Finding solidarity through feeling: affective negotiations in organizing for feminist activism in Turkey
Feminist and Queer Imaginaries of Hope in a Turbulent Era, Edward Elgar , ss.181-198, 2026
- Yayın Türü: Kitapta Bölüm / Araştırma Kitabı
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.4337/9781035336845.00017
- Yayınevi: Edward Elgar
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.181-198
- Anahtar Kelimeler: Affective solidarity, Anger, Feminist movement, Hope, Turkey
- TED Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
In Turkey, anger, hope, frustration, and relief are not only central to feminist and queer activism but also, at times, become driving forces for forming solidarities and organizing resistance. With this in mind, this chapter traces how women activists negotiate their involvement in the feminist movement in Turkey. Employing Hemmings’ (2012) framework of affective dissonance and affective solidarity, which underscores the significance of centering experiences of emotional uneasiness to understand the formation of feminist solidarities, I argue that women activists in this research switch between feelings of anger and hope when explaining their involvement in the movement, their motivation to stay in it, and the ways in which they build spaces of feminist resistance and resilience in Turkey. I propose that these negotiations between positive and negative emotions lead to resilient solidarities that keep re/forming under the current restricted civil space in Turkey. Drawing on data driven from 30 open-ended interviews with middle-class, university-educated activists engaged in online and offline feminist activism in Istanbul, this research contributes to the literature on affect theory and gender activism literature in Turkey by focusing on moments of emotional uneasiness (affective dissonance) to analyze feminist activism and sustainable feminist solidarities.