Conversations in Atlantic Theory

Dr. Akane Kanai is a feminist cultural studies scholar, currently based in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick. She researches the relational politics of identity, with a focus on how the emotional life of social media informs cultures of everyday knowledge. Her previous book, Gender and Relatability in Digital Culture, contributed a critique of relatability in theorizing the everyday regulation of emotion for young women online. Prior to joining Warwick in 2025, she was a senior research fellow at Monash University in Melbourne (Naarm), Australia. 
 
In today’s conversation, we discuss her latest monograph The New Politics of Online Feminism, where she argues that for young feminists online culture often poses more dilemmas than it solves. Dr. Kanai foregrounds the importance of moving beyond the polarities of correct and incorrect feeling to enable the everyday practices of listening to and learning about experience and difference.

What is Conversations in Atlantic Theory?

These conversations explore the cultural, political, and philosophical traditions of the Atlantic world, ranging from European critical theory to the black Atlantic to sites of indigenous resistance and self-articulation, as well as the complex geography of thinking between traditions, inside traditions, and from positions of insurgency, critique, and counternarrative.