Semiotics of care and violence in #MarielleMultiplica: Memetization and necropolitics during the 2018 presidential elections in Brazil

Abstract

The present work seeks to deepen the knowledge about the phenomenon of memetization within activism and digital visual culture during the electoral process that took Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency in 2018. The object of study is a street sign created and circulated in memory of Rio de Janeiro councilor Marielle Franco in street protests and digital networks. The article follows the path of the street sign in actions such as #MarielleMultiplica, an example of creative cultural resistance by autonomous agents in Rio de Janeiro, and, on the other hand, in Bolsonarist memes against the mobilizations around Marielle used to reinforce Bolsonarist rhetorics of necropolitics. The article traces the street sign on several platforms where it is used in different memetic genres of digital visual culture such as memes, graphics, illustrations and photographic records, all understood as parts of the framework of online and offline tactical media in which an interdiscursive battle is unleashed between the progressive and conservative sides of the electoral process. Within this path, a set of questions about social justice, mourning and struggle, visibility and erasure arise in the clash between necropolitics promoted in Bolsonaro's political campaign speeches and, on the opposing side, social movements that promote a politics of life and care through visual strategies relevant to the memetization process.

Within a semiotics of care, on the one hand, and a semiotics of violence on the other, differences can be seen in memes and memetic actions in terms of discursive tactics, authorship, image quality, use of technical protocols, transparency and opacity of the means of production, and modes of circulation of the street sign image in different contexts. It is concluded that the clash of narratives is fierce, placing the process of memetization as an efficient political weapon that contributes to the normalization of necropolitics in mediatized processes, in which the counter-narratives of resistance movements, although ephemeral, were essential to maintain agendas of social justice and democracy lit during the electoral period that, through the action #MarielleMultiplica, projected Marielle Franco as an international symbol of intersectional democracy and anti-fascist struggle.