V was reading out a newspaper article a while ago…

Yet another model immigrant being interviewed and explaining what happens to “us” and our language when we migrate…

all I can say is – re- quote A in her sa-cyborgs response (I seem to be going back to this several times today – see my response on mediacommons again…)

see http://personal.bgsu.edu/~radhik/Cyberethnography.pdf

(it was a conference paper written long ago – so dont know what parts of it went into what print authorized pub)

just as S and I are dialoguing in relation to representational practices and the DA encounter with a particular documentary maker last November – a further opportunity to elaborate on what we are trying to articulate comes up at

media commons

where the following youtube video was placed by curators for viewers to critique and discuss –

_ I did post to the comments section there – and what I posted may very well lead to me being accused of not seeing the liberatory potential of the internet….

but of course the video was placed there for comment and criticism.

What is the “voice” we hear. Bant Singhs have been singing all along – what’s at stake in putting this out there for an unknown audience – obviously it was not Bant Singh who decided to put this up in this way? Even if he did – is this his choice to make – the choice to have his freedom cries out in the forest of the Internet. What about his accountability to those he sings for and with – does he sing alone? Is that possible? Who made the decisions of how his singing is to be framed?

This also reminds me of the discussions we started to have around the “who gaze is it anyway” image (of ethnographer and weaver) that I put up last year for my COMS 640 to comment on…. the semiotic reading of that image was very interestingly de-contextualized and re-situated by the reader into contexts/discourse of linear narratives of development, modernity and post-structuralist and feminist discussions of voice and voicelessness. But the act of capturing image was in actuality pretty straightforward and innocent – it was the placing of it in the context of my class that lead to misreadings. Therefore it was the reader (not the read) who revealed himself/herself in that case – but it is the readers’ retelling of that story that will be taken as the “truth” (my problematizing it in class notwithstanding…)?

it is in the hearing

it is in the seeking

it is in the

not getting offended

it is in the rethinking…

but it is also in the belief that I must hear

or else….

it is a feeling in my gut that if I listen and prod long enough I may hear something …

it is a pain deep down that I cannot locate that urges me

with such urgency
perhaps because intuitively there has been some sensing

that something in what these “voices” say back to me will

temporarily ease my pain…

it is not solace – but perhaps a slap

that will remind my body – and help it articulate

to recover momentarily from the pain of understanding it affectively

but not being able to translate

perhaps I am looking for the boundaries of a container

not knowing what shape the container takes

will take

in the effort to say this this and that…

not that not that not that

na ithi na ithi na ithi…

go to discussion page to read and/or