FCJ-197 Entanglements with Media and Technologies in the Occupy Movement

Abstract

This essay explores the paradox of activists using corporate-owned platforms—the ‘master’s tools’ (Lorde, 1984)—in the context of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Grounded in findings from interviews with 30 women activists from eight North American Occupy sites, this essay reveals the frictions that result from the entangled paradox between philosophies embedded within technologies and activists’ philosophies. We document entanglements between corporate platforms and radical democratic ideals, and subsequent frictions between activists’ ideals and more pragmatic, DIY practices. We also investigate frictions between aspirations of openness, and the realities of surveillance and infiltration by the police state. We examine entanglements through the theoretical lenses of ‘connective labor’ (Boler et al, 2014), ‘veillance’ (Mann, 2004), and the ‘master’s tools’ (Lorde, 1984), and lay the groundwork for ‘queering the binary of individuals and groups’ (Barad, 2012) and recognising the non-linear, dynamic relations of social movements.

Keywords

• Occupy
• media activism
• online activism
• platforms