ABSTRACT
The #MeToo movement emerged internationally at a time of widespread South African popular activism against gender-based violence and strong decolonial feminist mobilization. This chapter critically engages #MeToo as an apparent form of transnational feminist activism with a focus on a reading from the Global South. From their location in South Africa, the co-authors read the movement through contemporary South African feminist activism, acknowledging the value of globalized online activism but also critically reflecting on its failures, gaps, and dangers. In the world of digital activism, #MeToo is a unique movement, maintaining momentum and reaching across global contexts. Yet, from a global Southern perspective, the co-authors raise questions about this movement’s politics and impact on localized struggles. Even though it is commonly understood that #MeToo built its feminist politics on pre-existing feminist activism and scholarly work, its global hyper-visibility makes it appear exceptional. This chapter foregrounds a “politics of location” and a critical, decolonial feminist concern that the dynamics of the movement have tended to reinstate global power inequalities. The co-authors interrogate how the neoliberal capitalist shaping of #MeToo furthers the dominant representation of the Global North as “expert” which may erase and undermine local grassroots feminist movements in the Global South while re-entrenching global inequalities in which certain bodies and lives are more valued than others.
