estructura de género y el mandato de la violación. In: Las Estructuras Elementales de La

Violencia. Ensayos sobre génro entre la antropología, el psicoanálisis y los derechos humanos. Buenos Aires: Universidad

Nacional de Quilmes/Prometeo. pp.21-54.

Segato, R. L., 2006. Qué es un Feminicidio: Notas Para un Debate Emergente. Brasilia: Departamento de Antropolo-

gia, Universidade de Brasília; Série Antropologia 401.

Segato, R. L., 2010. Territory, Sovereignity, and Crimes of the Second State. In: R-L. Fregoso and C. Bejarano, eds.

Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas. Durham and London: Duke University Press. pp.70-92.

Segato, R. L., 2016. La guerra contra las mujeres. Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños.

Sousa Santos, B. de, 1995. Law: A Map of Misreading. In: Toward a New Common Sense: Law, Science, and Politics in

the Paradigmatic Transition. New York: Routledge. pp.456-473.

Sputnik, 2017. Proyecto de Ley de Feminicidio en Uruguay es Solo un Parche al Código Penal. Sputnik, [online]

Available at: <htps://mundo.sputniknews.com/americalatina/201705061068954036-codigo-penal-feminici-

dios/> [Accessed 5 June 2017].

Stinson, L., 2016. Facebook Reactions, the Totally Redesigned Like Buton, Is Here. WIRED UK, [online] Avai-

lable at: <htps://www.wired.com/2016/02/facebook-reactions-totally-redesigned-like-buton/> [Accessed 24

February 2016].

Suárez Val, H., 2015. Feminicidio en Uruguay 2015. ZeeMaps/Google Maps. [online] Available at: <htp://bit.ly/

feminicidioUY2015> [Accessed 8 March 2018].

Suárez Val, H., n.d. Feminicidio Uruguay. Google Maps. [online] Available at: <htp://feminicidiouruguay.net>

[Accessed 8 March 2018].

Tagg, P., 1994. Subjectivity and Soundscape, Motorbikes and Music. In: H. Järviluoma, ed. Soundscapes. Essays on

Vroom and Moo. Tampere: Department of Folk Tradition. pp.48-66.

Tolia-Kelly, D. P., 2013. Te Geographies of Cultural Geography III: Material Geographies. Vibrant Maters and

Risking Surface Geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 37(1), pp.153-160.

Warfield, K., 2016. Making the Cut: An Agential Realist Examination of Selfies and Touch. Social Media + Society,

2(2), pp.1-10.

Williams, R., 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

138

Inmaterial 05. Helena Suárez Val

Helena Suárez Val

Goldsmiths, University of London

She is a social communications producer, focused

creating digital communication strategies and

cultural events in the areas of human rights and

feminism. She has worked in London, Johannes-

burg and Montevideo, for organisations such as

Amnesty International’s International Secretariat,

the Global Call to Action against Poverty and

Cotidiano Mujer. She has recently completed an

MA in Gender, Media and Culture at Goldsmiths,

UK and will continue her research as a doctoral

student at Warwick University. She is the creator

of feminicidiouruguay.net and, together with Elena

Fonseca, co-produces the weekly feminist podcast

#Informativo Feminista de Nunca en Domingo.

Fecha de recepción del artículo: 10 de Marzo de 2018

Fecha de aceptación del artículo: 8 de Mayo de 2018

Inmaterial 05.

Vibrant maps. Exploring the reverberation of feminist digital

mapping