Description
Creating care in uncommon sites, such as the digital, is part of commoning – or ensuring possibilities for robust life to all – that activists seek through undercommoning, part of making alternative means of care that follows in the Black radical tradition. Undercommoning allows us to reimagine feminist care beyond traditional and institutional contexts under capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. With the growth of the political, sexual, and domestic violences facilitated by digital technologies, and particularly after the shadow/ban on ‘gender’ and ‘women’ by the authoritarian governments, often in collusion with techbros, there is easy and commonsensical justification in downplaying technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TF-GBV) as a security issue. This draws from the conventional understanding that TF-GBV are less “real” or “harmful” than physical ones. Drawing on feminist security studies (FSS), feminist international relations theories, intersectional feminism and the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) literatures, we examine how feminists further the undercommoning of the digital as a site of care through fugitive planning and abolitionism, in part by drawing – subversively – on the National Action Plans of WPS agenda in South Asia and Americas. The paper contributes to gender and cybersecurity studies, TF-GBV studies, Digitalization, WPS studies and feminist security studies.
