The Memetics of Feminist Mobilization: Reflections After Non Una Di Meno’s Verona Transfemminista Rally

More than three years after its first rally in November 2016, the Italian feminist network Non una di meno (“not one [woman] less”) keeps experiencing strong momentum and wide participation in its initiatives. This paper analyzes a small corpus of memes gathered from the Instagram hashtag #VeronaTransfemminista [“trans-feminist Verona”], used by Non una di meno sympathizers on the occasion of the counter-rally organized by the movement to protest the hyper-conservative Congress of the Family in Verona on 30 March 2019. More specifically, the data under scrutiny for this paper is composed of a sample of 55 inferred or implied selfies posted on Instagram by people present at the initiative in Verona that have protest banners as the main participant of the visual composition. Based on a social semiotic analysis of these memes and their relation to the communique in which Non una di meno launched the initiative, this paper argues what follows. The centrality of individually felt and individually voiced emotions posted at #VeronaTransfemminista may seem to offer support for an interpretation of present-day social mobilization that privileges affect over formal membership in a social movement organization. However, the memetic character of the messages shared at the #VeronaTransfemminista (i.e. their being posted with awareness of each other) projects them in the collective dimension, quite literally turning the personal in the political. In this sense, the emotions voiced in the posts can be interpreted as intersubjective practices that create or undo alignments among subjects in a way that is always political in character. Furthermore, analysis in this paper identifies clear links between the diagnostic and prognostic frames centrally circulated by Non una di meno in the communique launching the initiative and the frames that its adherents voiced individually at #VeronaTransfemminista. In other words, the grievances voiced online at #VeronaTransfemminista did not emerge from personalized action frames independently produced by individual adherents, but were the product of the adherent’s interpretation of those frames centrally produced by Non una di meno as a social movement organization. In light of these findings, this paper makes the case for the interpretation of Non una di meno as a movement led by a group of choreographic leaders that conducts behind the scenes work to set the stage for the collective performances of its adherents, both online and offline. Non una di meno is therefore interpreted as an organizationally-brokered network mostly operating through the logic of collective action.