(Un)silencing as resistance

This chapter argues that what is commonly framed as “harassment”, “trolling”, or “online backlash” against academics must instead be conceptualized as online violence . Drawing on contributions from across this volume, I propose a reframing that identifies online attacks as epistemic, symbolic, and structural forms of violence that target not only individual scholars but also the legitimacy of their knowledge. These harms are patterned, gendered, and racialized, reinforced by platform infrastructures and institutional silences that normalize precarity and self-censorship. By situating online abuse within broader systems of power, rather than treating it as isolated hostility, I show how academic freedom is increasingly constrained through intimidation, discrediting, and enforced withdrawal. The chapter concludes by advancing unsilencing as both conceptual and political acts: naming online violence as violence and thereby resisting its normalization while reclaiming the conditions for critical knowledge production.