The affective politics of public digital denunciation: Negotiating intimacy and consent among Chilean youth

Abstract

Over the past decade, Chilean youth have turned to funas – public digital denunciations of sexual misconduct – as a contentious yet powerful feminist practice. This article examines how these practices configure intimacy, consent and gendered subjectivities among young heterosexuals in Santiago. Drawing on qualitative research with 60 participants, I argue that funas should be understood not simply as emancipatory or punitive but as ambivalent affective regimes that shape desire, fear and accountability. By bringing together critiques of consent culture, debates on digital denunciation and feminist theories of subjectivity, the article theorises funas as gendered mechanisms that both expand possibilities for feminist justice and reproduce new forms of surveillance and moral regulation. This situated analysis advances feminist theory by conceptualising consent and digital justice as unstable, affectively charged terrains where intimacy and politics are continuously negotiated.