okay - so the title of this post says it all:)

Now that "radha ki betiyaan" has become another excuse for me to

blog about my life… I suddenly have to send out email alerts to some

members of my family about something I blogged - in case that is the first t

time they would see or hear about it and be surprised….

well - more communication - is that good or not?

if more communication through multiple channels

when is it more effective

how is it more effective

p.s. have to laugh at where the tag radha ki betiyaan links to…

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interesting how even this most recent article took me back to theorizing pvt and public through postcolonial feminist lenses - and I really wasnt looking to directly go there…

and of course the ubiquitous tension/dialectic of accountability to and oppression within community v individualization and illusions of liberation….

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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.

producer and consumer

who’s producing who (what?)

who’s consuming who (what?)
which object stares back?

At least with a reporter - there are what seem to be guidelines established through years of practice (by reporters and related administrators) and rule-making around news-making and reporting. When a reporter meets us f2f for a story or is going to be amidst us in a public venue we are aware that we will likely be “reported” on.

But what of the daily blogger - what are the warning signs for someone who is going to be written about in a blog? What are power dynamics at play - when a high ranking academic blogs vs when a graduate student blogs - what social capital permits the blogging of certain events (bloggers are hardly ever about stating multiple perspectives - they state their own and those of their friends - just as I do - not that reporters are objective necessarily either but there are other checks and balances…)

I have so many recent events happening around me and that I have been a part of that I want to report on and comment on on my blog - but hesitate because I feel that my view on some of these events will not be taken too kindly …

This is not an issue of marginalization and empowerment - it is an issue of judgement and viewership.

Specific situated audience communities interacting with Writers produce “texts” - but where the blog goes - we cant always map the route.

but I may blog the reports eventually anyway.

Had a very productive conversation with N about the Machinima she and her group produced - will have something to write about that with quotes from her after a few more meetings and conversations with her.

stay tuned!

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