Dissertation by Emma Velez
Engaging the work of Latinas and Latinxs, this dissertation develops an account of the “colonial ... more Engaging the work of Latinas and Latinxs, this dissertation develops an account of the “colonial contract” and demonstrates the contributions that decolonial feminisms make to advancing accounts of the self, cross-cultural communication, and political marginalization. Rooting my intervention in a non-Western imaginary, I develop a philosophical reading of the figures of Las Tres Madres [The Three Mothers]: La Llorona, La Malinche, and La Virgen de Guadalupe. I argue that Las Tres Madres illuminate three key sites of contradiction in the colonial contract: subjectivity and subjection (La Llorona), subaltern agency (La Malinche), and epistemic resistance to political marginalization (La Virgen de Guadalupe). I contend that decolonizing the colonial contract requires decolonial imaginaries that open up new strategies for forging coalitional politics capable of tackling pressing contemporary geopolitical issues that are deeply connected to the continued legacies and histories of colonization.
Publications by Emma Velez
Critical Philosophy of Race, 2024
The social uprisings in the United States during the summer of 2020 renewed public discussion of ... more The social uprisings in the United States during the summer of 2020 renewed public discussion of forms of domination embedded into the social contracts of Western democracies. These discussions echo insights from within political philosophy regarding the domination contract. Despite numerous attempts to shed light on myriad aspects of the domination contract, an analysis of the role of colonialism and coloniality has yet to be sufficiently engaged by political philosophers, particularly within social contract theory. Drawing on the frameworks of intersectionality and decolonial feminism, this article examines the interweavings between two prominent domination contracts, the racia-sexual contract and the colonial contract, to better account for the systematic exclusion of Black, Indigenous, and other women of color (BIWOC) from liberal social contracts that are foundationally predicated on forms of gendered, racialized, colonial domination.
Oxford Bibliographies, 2022
Hailing from myriad philosophical traditions and subfields as well as from various disciplinary a... more Hailing from myriad philosophical traditions and subfields as well as from various disciplinary and interdisciplinary backgrounds, Latina/o/x feminist philosophers offer a unique tradition of philosophical reflection on a range of issues including the complex intersections of race, sexuality, gender, colonialism and coloniality, the body, knowledge production, aesthetics, and the ethico-political. This annotated bibliography provides an entry point into the richness and depth of this work, which is often under-considered and under-engaged within mainstream philosophy. At the outset, it is important to attend to the key terms that comprise the title of this entry, i.e., “Latina/o/x” and “feminist.” Following the understanding of the term “Latina/o/x” by Latinx scholars, this entry assembles writings that are by and about people of Latin American descent (broadly conceived) by authors with a variety of gender identities including women, men, gender non-conforming, and trans people. Further, this entry adopts self-naming conventions that are actively being negotiated, like Latinx, as well as other iterations used by authors in the texts included here (e.g., Chicana, Xicana, Latin@, etc). Though these collected writings pursue a wide range of philosophical modes of inquiry all issue from explicitly feminist commitments and concerns. Which is to say, in some capacity all the pieces gathered here are concerned with the dismantling and transformation of conditions that produce sexism as well as sexist and gender-based exploitation and oppression. This entry aims to provide a robust engagement with the scholarship of US-based Latina/o/x feminist philosophers. While much of this work is in deep dialogue with feminist philosophies emerging from Latin America (and, indeed, many of the thinkers included here are themselves located in the United States or are connected to Latin American diasporas), this entry is limited in scope to consideration of work produced in the context of the United States. The organization of this annotated bibliography illustrates not only the depth and breadth of Latina/o/x feminist thinking on complex philosophical issues that are of particular concern to peoples of Latin American descent and Latina/o/x communities, but also the philosophical trends that emerge from such a grouping together. In particular, in what follows, scholars and students will gain invaluable resources for thinking with Latina/o/x feminist philosophers in areas such as critical philosophies of race, phenomenology, epistemology, and decolonial theory. In keeping with the multiplicity of approaches and disciplinary traditions of Latina/o/x feminist philosophers and philosophies, the texts collected here survey a range of sources that include philosophical and theoretical works, edited collections, and journal special issues and clusters.
Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2020
Utilizing a decolonial feminist lens, I develop an account of a “care-ful
geopolitics” as alterna... more Utilizing a decolonial feminist lens, I develop an account of a “care-ful
geopolitics” as alternative approach to considering La Frontera in the era of Trump. Differing from “Great Wall geopolitics,” which relies on a colonial and imperialist imaginary, a care-ful geopolitics engages in a multiscalar analysis through a decolonial imaginary, attends to complexity and contextuality, and takes seriously interdependency. Prescriptively, I argue that a care-ful geopolitics entails a global “duty to care” for and about those humans, nonhumans, and ecosystems that will be impacted by the construction of Trump’s “Great Wall.”
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 2020
Critical Philosophy of Race , 2020
Editors' Introduction to the special-issue of Critical Philosophy of Race 8, no. 1-2, "Towards De... more Editors' Introduction to the special-issue of Critical Philosophy of Race 8, no. 1-2, "Towards Decolonial Feminisms"
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2019
This paper offers a critical reading of María Lugones’s engagement with intersectionality theory,... more This paper offers a critical reading of María Lugones’s engagement with intersectionality theory, as primarily developed by Black feminists. I argue that her "linguistic critique" of intersectionality risks jeopardizing the possibility of coalitional politics emphasized by decolonial feminisms, especially between Black women and Latinas. We should instead attend to her "coloniality critique" that shows what undergirds the categorial logics intersectionality names, interrogating their source as a colonial imposition. By furthering the insights of intersectionality, I argue that decolonial feminism helps us to reorient our practices of resistance to categorial logics and the possibility of forging decolonizing coalitions among women of color.
Book Reviews by Emma Velez
Conference Presentations by Emma Velez
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, 2019
Utilizing a decolonial feminist lens, I develop an account of a “care-ful geopolitics” as alterna... more Utilizing a decolonial feminist lens, I develop an account of a “care-ful geopolitics” as alternative approach to considering La Frontera in the era of Trump. Differing from “Great Wall geopolitics,” which relies on a patriarchal, colonial, and imperialist imaginary, a care-ful geopolitics engages in a multiscaler analysis, attends to complexity and contextuality, and takes seriously interdependency. Prescriptively, I argue that a care-ful geopolitics entails a global “duty to care” for and about those humans, nonhumans, and ecosystems that will be impacted by the construction of Trump’s “Great Wall.”
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, 2018
I offer a critical reading of María Lugones’ engagement with intersectionality theory, as primari... more I offer a critical reading of María Lugones’ engagement with intersectionality theory, as primarily developed by black feminists. I argue that her ‘linguistic critique’ of intersectionality risks jeopardizing the possibility of coalitional politics emphasized by decolonial feminisms, especially between Black women and Latinas. We should instead attend to her ‘coloniality critique’ that shows what undergirds the categorial logics intersectionality names, interrogating their source as a colonial imposition. By furthering the insights of intersectionality, I argue that decolonial feminism helps us to reorient our practices of resistance to categorial logics and the possibility of generating liberatory worlds for Women of Color.
Towards Decolonial Feminisms, A Conference Inspired by the Work of María Lugones, 2018
I begin this paper on silence and the importance of listening for decolonial feminist praxis with... more I begin this paper on silence and the importance of listening for decolonial feminist praxis with a brief reflection on the speech given by Emma González, a survivor of the recent school shooting at Stoneman Douglass High School in Parkland, Florida, at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C. on March 24th. Many of us are probably familiar with González, who in the months following the tragic events in Parklands became one of the public faces of the #NeverAgain movement against gun violence. The media attention given to Gonzalez has both lauded and disparaged her boldness and outness as a young, queer, Latina. I draw our attention to her speech because, as has been noted by much of the coverage following the event, it is marked not so much by what González says, but, rather, by her four minutes and 26 seconds of silence.
The philosophical question that I pose is, How do we read this silence? Contra Western philosophical accounts of silence as merely derivative of or a lack of speech, I argue that the silence invoked by González was communication-full. Following the work of María Lugones—in particular, her concepts of “complex communication” and “transgressive hearing” (Lugones 2006)—I argue in this paper for the constitutive role of affective and nondiscursive elements of communication for a decolonial feminist praxis. In particular, I focus on silence as a meaning-full, rich, and potentially resistant form of complex communication. And it is in this way that I suggest we read González’s silence. But, to do so requires that we learn to listen and develop the skills of "transgressive hearing"; that is to say, that we learn to develop a responsive disposition to better listen to, discern, and decode these grammars of silence in our decolonial feminist praxis that seeks deep and liberatory coalitions.
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, 2017
The imaginary of the West is beset with native informants. We can perhaps immediately call to min... more The imaginary of the West is beset with native informants. We can perhaps immediately call to mind several indigenous women who have played this crucial role in the colonial encounter between “Old” and “New” worlds in the Americas: Amonute, Sacagawea, and Malintzin. As translators and purveyors of local knowledge these indigenous women were crucial to the success of the conquest of the Americas. The legacy of Amonute, better know to most of us as Pocahontas, is now thoroughly captured in the circuit of capital and U.S. imaginary through the Disneyfication and romanticization of her story; the successful mixing of Native and Colonizer. Sacagawea, the Lemhi Shoshone woman who acted as translator and guide to the expedition of Lewis and Clark, was integral to the expedition that would later lead to westward expansion of the United States and now graces the back of the nation’s currency. However Malintzin, the Nahua woman we more often call La Malinche, has enjoyed a more notorious and less lauded position for her role as translator to Hernán Cortés, the Spanish Conquistador, and her subsequent complicity in the colonization of the Americas by Europe.
Called by many names—La Malinche, La Chingada, La Lengua— Malintzin was an embodied native informant and, I argue, as such we can read her as an agent capable of resistance through her acts of witnessing and translation. As a central figure of the Conquest, the historical narrative of Malintzin has taken on a symbolic and legendary status as the Mother of the race of mestizos that would go on to be called the Mexican people. As such she is an important emblem of Mexican national identity. Her legendary status takes on different meanings throughout different periods of Mexico’s history. As a result, the narrative of her life is contested and often contradictory. In this paper, I take up Malintzin and her mythology in order to read the decolonial possibilities she offers us for rethinking the native informant in anticolonial texts— particularly those of Gayatri Spivak and Octavio Paz.
As Sandra Messinger Cypess describes her, Malintzin is a “synecdoche for gender and racial relations” in Mexico. Expanding on this insight, I argue in this paper that La Malinche-as-Native Informant is a synecdoche for the problem of the credible witness and as such calls forth the epistemic aporia of colonialism, i.e. the aporia of subaltern speech. Contra Spivak’s theorization of the native informant and Octavio Paz’s account of La Malinche, both of which render her epistemic agency an impossibility, the decolonial feminist reading that I develop in this paper reads Malintzin as a pedagogical exemplar for locating agency that persists in the face of oppression; as an actor whose agency refuses to be flattened, leveled, or silenced.
Sophocles’s trilogy of Theban plays has been foundational for Western literary, philosophical, an... more Sophocles’s trilogy of Theban plays has been foundational for Western literary, philosophical, and psychoanalytic thought. Rather than continue to reentrench this philosophically generative myth, I propose that we look toward a mythological sister of Antigone who is better situated to address problems of the contemporary moment where the boundaries between family and the state, the citizen and the foreigner, and hegemonic and subaltern subjects are being redrawn in important ways. These changes give rise to a distinctly new set of problems that demand a new ethics, what Luce Irigaray, an important and influential reader of Antigone, aptly calls “an ethics of our time.” In this paper I attempt to take up this important task, but I give a decolonial critique of her use of Antigone as the founding mythological figure from which to articulate an ethics of our time. Instead, I turn toward La Llorona, the wailing woman from Mexicanx/Chicanx lore as una otra hermana de Antigone. While there are deep resonances between the two figures because of her particular cultural location, Llorona allows us to expand the scope of the boundaries of Woman so that we can better investigate the ethical imperatives of estos tiempos, our time.
Spivak’s infamous exclamation that ‘the subaltern cannot speak’ is often criticized for foreclos... more Spivak’s infamous exclamation that ‘the subaltern cannot speak’ is often criticized for foreclosing the possibility of subaltern speech. This passionate exclamation, while often misinterpreted, confronts the dangerous analyses of academics and our all too frequent complicity in the muting of subaltern voices. This project is praiseworthy and it is for this reason that despite Spivak’s own misgivings about the initial form of the piece that the essay continues to be anthologized in postcolonial and feminist studies. However, it is my argument that Spivak’s deconstruction is limited by her narrow definition of what constitutes the truly subaltern. Spivak begins her deconstruction with intentions of showing an ethical way for the first world intellectual to recognize her own limits in representing subaltern voices. Yet, because of her conception of subalternity, Spivak’s analysis comes to an impasse leaving her in an aporetic bind concerning the question of subaltern speech and the liberation of oppressed subjects. In this essay, I seek to argue that the work of Chicana feminists María Lugones and Gloria Anzaldúa serve to move Spivak’s analysis of subalternity and oppression forward. Both provide us with theories of oppression informed by their specific subject positions as Latinas, poly-cultural subjects who themselves have been the victims of multiple forms of oppression. As a result, these two deeply imbricated thinkers offer unique insights and pedagogically demonstrate ways of faithfully theorizing about oppression and oppressed subjects, aiming always towards liberation. By grounding themselves in the liminal space between worlds, Lugones and Anzaldúa seek not to restore subaltern and oppressed people as the subjects of discourse but, rather, seek to establish them as active agents in the construction of counter-hegemonic antistructural spaces. In so doing, they offer the possibility of completing the syllogisms of subaltern speech acts.
Social media is often criticized for it’s alienating effects, for thwarting our ability to know o... more Social media is often criticized for it’s alienating effects, for thwarting our ability to know ourselves as members of an actual and living community. Likewise, the instantaneous nature of social media’s disbursement of affect is frequently cited in order to undermine its epistemic validity and the rhetoric used to do so is often feminized. Whether “good” or “bad,” the ubiquity of social media platforms and our use of them in the contemporary moment is undeniable. In part facilitated by the proliferation of “smart” mobile devices, social media users have begun leaving larger networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, in favor of “App” based media whose user bases are much smaller and more intimate. Perhaps most interesting and characteristic of these is the App called Snapchat.
Using Snapchat as a case study, I seek to explore how the ephemeral content of the App changes its usage in contrast to platforms like Facebook and Twitter. To do so, I appeal to the work of Wendy Chun and Lauren Berlant—using Chun’s analysis of temporality in new media and Berlant’s conception of the “intimate public.” This essay seeks to sift out the relationship between intimacy, publicity and the public sphere, and temporality in relationship to this media. Additionally, this piece seeks to explore the deep connection between the intimacy of Snapchat’s public and its supposed ephemeral temporality. This investigation culminates with a gesture towards larger and deeper questions regarding the liberatory political potential of ephemeral media to instigate structural transformation out of shifts of collective feeling—what I call “ephemeral bursts of affect”—that are increasingly being mediated via social media platforms like Snapchat.
The role of listening in the speech act cannot be denied. As a two-fold process consisting of bot... more The role of listening in the speech act cannot be denied. As a two-fold process consisting of both speaking and hearing, an examination of each of its constitutive parts is necessary if one seeks to construct a theory whereby understanding is reached first and foremost through the speech act. It is precisely because of its dual nature, which necessarily requires correct attitudes for both hearing and speaking in order to be successful, that it seems puzzling that the responsibilities of the hearer are set aside in Jürgen Habermas’ theory of communicative action. This intentional bracketing of the duties of the hearer is rendered perhaps even more puzzling given the hermeneutic lineage of Habermas’ theory, particularly when considering the influence of both Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer on his thoughts. In the following, I will attempt to demonstrate that by presupposing the listener as always already actively engaged in a way that promotes understanding, Habermas effectively brackets the role of the listener. As a result, his theory falls prey to critiques of asymmetry that I argue could be combated and mitigated by the inclusion of a more robust space for the responsibilities of the hearer. It is my goal to outline this oversight in Habermas’ theory in order to demonstrate the conceptually constitutive role that listening must have for a successful theory of communicative action, that is to say, a theory that is able to successfully reach understanding in order to create interpersonal relationships. This critique of Habermas will attempt to sketch out some of the duties of the listener in order to provide a fuller picture of the dialectic of the speech act. This is demonstrated through a careful analysis and interrogation of Habermas’ pragmatics as well as by placing his theory into conversation with the work of Ofelia Schutte in order to show, using the heuristic of the Latina speaker, what is at stake when the role of the listener is inadequately considered as a constitutive component of the speech act. Schutte’s work demonstrates the salience of the responsibilities of the listener, particularly in situations where one seeks to engage in discourse with a culturally or horizonally different interlocutor. Schutte allows us to see that it is possible for the speech act to fail in its pursuit of communicative action, even in a circumstance like Habermas’ ideal speech situation, if both speaker and hearer are not given symmetrical responsibilities. As listeners, it is our duty to engage in the labor of “radical decentering” that would enable us to listen to our culturally different interlocutor’s message and therefore to have the ability to decipher and understand it, ensuring the possibility for the success of the speech act.
Papers by Emma Velez
Routledge eBooks, Feb 22, 2024
Uploads
Dissertation by Emma Velez
Publications by Emma Velez
geopolitics” as alternative approach to considering La Frontera in the era of Trump. Differing from “Great Wall geopolitics,” which relies on a colonial and imperialist imaginary, a care-ful geopolitics engages in a multiscalar analysis through a decolonial imaginary, attends to complexity and contextuality, and takes seriously interdependency. Prescriptively, I argue that a care-ful geopolitics entails a global “duty to care” for and about those humans, nonhumans, and ecosystems that will be impacted by the construction of Trump’s “Great Wall.”
For the full issue see: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia/issue/toward-decolonial-feminisms-tracing-the-lineages-of-decolonial-thinking-through-latin-americanlatinx-feminist-philosophy/A6D10B66EEDA6742DDFEBB83E57C39E8?fbclid=IwAR2I8ejWYRvfzJ2ThDF8GOuIWvdVrf7vD9L16gpgI192lSNFUQdVJEjp2fA
Book Reviews by Emma Velez
Conference Presentations by Emma Velez
The philosophical question that I pose is, How do we read this silence? Contra Western philosophical accounts of silence as merely derivative of or a lack of speech, I argue that the silence invoked by González was communication-full. Following the work of María Lugones—in particular, her concepts of “complex communication” and “transgressive hearing” (Lugones 2006)—I argue in this paper for the constitutive role of affective and nondiscursive elements of communication for a decolonial feminist praxis. In particular, I focus on silence as a meaning-full, rich, and potentially resistant form of complex communication. And it is in this way that I suggest we read González’s silence. But, to do so requires that we learn to listen and develop the skills of "transgressive hearing"; that is to say, that we learn to develop a responsive disposition to better listen to, discern, and decode these grammars of silence in our decolonial feminist praxis that seeks deep and liberatory coalitions.
Called by many names—La Malinche, La Chingada, La Lengua— Malintzin was an embodied native informant and, I argue, as such we can read her as an agent capable of resistance through her acts of witnessing and translation. As a central figure of the Conquest, the historical narrative of Malintzin has taken on a symbolic and legendary status as the Mother of the race of mestizos that would go on to be called the Mexican people. As such she is an important emblem of Mexican national identity. Her legendary status takes on different meanings throughout different periods of Mexico’s history. As a result, the narrative of her life is contested and often contradictory. In this paper, I take up Malintzin and her mythology in order to read the decolonial possibilities she offers us for rethinking the native informant in anticolonial texts— particularly those of Gayatri Spivak and Octavio Paz.
As Sandra Messinger Cypess describes her, Malintzin is a “synecdoche for gender and racial relations” in Mexico. Expanding on this insight, I argue in this paper that La Malinche-as-Native Informant is a synecdoche for the problem of the credible witness and as such calls forth the epistemic aporia of colonialism, i.e. the aporia of subaltern speech. Contra Spivak’s theorization of the native informant and Octavio Paz’s account of La Malinche, both of which render her epistemic agency an impossibility, the decolonial feminist reading that I develop in this paper reads Malintzin as a pedagogical exemplar for locating agency that persists in the face of oppression; as an actor whose agency refuses to be flattened, leveled, or silenced.
Using Snapchat as a case study, I seek to explore how the ephemeral content of the App changes its usage in contrast to platforms like Facebook and Twitter. To do so, I appeal to the work of Wendy Chun and Lauren Berlant—using Chun’s analysis of temporality in new media and Berlant’s conception of the “intimate public.” This essay seeks to sift out the relationship between intimacy, publicity and the public sphere, and temporality in relationship to this media. Additionally, this piece seeks to explore the deep connection between the intimacy of Snapchat’s public and its supposed ephemeral temporality. This investigation culminates with a gesture towards larger and deeper questions regarding the liberatory political potential of ephemeral media to instigate structural transformation out of shifts of collective feeling—what I call “ephemeral bursts of affect”—that are increasingly being mediated via social media platforms like Snapchat.
Papers by Emma Velez
geopolitics” as alternative approach to considering La Frontera in the era of Trump. Differing from “Great Wall geopolitics,” which relies on a colonial and imperialist imaginary, a care-ful geopolitics engages in a multiscalar analysis through a decolonial imaginary, attends to complexity and contextuality, and takes seriously interdependency. Prescriptively, I argue that a care-ful geopolitics entails a global “duty to care” for and about those humans, nonhumans, and ecosystems that will be impacted by the construction of Trump’s “Great Wall.”
For the full issue see: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia/issue/toward-decolonial-feminisms-tracing-the-lineages-of-decolonial-thinking-through-latin-americanlatinx-feminist-philosophy/A6D10B66EEDA6742DDFEBB83E57C39E8?fbclid=IwAR2I8ejWYRvfzJ2ThDF8GOuIWvdVrf7vD9L16gpgI192lSNFUQdVJEjp2fA
The philosophical question that I pose is, How do we read this silence? Contra Western philosophical accounts of silence as merely derivative of or a lack of speech, I argue that the silence invoked by González was communication-full. Following the work of María Lugones—in particular, her concepts of “complex communication” and “transgressive hearing” (Lugones 2006)—I argue in this paper for the constitutive role of affective and nondiscursive elements of communication for a decolonial feminist praxis. In particular, I focus on silence as a meaning-full, rich, and potentially resistant form of complex communication. And it is in this way that I suggest we read González’s silence. But, to do so requires that we learn to listen and develop the skills of "transgressive hearing"; that is to say, that we learn to develop a responsive disposition to better listen to, discern, and decode these grammars of silence in our decolonial feminist praxis that seeks deep and liberatory coalitions.
Called by many names—La Malinche, La Chingada, La Lengua— Malintzin was an embodied native informant and, I argue, as such we can read her as an agent capable of resistance through her acts of witnessing and translation. As a central figure of the Conquest, the historical narrative of Malintzin has taken on a symbolic and legendary status as the Mother of the race of mestizos that would go on to be called the Mexican people. As such she is an important emblem of Mexican national identity. Her legendary status takes on different meanings throughout different periods of Mexico’s history. As a result, the narrative of her life is contested and often contradictory. In this paper, I take up Malintzin and her mythology in order to read the decolonial possibilities she offers us for rethinking the native informant in anticolonial texts— particularly those of Gayatri Spivak and Octavio Paz.
As Sandra Messinger Cypess describes her, Malintzin is a “synecdoche for gender and racial relations” in Mexico. Expanding on this insight, I argue in this paper that La Malinche-as-Native Informant is a synecdoche for the problem of the credible witness and as such calls forth the epistemic aporia of colonialism, i.e. the aporia of subaltern speech. Contra Spivak’s theorization of the native informant and Octavio Paz’s account of La Malinche, both of which render her epistemic agency an impossibility, the decolonial feminist reading that I develop in this paper reads Malintzin as a pedagogical exemplar for locating agency that persists in the face of oppression; as an actor whose agency refuses to be flattened, leveled, or silenced.
Using Snapchat as a case study, I seek to explore how the ephemeral content of the App changes its usage in contrast to platforms like Facebook and Twitter. To do so, I appeal to the work of Wendy Chun and Lauren Berlant—using Chun’s analysis of temporality in new media and Berlant’s conception of the “intimate public.” This essay seeks to sift out the relationship between intimacy, publicity and the public sphere, and temporality in relationship to this media. Additionally, this piece seeks to explore the deep connection between the intimacy of Snapchat’s public and its supposed ephemeral temporality. This investigation culminates with a gesture towards larger and deeper questions regarding the liberatory political potential of ephemeral media to instigate structural transformation out of shifts of collective feeling—what I call “ephemeral bursts of affect”—that are increasingly being mediated via social media platforms like Snapchat.