"Either it touches, or it doesn't." Techno-discursive practices around Alejandra Pizarnik and Clarice Lispector: affective archives, political performances and feminist genealogies

Abstract

This paper analyzes digital discursive practices around Alejandra Pizarnik and Clarice Lispector on Twitter between 2018 and 2022, employing the theoretical perspective of decolonial and feminist Digital Humanities in Latin America, as well as data feminism. It utilizes computational processing tools to capture, compose, and process extensive masses of tweets that reference the authors. It is based on Digital Discourse Analysis and Affect Studies, it considers Twitter practices of quoting, naming, and referencing Pizarnik and Lispector as techno-discursive performances capable of building affective bonds, understanding, and constituting communities on Twitter. The paper argues that these performances have three fundamental functions: to create feminist collectives, genealogies, and discursive memory, forming sororities and dororidades; to explore affect as a way of exploring subjectivity marked by absence and the potential to affect and be affected; and to mobilize political meanings that repoliticize affect and emotion, gaining strength in public life.