Safe Spaces, Self-Care and Empowerment – Netzfeminismus im Sicherheitsdispositiv

Abstract

Safe Spaces, Self-Care and Empowerment – Web Feminism and the Dispositif of Security During the last decades, security has turned into a contested and ambiguous leitmotif of western societies in the 21st century. Feminist net activist’s debates have also concentrated on security discourses, albeit with a somewhat different focal point: Feminist blogs as well as feminist conferences often focused on the creation of so called safe(r) spaces. Parallel, empowerment and self-care are discussed as important strategies to brace oneself for online abuse and harassment. Katrin M. Kämpf analyzes if and how far these debates predominantly argue within the logic of the dispositifs of security, gouvernmentality and dynamics of precarization. What would it mean for feminist movements if current feminist debates largely reproduced mechanisms of governing and lost sight of „the art of not being governed like that“ (Foucault 1992).