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Paper short abstract

Based on ethnography with (LBT) women activists in Colombia, this paper examines how activists’ emotions mediate experiences of threat and inform practices of resistance. It argues for attending to emotions as central to feminist and anthropological understandings of (in)security.

Paper long abstract

This contribution draws on ethnographic research with female social leaders and human rights activists, including lesbian, bisexual, and trans women, who conduct their activism in Colombia’s Meta and Montes de María. These contexts are simultaneously characterised by the ongoing peace process and the persistence of armed conflict. Drawing on an intersectional feminist understanding of emotions (Ahmed 2005) and critical anthropology of security (Goldstein 2010), we examine how emotions shape the navigation of (in)security in contexts marked by both the persistent targeting of social leaders and the everyday struggles of (LBT) women activists.

Based on ethnography, focus groups, and participatory audiovisual methods, we investigate emotions such as fear, anger and helplessness. These emotions are not merely reactions to current threats and injustice, but also deeply embedded in the collective memory of violence against social leaders, women and LGBTIQ+ individuals and continue to shape how insecurity is perceived today. On the one hand, these affects are circulating within shared spaces and thus contesting political work and solidarity. On the other hand, the activists analyse emotions as part of current political strategies designed to produce silencing, fragmentation, and withdrawal from public life.

By emphasising the activists’ own reflections regarding the role of emotions, the paper traces how they deliberately turn towards their emotions as a means of understanding their own vulnerability and practicing resistance. Finally, we propose that both activist and scholarly attention to emotions contributes fundamentally to (feminist) critical thinking about security for/from communities that continue to organise under conditions of threat.