Revised Abstract
In the context of current political situation in Brazil, this article cannot confine itself in an analysis of resistance networks but their authors wish their work engages more clearly with the necessity that has arised during recent Brazilian election where usage of fake news and media manipiulation was demonstrated several time, and where many resistance network emerging from women organisations have been actively silenced, we need this article to contribute to "develop the grassroots power and broad social vision that might make real change? " in a process of “globalization from below.”
Title: A feminist methodology to understand Free software territory: the
“Technoxamanismo” and “Baobaxia” network in Brazil
Abstract:
This article will discuss the process of building Free Software-based digital infrastructures for communities in the Northeast of Brazil. In the context of the misuse of centralised social networks during latest brazilian elections[1], and the resistence from feminist networks, we will support and follow the Brazilian movement Technoxamanism, and along with them, we will present them as networks are to be understood as strategies to take back the future [2]
First, we will focus on the project Baobáxia, “a rota os Baobas” an “eventually connected network” composed of a number of “Mucuas” (nodes) located in over 200 communities of the Mocambos, a network of Brazilian quilombos (freed slave communities). We will provide the background of the network and characterize their unique discourse as both the development of the language and of the networks are largely understudied, hidding the benefice of these
aparatuses to a broader understanding of decentralized network, intersectional and anticolonial studies, as a situated model of resistance.
Then, we will proceed to explore its intersections with other projects
for alternative computing in the country, such as “metarecyclagem” where
a group of Brazilian technologists and artists have been promoting the
“up-cycling” of computing technologies and their usage for artistic
expression through regular “Gambiarra” (translated as “makeshift”) and
“HiperTropicalProgramacao” events alongside several independent
technical and political collectives in the country. Another political
articulation of the reflection on the appropriation of digital
technologies has given rise to practises which are identified by local
activists and artists as “technoshamanism.”
We describe the work we conducted in the context of Baobáxia through a
series of interviews and direct participation in the activities of the
network, exploring their specificity vis-à-vis activist networks in
Europe where we are also implicated, such as the experience of bricolabs
which have been active for the past 18 years.
The research problem we will explore has to do with question of the role
and place of digital activism in the Brazilian context, and how a “third
technoscape” emerges from an anti-colonial position and cultural
narrative reappropriation, leading to the invention of “singular
technologies”. We will focus on how local “knowledges” of oppressed
Brazilian groups are translated into the formation of computer networks
and technologies that create infrastructure for Afrobrazilian communities.
Brazil is a fertile territory for new forms of technopolitics which can
be actualized by debates in intersectional and post- / anti-colonial
studies. Working from a necessary distance, the article will examine the
experience of direct implication of the authors. The analysis we pursue
highlights the importance of minorised technological practice that
convey integral organisational models opposing capitalist hegemony. In
order to frame our research problem, we will mobilize a feminist
epistemology which considers necessary principles of “intra-action”
(Barad 2007) across heterogeneous sociotechnical spaces.
Notes:
1- Caio Machado, Beatriz Kira, Gustavo Hirsch, Nahema Marchal, Bence Kollanyi, Philip N. Howard, Thomas Lederer, and Vlad Barash. “News and Political Information Consumption in Brazil: Mapping the First Round of the 2018 Brazilian Presidential Election on ̵̻̏T̴͙̾w̵̛̲a̶̐͜t̴̟̍t̵̥̆e̸̱̚r̶̯̈́.” Data Memo 2018.4. Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda. comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk
2- “base de criação de conceitos, e ainda de práticas transversais, que tenta recuperar ideias de futuro perdidas no passado, #takebackthefuture.” Questionario sobre el technoxamanismo Revista Metamorfose, vol. 3, n. 1, set. de 2018, 104-120 QUESTIONNAIRE ABOUT TECHNOSHAMANISM
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