Feeling Collective: The Queer Politics of Affect in the Riot Grrrl Movement

Abstract

The Riot Grrrls were an underground, decentralized movement made up of young people who worked to channel feminist and queer politics through mediums of cultural production. To turn toward the affective and emotional dimensions of Riot Grrrl, I offer an analysis of the zine I ♥ Amy Carter. Focusing specifically on expressions of intimacy, I trace the contours of queer modes of being across the Riot Grrrl movement as a political force for imagining new relationalities. Mobilizing queerness as a possibility within their interpersonal relations, the Riot Grrrls embodied queer intimacies alongside a queering of intimacy through what I broadly identify as a “grrrl crush,” or an overlap and oscillation between friendship, admiration, and desire. As a specific articulation of queer intimacy, the grrrl crush offers a mode of belonging that is decidedly political, enabling greater theorizations of queer and feminist solidarity.

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