#NiUnaMenosBolivia fights back : A discourse theoretical analysis on the struggle against gender-based violence in Bolivia

Abstract: Femicides are not a new phenomenon. Marches involving thousands of people all around the Latin American continent to fight them, however, is. Ni Una Menos - Not one woman less - is the slogan that also mobilized Bolivians to mass-based protests in November 2016.This thesis investigates the counterpublic of #NiUnaMenosBolivia for the purpose of understanding its discursively articulated identities. A multidisciplinary discourse theoretical analysis combines Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory with Nancy Fraser’s contributions to the struggle over needs of counterpublics to examine textual, photographic and ethnographic data.Two levels of identities of #NiUnaMenos are extracted from the investigation: Internal agonistic identities pinpoint at the friction between the representors and the represented identities of the counterpublic. A collective identity evolves in the context of the struggle for justice, freedom and dignity through the construction of an antagonistic “Others” who are held responsible for femicidal violence.This study builds a bridge between feminist activism and academic discourse for feminist studies of the region. It further develops and exemplifies a methodological toolkit for a theoretically based discourse analysis on contemporary women’s movements.