Drawing of Rebeca Lane's on the Central American map

Ni Una Menos: A collective identity in Rebeca Lane's rap

In 2015 Ni Una Menos emerged as one of the recent developments of the Latin American feminist movement that has gained important international recognition. Ni Una Menos is the name of the movement, chants in the streets, graffiti, drawings, lyrics, clothes, tattoos, and hashtags. It exemplifies the complexity of the interaction of offline-online spaces with technosocial events and technopolitical activism that challenge the study of feminism as a community of practice and the way we approach language as part of feminisms

In this digital project, I approach the complexity of Ni Una Menos by studying one of the songs that are named after the movement: Ni Una Menos by the Guatemalan rap artist Rebeca Lane. Therefore, the topic of this research is the people and territories indexed with the first person singular and plural in the song taking into consideration the lyrics, the video, and the comments to 2022 on the official video, which was published on her official YouTube account on November 11th, 2018. For selecting this specific song, I considered the relevance of the artist and the territory where she is from.

This is exploratory work to understand the relationship between language, feminism, subjects, territory, and the online-offline space.On it, I explore the challenges of mixing arts-based methods and data visualization. 

writing

Acknowledgements

  • José del Valle for supporting me to approach the relationship between language and territory, and to be open to explore digital possibilities.
  • Cece Cutler for her support for a first approach to the rap song. 
  • Lisa Rhody and Matt Gold for their advise on digital projects and skills.
  • New Media Lab for being a space to explore and discuss.