Decolonial Antiracist Feminist Digital Activism: Naming Carolina Maria de Jesus, Lélia González, and Marielle Franco on Twitter

This chapter analyses Ubuntu as central to the practice of naming as deployed by antiracist feminists in Brazil. We argue that name listing, name repetition, and citation, among Brazilian feminists of Color, are closely related to Ubuntu philosophy, helping to open up counterpublic spaces of resistance among Brazilian antiracist feminists. Through naming, users acknowledge their place in a larger feminist, antiracist tradition, strengthen their sense of citizenship, create contentious lineages and establish alliances with intersectional feminists in other areas of the Global North and South. Naming is an identity maintenance technique that creates collective identities, disseminates knowledge, offers role models and inspiration, creates memorials for the deceased and celebrates the actions of new and future generations. This is why it is strongly connected to Ubuntu philosophy. We focus on three Black female intellectuals—Marielle Franco, Lélia González, and Carolina Maria de Jesus—analysing tweets referencing their names, their transnational circulation, the appearance of hashtags, the users more frequently referenced and retweeted, and the topics mobilized in social networks.