When you ACTUALLY truly shift the lens of benefit to look at issues of sustainable livelihoods, accessible democratic practices and sharing of resources with future generations…… THEN what would we think of a progress? I keep thinking of the senior citizen who asked about why we were not improving our (US) railways - and why we always focus on better flying and fighting technologies (at least that’s the gist it seems of what he said). And of the rickshaw pullers that disappeared from the streets of Hyderabad from one visit to the next “back home” (India)…. 

PLEASE SUBMIT ABSTRACTS ASAP  (deadline is still tentative - so if you are working on something relevant email me anyway with a query).  Title: Everyday 3D Lives: Digital Embodiment, Performativity and GlobalizationEditor : Radhika Gajjala[ http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik ](Lexington Press is interested and I am discussing this collection with them)  In the recent past, there has been much talk of “web 2.0 “ and “web 3D” as new media. Educators and researchers all over the world are debating the pros and cons of such environments. MMORPGs (Massive(ly) multiplayer online role-playing games) such as World of Warcraft (WoW) and online 3D environments for social and economic activity. Immersive environments such as secondlife are being examined from multiple disciplinary lenses. This edited will include articles based in examinations of embodiment, performativity, gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality and globalization critically, and will be open to multiple disciplinary intersections.What sorts of convergences, conjunctures and connections emerge in relation to embodiment, identity and globalization specifically in 3D environment (such as secondlife) and MMORPGs? Researchers examining presence and absence or voice and voicelessness are increasingly mobilized to speak of identities emerging online, while binaries such as embodied/disembodied and global/local are deployed unproblematically in both utopian and dystopian viewpoints regarding the Internet. Performativity begins to shape exposure and privacy. Thus while claims are being made that the Internet is a “public sphere” in a Habermasian sense (Poster 1995) corporate privation and surveillance comes upon us in Internet mediated environments and we learn to negotiate our speaking within interstices of presences and absences, cooperation and isolation, community engagement and individual consumerism. Simultaneously hegemonic structures invested in particular ideologies of globalization and “free” markets learn to co-opt diverse identities and voices. Voice thus becomes a strategic construct in both cases. Notions of voice/voiceless and empowerment/participation in such instances are appropriated by status quo discourses and are themselves mobilized for the oppression of the subaltern (Gajjala, forthcoming 2008).In the book on “Pedagogies of the Global”, the editor, Arif Dirlik writes that”Rather than erase difference by converting all to Euro/American norms of modernity, however, capitalist modernity, as it has gone global, has empowered societies once theoretically condemned to premodernity or tradition to make their own claims on modernity on the basis of those very tradition to make their own claims on modernity on the basis of those very traditions, as filtered through experiences of colonialism, neocolonialism, or simple marginalization by the forces of globalization “(Dirlik, 2006, 3).Digital media plays a significant role in aiding these connections and shaping these re-presentations. I am interested in research that examines these connections, representations and productions through critical theoretical lenses based in postcolonial theories, feminist theories, critical race theories and so on.500 word abstracts due by January 1, 2008 and full articles of no more than 8000 words length due by September 2008.Email me with any queries (Deadlines are still flexible at this time - so keep checking) - radhika@cyberdiva.org.

DEADLINE EXTENDED:

PLEASE SUBMIT ABSTRACTS BY DECEMBER 1, 2007.

Title: Everyday 3D Lives: Digital Embodiment, Performativity and Globalization

Editor : Radhika Gajjala

[ http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik ]

In the recent past, there has been much talk of “web 2.0 “ and “web 3D” as new media. Educators and researchers all over the world are debating the pros and cons of such environments. MMORPGs (Massive(ly) multiplayer online role-playing games) such as World of Warcraft (WoW) and online 3D environments for social and economic activity. Immersive environments such as secondlife are being examined from multiple disciplinary lenses. This edited will include articles based in examinations of embodiment, performativity, gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality and globalization critically, and will be open to multiple disciplinary intersections.

What sorts of convergences, conjunctures and connections emerge in relation to embodiment, identity and globalization specifically in 3D environment (such as secondlife) and MMORPGs? Researchers examining presence and absence or voice and voicelessness are increasingly mobilized to speak of identities emerging online, while binaries such as embodied/disembodied and global/local are deployed unproblematically in both utopian and dystopian viewpoints regarding the Internet. Performativity begins to shape exposure and privacy. Thus while claims are being made that the Internet is a “public sphere” in a Habermasian sense (Poster 1995) corporate privation and surveillance comes upon us in Internet mediated environments and we learn to negotiate our speaking within interstices of presences and absences, cooperation and isolation, community engagement and individual consumerism. Simultaneously hegemonic structures invested in particular ideologies of globalization and “free” markets learn to co-opt diverse identities and voices. Voice thus becomes a strategic construct in both cases. Notions of voice/voiceless and empowerment/participation in such instances are appropriated by status quo discourses and are themselves mobilized for the oppression of the subaltern (Gajjala, forthcoming 2008).

In the book on “Pedagogies of the Global”, the editor, Arif Dirlik writes that

“Rather than erase difference by converting all to Euro/American norms of modernity, however, capitalist modernity, as it has gone global, has empowered societies once theoretically condemned to premodernity or tradition to make their own claims on modernity on the basis of those very tradition to make their own claims on modernity on the basis of those very traditions, as filtered through experiences of colonialism, neocolonialism, or simple marginalization by the forces of globalization “(Dirlik, 2006, 3).

Digital media plays a significant role in aiding these connections and shaping these re-presentations. I am interested in research that examines these connections, representations and productions through critical theoretical lenses based in postcolonial theories, feminist theories, critical race theories and so on.

500 word abstracts due by December 1, 2007 and full articles of no more than 8000 words length due by September 2008.

Email me with any queries - radhika@cyberdiva.org.

There is a very interesting discussion going on on the AIR-L list that I am trying not to get drawn into replying to posts on. Too much stuff to do here with Grad step week and all (and last week the Digital Mirror and New Faculty presentation as well as prep for Grad step week took up most of my time).

This post is mostly a public note to myself (yes Public - if it is on a blog it is public and however stupid my public comment may have been or is - yes it can be traced back to my “real” self - even if I use a psuedonym - it can… how many times do we rehearse these arguments on lists anyway?)

Performativity and everyday negotiation of online existence as a not so “new” thing is a point (among others) that gets missed in some discussions of “privacy” and the internet as “public space” arguments - but more later. Just as digital literacy and digital divide discourses are still stuck in early generations of Internet user paradigms even as they use buzz words such as “web 2.0″

Nuances are so easily disappeared in the focus on static in looking at online existence/texts as if (implicitly) they were either just speech on the one hand or written text (as defined by print paradigms) on the other while viewing online engagement as unproblematically “disembodied”…

more later

to find out more about what it means to “quilt conceptually” according to rad Zabibha (born in 2006) and Cyb Tabla (born in 2004)

go to http://slurl.com/secondlife/Brouwer/172/149/42

work in-progress - always

considering also linking to Diva’s earlier moo projects - at least those that are still accessible

it goes…

మేము ఇక్కడనుంచి 9 మంది రాజవోలు వర్క్షాప్పుకు వెళ్ళాము…

so now I have to piece together based on all these notes since I cant seem to locate the tapes…

” things are
made to look the same only when we fail to examine them too closely” - Nancy Cartwright, 1983

how may you be made ready to hear the voice(s) you ask me/us to reveal to you?

why do you want us to reveal that “authentic” voice to you?

who decided that if I put something in quotes it becomes his authentic voice?

how may you be made ready to hear the voices you think you will hear if we reveal his words to you?

how would you know his “authentic” voice when you do not take the trouble to go there and hear it as a voice in context?

why do you wish me to pull forth his voice for you to pull forth with the click of a mouse

how does that make you the judge of whether or not it is really his voice

why is she assumed to be voiceless

when the conceptualization of “voice” is in your control

still

(k)no(w) you

we will not “give” you her voicings

you will just have to make the effort of trying to understand within what we write

or come down and try to translate it yourself - but be assured you are being watched as you

confident of your ability to translate

invade, capture and preview

hers

and

his

voice

so that they may be pulled up and analyzed and understood

even as you take their daily living away as in the capturing and replaying

you take no note of what they seem to be asking for

because the complexity of what they say cannot be captured, recorded, shifted and replayed

outside

de-contextually

where

all so that you may feel you are a part of the community of protest

you have replayed, captured and colonized his meaning

yet again.