Book Review: Pain Generation, Social Media Feminist Activism, and the Neoliberal Selfie, by L. Ayu Saraswati

In Pain Generation, Social Media, Feminist Activism, and the Neoliberal Selfie, L. Ayu Saraswati uses the concept of the neoliberal selfie as a form of online phantasmagoria to “trouble” the use of social media by feminist activists to mobilize the political potential of pain caused by sexual harassment, violence, and abuse (2). In so doing, she exposes the ways in which the neoliberal parameters and governing logic of social media limit feminist work in these spaces, whilst maintaining a level of empathy and nuance that directs her criticism firmly toward neoliberalism and the platforms themselves rather than the individual activists she discusses. The book offers an insightful analysis of how social media re-inscribes and reinforces neoliberalism’s emphasis on productivity and the self and offers strategies for feminist social media practice that seeks to transcend its limitations. Saraswati’s analysis focuses on four case studies of feminists who use social media (primarily Twitter and Instagram) to conduct feminist activism. In Chapter 1, she defines and contextualizes the neoliberal self(ie) as a product of the underlying neoliberal structure and governing logic of the social media platforms used by these activists and the ways that it limits and inflects their campaigns. The core message of Saraswati’s book is that: