Body and emotion at the feminist protest: the Rio de Janeiro Slut Walk (Marcha das Vadias)

Abstract

Bodies and emotions have always been important political resources for activists, although only recently have they become objects of social movements’ studies. In the SlutWalk (Marcha das Vadias), an anti-rape global feminist protest, demonstrators’ bodies constitute the very meanings of collective action, since they are mobilized to produce new codes about sexual violence and sexuality. The employment of nudity and “sexy” clothes by the participants are some of the ways by which the body is used to produce and communicate those meanings. The protesters’ performative embodiment aim to produce symbolic efficacy by evoking emotions connected to humor, provocation and self-affirmation, and overlooking those associated to pain and victimization, which are central at other anti-rape protests. The bodily and emotional repertoires of the protest, which result from symbolic and material work done by activists in and from specific cultural and interactional contexts, re-elaborate the feminist identity politics, as they are used by the Slutwalkers and other feminist groups to delineate fluid boundaries of mutual differentiation.