FEMINISM AND THE CATHOLIC WOMAN ON INSTAGRAM: an analysis of the discursive materiality of female posts in the years 2021 and 2022
Discourse Analysis; Catholicism; Feminism; Woman.
The female struggle to conquer space in world society has, over the years, been fought in an arduous way with the intention that women have the right to choose what makes them happy and fulfills them as a human being, and, in general, this discursive memory is aligned with the feminist movement. However, recently on social media, Catholic women have taken a firm stand against and in favor of this movement, whose origins date back to the 1790s. In this sense, this research was dedicated to studying the Catholic female discourse produced between the years 2021 and 2022 by the Instagram pages @ascatolicas and @anacarolderosa, which have approximately the same number of followers. The aim of this research is to understand how the Catholic women who manage the selected pages discursively position themselves regarding the Catholic faith and the feminist movement. This work has its analysis methodology based on the theoretical assumptions of Discourse Analysis of the French line (for example, Michel Pêcheux and Marie-Anne Paveau), and assumes as its corpus six posts, which present technographisms in their discursive materiality followed by captions that complement/amplify the effects of senses that they move. Bibliographic texts related to Catholic doctrine (for example, Catechism of the Catholic Church and Encyclicals) and to the feminist movement (for example, writings by Simone de Beauvoir and Kate Millet) are also mobilized in the analysis process, in order to support the understanding of the discourses found in the corpus of analysis. It is necessary to bear in mind that Instagram posts are discursive technogenres that have a structure determined by the social network itself, which have an image and a caption in their skeleton, whose copyright of its producers are guaranteed. On this subjecte, it is noticeable that the data selected for analysis are, in fact, not numerous, but that the discussion moved by them points us to a relevant way to reflect on the construction of a society that is more aware of the implications of its positions.