PhD Unal Abaday Didem

Transnational Contexts and Digital Muslim Feminisms in Times of Right-Wing Populism

Tieteellinen tutkimus / siihen pohjautuva työ | Kaksivuotinen

This project scrutinizes conditions, forms and possibilities of Muslim feminist digital activism within increasingly diverse and complex feminist counter-publics in contemporary Finland and Turkey. Using interviews, digital media and other visual/textual data, it aims to provide comprehensive insights into how Muslim feminists’ interventions into the power asymmetries in feminist counter-publics and their transnational feminist awareness can play a critical role in reconfiguring the feminist political agenda and confronting reactionary populisms. Focusing on a Muslim majority and Muslim minority context, the project shall expose transnational flows of Muslim feminist activist practices beyond the rigidities of methodological nationalism and center-periphery or “First World-Third World” imaginaries. Positioning local Muslim feminisms within the global matrix of feminist resistance, the project shall demonstrate that the efficacy of intersectional feminist responses to reactionary forces in contemporary tumultuous times highly depends on how feminist subjects navigate tensions of inclusivity, difference, and pluralism in feminist politics of defiance. Focusing on the digital as an analytical means to study the enactment of feminist positions in loose networks beyond the rigidities of collective identity, it explores repertoires of contention, coalition building across difference, changed modes of communication and new configurations of Muslim feminist activism across national borders that can substantively and self-reflexively engage with issues of difference, politics of location and power asymmetries among feminisms. Within this frame, the project aims to contribute to a nuanced understanding of Muslim feminists’ digital narratives on multiple and overlapping oppressions across national frontiers as regenerative sources for intersectional and inclusive collective feminist politics in the context of rising right-wing populisms.