“Digital diasporas” occur at the intersection of local/ global, national/

international, private/public, offline/online and embodied/disembodied. In

digital diasporas, a multiplicity of representations, mass media broadcasts,

textual and visual performances and interpersonal interactions occur. The

term *”digital diaspora”* is most often used to talk about how diasporic

populations the world over use the Internet to connect to each other.

Scholars such as Anna Everett (2009) and Jeniffer Brinkerhoff (2009) have

each used the phrase in relation to very specific situated histories of

forced migrations (African American histories of slavery) and transnational

travel respectively. The link to labor flows and hierarchies of colonialisms

and digital globalization is clear in both. In most general usage of the

phrase “digital diaspora,” however, it is used to describe migrant

populations without attention to the specific conditions of subjectivity

that produces diasporas. Further, it is interesting that international NGOs

(specifically the United Nations) and Transnational corporations as well as

National businesses have mobilized the notion of digital diaspora in

“reverse brain-drain” efforts where very materially successful

transnationals and migrants with moneys to invest actually get to return

home.

In the past I have edited a couple publications that center around South

Asian Digital Diasporas (a Special Section of New Media and Society in 2006)

and South Asian Technospace (a co-edited collection of essays). My intent

with this next volume on digital diasporas is to include material that helps

elaborate on the more current platforms where links between transnational

capital and labor flows can be mapped in the context of the increasing

NGOization and ITization of the globe. Thus questions include (but are not

limited to) – why “digital diaspora” and why now? What forms a “digital

diaspora” within gaming environments and social networks? How are

non-profits and transnational corporations (similarly or differently)

mobilizing this idea of digital diaspora in relation to labor and capital

flows? How does a “digital diaspora” form – how does it “look” – how does it

function and so on.

>From prospective contributors, I will need an extended abstract of 800 to

1000 words that fleshes out the theoretical and methodological approaches in

relation to a specific site that will be examined.

Due Dates:

1] Extended abstract due on July 26th, 2011

2] You will hear back about your abstracts by August 15th 2011 – with

suggestions on how

you can proceed if the abstract is considered acceptable for the collection

3] Full essays are due by October 1, 2011.

If you have questions regarding the publisher and what exactly I’m looking

for and so on – feel free to email me -

radhika@cyberdiva.org with the subject header

“digital diasporas.”

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

The archives aren’t updated yet – but when they do you can find the discussion…

Meanwhile – cutting and pasting a part of my most recent post to invite anyone in-world to IM me to be a part of the group I am forming.

THIS discussion is to me about SL education and how we as educators can use these tools (if we must) responsibly and to explore if this medium is indeed enhancing or hampering our ability to pedagogically negotiate the complexities of representational practices world wide. When are we as educators part of the solution and when do we become part of the problem?

I am starting a group on SL on the politics of representation and pedagogy – anyone interested should IM me inworld – rad Zabibha.

This fall I teach a course on Pedagogy at the grad level and hope to have them participate in an SL based assignment that will include this group and discussions with them. Therefore the group is about more than “SLED” – it is about Pedagogy and representational practices.

what can I say?

whose voices am I consuming as I say

why can I not say

when you can

but yet you want their authentic voices

what I tell you cannot be trusted

that’s what you say

as if you had heard the authentic

yourself

then why do you need me to reveal it to you

if you know what it should look like?

so what is the nature of evidence in the academe – who is required to provide what evidence and why…

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.

J writes on that discussion (see url linked in a previous post – if I put the url here it pings back to the site in the comments section and I dont want to link all my thoughts directly via that site once again in another comments post – even though people may very well travel here from there anyway because of the previous ping):

” what is the kind of politics that can be generated through online exchange of images such as this? If left at the level of individual viewing it would perhaps, at best, be an act of critical conciuosness–I continue to be optimistic that that is in itself a valuable part of education. At its best, it will become part of a collective source of action.”

I responded on that site – but am still uncomfortable – I would have so easily agreed with this 8 years ago. The team at DA has literally shown me – through taking my hand and actually travelling me through – allowing me to work and go to the villages with them whenever I went to H’bad these past several trips… this is what we are trying to now articulate.

Yes there will be collective action – but what forms will it take – is action without engagement in the context in itself productive.

The point though is exactly that – the “kind of politics that [may] be generated…” while I am sure that in that statement is implicit an optimism abou the kind of politics possibly generated – there is no guarantee that the culture of globalization within which internet-speak as it is today will yield the kind of politics assumed by the optimistic reading of that statement…

enough said for now – this feeds so much into the work I am currently writing/dialoguing on – which is why I found myself caught up in discussing it so much. L looked at it today and thankgoodness she got it. So we will go back to talking about a certain documentary maker and enunciation within “global” contexts – where global is set up in a particular hierarchy which is conveniently erased as soon the global is spoken of with very specic “globals” pitted against it as local. More on this later.

We have to develop multiple notions of what it means to act – collectively – and when which collective contributes what…

enough said for this morning…

L emailed me her re-construction of the memory from last november – perhaps as we write that I will be able to get back to this nagging sense I have about seemingly unproblematized or unpacked notions of collective action through these interfaces.

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…)?