701 Decolonial Archive Mapping by Grace Caraway

Pakistan

gcarawa — 2021-09-16 15:15:21 UTC

Citation: Ansari, A. (2018). What Knowledge for a Decolonial Agenda in the Philosophy of Technology? In D. Blamey & B. Haylock (Eds.), Distributed. Open Editions.

Annotation: Ahmed Ansari (2018) raises important questions about the “production and dissemination of knowledge", inviting us to think beyond the already established and accepted sources of knowledge in the field of technology. Ansari wants us to focus on the alternative narratives and representation, particularly when it comes to the production of knowledge. He states that “we must not accept that there is only one form of technicity, that which belongs to the West.” Ansari is of the opinion that the focus of innovators and scholars alike must be broadened. In the age of the internet, where information from all sources and voices from all over the world should have equal representation, we still fail to see a fair share of representation. He concludes on the thought that “the challenge for the architects at the margins of the future web would be to imagine what new possibilities, new visions of the internet could emerge: new knowledges sustained by new platforms in new, plural realms of the digital.” To create a world where the human aspect of technological usage is retained and promoted, we would need a pluralistic approach.

Yucatán Peninsula

gcarawa — 2021-09-16 15:18:52 UTC

Citation: Jackson, S. (2019). Facing Objects: An Investigation of Non-Human Personhood in Classic Maya Contexts. Ancient Mesoamerica, 30(1), 31-44. doi:10.1017/S0956536118000019

Annotation: Sarah Jackson’s research into Mayan civilization’s personification of non-human objects is compelling in its own right, but I found it particularly illuminating to consider the ways in which the Mayans relationship with material objects mirrors our relationship with technology and digital media today. She explains how the Mayans had complex, ritualistic relationships with material objects and often bestowed upon them personhood, frequently in the form of a facial glyph. In a section titled “Boundaries and Contents of Persons” she explains how “Mayan bodies were dividual (or divisible)” and that their notion of personhood “involved a self that moved beyond the boundaries of particular bodies, yielding persons that were ‘extended and extendible’”. I find this compelling because today our wearable technologies, smart devices, and digital assistants too extend the self and make it difficult to discern where personhood ends and objecthood begins. In “Personhood through Action and Interaction,” she argues that “argues that objects have souls that can ‘enter into relations with other souls,’ and participate in life cycles analogous to those of humans, suggesting another socially embedded commonality for persons no matter the form or type.” Again, we can see in technologies deep embeddedness in contemporary life a similar interaction between souls, between devices as the electronic media shapes our society. Together with this week’s readings, particularly McLuhan 1964, we can see many parallels that highlight how the media itself can be much more transformative than the content of the media. Jackson spends considerable time talking about faces and the Mayan’s effort to personify their technology with faces. While we do not rely on faces as much in our wireless world, one needs only to consider Siri, Alexa, and Cortana to realize that we too choose to personify our media technology.

Japan

gcarawa — 2021-09-16 15:20:42 UTC

Citation: Steinberg, S. (2017). McLuhan as Prescription Drug: Actionable Theory and Advertising Industries. Media Theory in Japan. Eds. M. Steinberg and A. Zahlten. Duke University Press.

Annotation: Steinberg focuses on McLuhan’s popularity with Japanese scholars, like Gotō Kazuhiko, and advertisement executives, like Takemura Ken’ichi, who is the primary focus of Steinberg’s exploration. The chapter explores McLuhan’s impact on Japan in 1960s in both the scholarly field and advertising, where it was popularized. The chapter considers the role Takemura had in popularizing McLuhan for the general public and for how McLuhan’s ideas can be transferred into advertising. Steinberg considers the danger in the change of McLuhan’s focus in Japan (from theory to advertising tips) and how Takemura, dubbed “TakeMcLuhan” by the author, reorients the approach into considering how the medium of advertising can be changed to make the most impact on the consumer.

Kansas, USA

gcarawa — 2021-09-16 15:22:05 UTC

Citation: Rosiek, J. L., Snyder, J., & Pratt, S. L. (2020). The New Materialisms and Indigenous Theories of Non-Human Agency: Making the Case for Respectful Anti-Colonial Engagement. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(3–4), 331–346.

Annotation: Rosiek, Pratt, and Snyder (who is Indigenous and is an enrolled citizen of the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas) explore agential realism within new materialism. Agential realism has to do with the idea that agency is not limited to humans, but manifests in all aspects of reality, including non-humans. While this is something of a new concept for Western, Eurocentric scholars, it is not new within the field of Indigenous studies. This begs the question why hasn’t this pre-existing literature been consulted and built upon rather than ignored? The authors answer this question, expand upon the topic of agential realism, and breakdown the ways in which Indigenous scholarship and practices of inquiry might be “illegible” to those trained in Eurocentric tradition. This is sort of a "meta" reading in a way since it discusses anti-colonial engagement as well as sharing the Indigenous studies approach to some of these concepts.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-09-16 15:23:21 UTC

Citation: Mossberger, K., Tolbert, C., Gilbert, M. (2006). Race, Place, and Information Technology. Urban Affairs Review, 41(5), 583 – 620. https://doi.org/10.1177/1078087405283511

Annotation: Mossberger, Tolbert, and Gilbert explore the issues with technological inequalities and inaccessibility that arise based on location (place) rather than race and ethnicity. They focused on examining African-Americans and Latinos who have lower rates of access and skill to emerging and established technological artifacts, which puts them at a disadvantage to be fully involved in the democratization of technology. Contributing to the understanding of “digital divide,” their findings reveal that the underdeveloped, segregated, and poverty concentrated areas (zip codes) where some African Americans reside, is a major reason why they are unlikely to learn about and use technology - unlike other dominant racial groups. On the other hand, Latinos are affected by the language barrier experienced. Their findings also show that both African Americans and Latinos were more likely to demonstrate positive attitudes toward information technology (even though attitudes might not really explain the lower rates of access and skills). Mossberger et al argues that given that “place” matters, concentrated poverty areas and racially segregated regions deserve attention in technology policy. The authors insist that virtual inequality should be considered and viewed as a part of other forms of inequalities experienced in our society.

London, UK

gcarawa — 2021-09-16 15:24:43 UTC

Citation: Gourlay, L. (2021). There Is No 'Virtual Learning': The Materiality of Digital Education. Journal
of New Approaches in Educational Research, 10(1), 57-66. doi: 10.7821/naer.2021.1.649

Annotation: Lesley Gourlay presents a sociomaterial and posthumanism perspective of virtual learning contrary to dominant discourse. Contextualized by the COVID-19 pandemic, Gourlay argues that digital engagement is a material and embodied practice; thus, there is no such thing as ‘virtual learning.’ She begins by discussing the three-part model of digital objects: physical (i.e., the CD-ROM), logical (i.e., recognized data), and conceptual (i.e., a digital photo). With this model, Gourlay seeks to prove the material and long-lasting nature of digital practices. Next, Gourlay argues that digital engagement is an embodied practice. Devices have a physicality that cannot be ignored and engagement with these devices is situated in physical spaces that must be managed or negotiated with – the devices are extensions of physical objects (i.e., furniture) and/or ourselves. From a sociomaterialist perspective, the university can be located as a space “enacted at a distance” by the students, characterized as “real, imagined, absent, and present” (Bayne et al., 2014 as cited in Gourlay, 2021, p. 61). In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic when universities were forced online, Gourlay states that ‘online learning’ is “always sociomaterially situated” as evidenced by the ways in which humans engaged with nonhuman actors to engage in digitally-mediated classes (Gourlay, 2021, p. 63)

Australia

gcarawa — 2021-09-16 15:26:10 UTC

Citation: Latimore, J., Nolan, D., Simons, M., &
Khan, E. (2017). Reassembling the
indigenous public sphere. AJIS.
Australasian Journal of Information
Systems, 21, 1-15.

Annotation: Latimore, Nolan, Simons, and Khan’s article “Reassembling the Indigenous Public Sphere” reflects on the ways that Indigenous Australians have been ostracized from the public sphere and have therefore gravitated to non-traditional media sources in order to connect and communicate. Scholars have theorized the social structures in Australia where the Indigenous peoples form a “‘counter-public’” or where they are part of a “wider sphere of representation” (2). Responding to these theories, the authors take a materialist media approach and argue that, since the technology and communication media in Australia are products of historical oppression, a new app called Wakul may be a way to create a new form of interaction between the general public and the Indigenous population in Australia.

India

gcarawa — 2021-09-16 15:26:49 UTC

Citation: Sengupta, R. (2020). Towards a decolonial media archaeology: The absent archive of screenwriting history and the obsolete munshi. Theory, Culture & Society, 38(1), 3–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276420930276

Annotation: Sengupta’s (2020) article highlights how Foucault’s media archeology overlooked global power asymmetries and appeared rather geo-politically insular and race agnostic. He argues that if certain kinds of media have been historically privileged over others, a decolonial media archeology “would investigate how coloniality/modernity may have informed many of those epistemological conditions” . He brings together the concepts of decolonial thinking and media archeology to “challenge the linear narratives of modernity/coloniality in media history.” Sengupta observes that radical media archeology has been more focused on the machines rather than the historical narratives created by humans. He argues that “decolonial media archaeology ought to depart from purely materialist approaches and radically write the human back into media histories.” He goes over the genealogy of the term “munshi” and how its meaning has rendered itself differently since the time of Akbar to the dialogue writer in talkie studios. He also explains how the British colonialism in India affected the status of “munshi” and created a divide between languages—Urdu and Persian were associated with Muslims and Bengali and Hindi to Hindus (munshi vs. pandit).

United States

gcarawa — 2021-09-16 15:28:52 UTC

ISBN: 9781509526390

Citation: Benjamin, R. (2019) Race After Technology: Abolitionist tools for the New Jim Code. Polity, 2019.

Annotation: The book examines the relationship between automation/artificial intelligence and systemic racism.

The Open University, Hawley Crescent, London, UK

gcarawa — 2021-09-16 15:30:30 UTC

Citation: Ali, Syed Mustafa (2017, June 12-16). Transhumanism and/as Whiteness. IS4SI 2017 Summit Digitalisation for a sustainable society, Gothenburg, Sweden, MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute), pp. 1–3.

Annotation: Ali considers transhumanism (through posthumanism) as he outlines this perspective’s persisting Eurocentric, colonial, and white/hetero/masculine orientation—even when this philosophical perspective claims to detach from these identities. He ultimately asserts the prevailing whiteness and Eurocentrism of trans and posthumanism, as two ways of thinking that rely on a difference existing between a specific human body and subsidiary and disparate ones. Though Ali does not deny posthumanism and materialism’s confrontation of various racial and colonial injustices, he ultimately highlights the fragility of these approaches and their intent.

Africa

gcarawa — 2021-09-16 15:31:25 UTC

Citation: Ndubueze, U. (2021). Materialism and the materialistic incursion into modern African societies: Consequencies for the African personality and society (Nigerian experience). Asian Journal of Social Science and Management Technology, 3(3), 47 -59.

Annotation: Writing from experience, the author - Uwalaka Ndubueze sheds light on the consequences of materialist incursion on the African personality and societies with a view to alert Africans on the dangers of an uncritical absorption of the materialist ideology in the quality of African personality and society. Highlighting that Western liberal capitalist mode of development and the Marxist/communist paradigm, which both share one similarity (anchored on materialistic philosophy),the author poses that their ideologies have been exported to other countries in the world (Africa inclusive) through the use of technology that seem to have a dire consequences on the African culture (values and spirituality) and its political culture. He underscores some of the effects as resulting in negative foreign cultural influences, money power, material power, sex power, excessive display of affluence, corrupt leadership and followership, culture of mediocrity, decline of shared values and social discipline and so on. The author belives that information or communication technologies should be democrtized with enough enlightnement for its users - so as not to lose oneself in the bid to get technologically advanced

Yucatán Peninsula

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:04:22 UTC

Citation: Estrada Ochoa, A.C. (2008) Naturaleza, cultura e identidad. Reflexiones desde la tradición oral maya contemporánea. Estudios de Cultura Maya, 34

Annotation: Estrada-Ochoa first distinguishes Western science, which claims to "build science" while simultaneously merely "discovering nature," from a more indigenous perspective that is more focused on subjective perspectivism. Western thinking tends to focus on multiple cultures that create a natural nationalistic unity while American indigenous cultures tend to see multiple natures that create cultural unity (189). Later she demonstrates that while Western thought typically perceives a Mayan persepective toward blended Nature and Culture, that the two can be distinguished within Mayan thought. This misunderstanding stems from the fact that Mayans typically do not see Nature or Culture but typically Nature and Culture (190). Western thought tends to believe that culture humanizes people by winning over nature and the author draws attention to colonialism, genocide, racism and discrimination to highlight the inherent dangers to this belief system (192). While progressive politics in Western thought is derived from an implicit superiority, the Mayans equivalent to social justice stems from the shared natural and cultural unity and a belief that while people, animals, minerals, the Earth, etc. all share different identities, that we are all of a natural unity (189-193).

New York University, New York, NY, USA

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:06:08 UTC

ISBN 13: 978-0-19-280182-1

Citation: Young, R. (2003). Postcolonialism: A very short introduction. New York, NY: Oxford University Press Inc.

Annotation: Young (2003) highlight the narratives surrounding why the term "postcolonial' disturbs the order of the world. Through the chapters contents displayed in his book, he takes his readers on a journey through cities, the suburbs of its dispossesed, the poverty of its rural landscape, different invisible scenes that are often not acknowledged, and the daily lives and experiences of inhabitants. He showcased the various snapsots (visuals) taken in various location around the world as well as the testimonies from some victims and survivors. Most, importantly, he was able to demonstrate, with a postcolonial argument, that power remains carefully controlled and excercised by Europe and North America on the nations of the three non-western continents (Africa, Asia, Latin America) - esp. in moments of economic hardships.

Brazil

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:07:29 UTC

Citation: Cruz, Felipe. Indígenas Antropólogos e o Espetáculo da Alteridade in Revista de Estudos e Pesquisas Sobre As Américas, v. 11, p. 93-108, 2017.

Annotation: Cruz (who uses his ethnicity's name, Tuxá, in daily life, and by which I'll be calling him from now on) (2017) uses his own experience as a Brazilian northeastern indigenous person to analyze and problematize how academia treats its indigenous members, particularly after affirmative actions by the Brazilian government facilitated the access of indigenous students in public universities. He focuses on Anthropology, as it's his field of study, and how jarring is the relationship of ingigenous peoples and areas of knowledge that, despite having been constructed upon colonialism, are supposed to be some of the most open to alterity. In that universe, Tuxá delineates two main kinds of attitudes that constrain and exoterize indigenous participants from actually being seen as subjects of their own and reaching a horizontal area of debate and production. One is the inertial problem of academic formality, that tries to wash away any members' particularities as to create an homogeneous form of speech and discourse. That problem affects all academics, but it's particularly cruel with indigenous members, who are expected to conform with a habitus of a completely strange world. The other is the non-indigenous fantasy about a fixed indigenous alterity: rooted in colonial/racist paradigms that range from more to less "purist", but that all treat indigenous academics as an object or a prize. As an indigenous anthropologist, Tuxá reflects upon how the richness of Academia comes at a high price.

South Asia

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:08:26 UTC

Citation: Mukhia, H. (2010). Alternative Modernities, Alternatives to Modernity or Multiple Modernities – What Else? Pakistan Perspectives, 15(2), 5-14.

Annotation: Mukhia focuses on the South Asian region, encouraging us to look at “modernity” in a way that is different from the American and European perspectives. The concepts of modernity, according to Mukhia, are “an importation from Europe” (p. 5). Arguing for a pluralistic viewpoint, he says that history, as it has been handed to use by colonizers, is not the entire truth.
Mukhia echoes Grosfoguel’s point that capitalism and colonialism were not just about the economy. Economy, in fact, was just one aspect of ‘modernity. One of the most important impacts is the development of “an epistemic hierarchy that privileged western knowledge and cosmology over non-Western knowledge and cosmologies” (Grosfoguel, 2008, p. 6). Mukhia also argues for a pluriverse where the linear view of ‘modernity is divested and an inclusive environment can be created.

Nigeria

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:09:12 UTC

Citation: Adichie, C. N. (2009). The danger of a single story. TED Talk.

Annotation: Adichie highlights how detrimental a single, isolated perspective can be to any group of people. Narrating one such experience, she tells how one of her roommates “had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe”. These stories penetrate our lives and force us to look at everything from that singular point of view.

South Asia

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:10:15 UTC

Citation: Thussu, D. K. (2009). Why internationalize media studies and how? In D. K. Thussu (Ed.), Internationalizing media studies (pp. 13–31). Routledge.

Annotation: Daya Kishan Thussu (2009) talks about why media studies should be internationalized and how. He argues that the institutionalization of media studies has largely ignored the “transnational and historical contexts of communication and media” (p. 14). This ignorance led to an asymmetry, which means that Western thinkers did not feel the need to read non-Western specialists. This prominence of Western works creates a dependency on Western thinkers rather than traditional thinkers ultimately leading to the Eurocentric bias. Thussu also mentions that even in comparative models of media systems, the focus has been on Euro-American media, despite the fact there are larger media systems outside of those regions, specifically in South Asia (for instance, journalism in India is the world’s most diverse mediascape, but there is hardly any notable focus on that). He recommends that media studies curricula should be made more inclusive and international by taking into consideration the non-European histories (for instance, the first higher education centers—Taxsila and Nalanda—were not established in Europe, but in the present-day Pakistan and India). He gives many examples of contributions that come from Chinese, Islamic, and Indian histories, but these trajectories are not considered in media studies.

California, USA

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:11:30 UTC

Citation: Grosfoguel, R. (2008). Latin@s and the decolonization of the US empire in the 21st century. Social Science Information, 47(4), 605–622. https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018408096449

Annotation: Grosfoguel utilizes Quijano's concept of 'coloniality of power' to analyze the reality of the Latine population in the US, as they're the fastest-growing population in the country but have been, and are constantly, taken as second-class citizens. He makes clear cuts of the immigrant populations that are prevalent in the country and their differences, focusing on the ones that suffer from a definition of racism as a cultural discrimination rather than a simply biological one. From the neocolonial structure the US lives by, Grosfoguel takes California as a model as to how the country would look like in the future: with a non-White population much bigger and active than the historically hegemonic one.

Korea

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:12:26 UTC

Citation: Yamamoto, H. (2019). Decolonial possibilities of transnationalism in contemporary zainichi art. Situations 12 (1), 107-128. http://situations.yonsei.ac.kr/product/data/item/1553949880/detail/0bdb035e13.pdf

Annotation: This essay focuses deeply on the theories of transnationalism and decolonial studies and how these lenses can help to frame discussion of pieces of art and media. The objects at the center of the study are pieces by zainichi artists: artists that are Korean but live in Japan as “long-term or permanent foreign residents.” These artists descend from Koreans who were displaced during the Japanese occupation of Korea from 1910-1945, and the artists are concerned with how to translate the feeling of being torn between two identities. The group of artists consists of both Korean and Japanese artists as they explore transnationalism tendencies, which the author defines as “the phenomenon of trans-border interconnectedness among different nations and ethnicities” (110). Through an exploration of video art, textiles, paintings, and sculptures, the author explores how the artists navigate the tensions of their families that are torn between two cultures and countries.

Japan

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:12:49 UTC

United States

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:14:57 UTC

(no specific region)

ISBN: 9780553418835

Citation: O'Neil, Cathy. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Broadway Books, 2017.

Annotation: Mathematician Cathy O'Neil reveals the ways in which today's black box algorithms and mathematical models are unchecked, and being weaponized against our most vulnerable populations, reinforcing inequality, racism, and discrimination.

Atlanta, GA, USA

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:15:28 UTC

Citation: Wiggan, G., & Watson-Vandiver, M. J. (2019). Pedagogy of empowerment: Student perspectives on critical multicultural education at a high-performing african american school. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 22(6), 767-787. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2017.1395328

Annotation: This article looks at a high-performing urban school (Harriet Tubman Academy [HTA]*) to explore the importance of critical multiculturalism in education. The school has a unique curriculum with a focus on African-centered education, cultural empowerment, and ancestral history. “Using a critical anti-racism education perspective, it can be noted that HTA produces organic intellectuals. HTA students critically examine their education in relation to the world around them" (Freire, 2000 as cited in Wiggan & Watson-Vandiver, 2019, p. 782). This case study revealed greater academic achievement among students and positive perceptions of the curriculum among teachers and students.

Botswana

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:17:39 UTC

Citation: Nyati-Ramahobo, L. (2002) From a phone call to the high court: Wayeyi Visibility and the Kamanakao Association's Campaign for Linguistic and Cultural Rights in Botswana, Journal of Southern African Studies, 28:4, 685-709, DOI: 10.1080/0305707022000043476

Annotation: Lydia Nyati-Ramahobo writes about the struggles of her tribe, the Wayeyi, in Botswana. She goes over the history from before British colonization to the present day, showing how her tribe has become invisible in their own lands. For Nyati-Ramahobo, “It is a legacy from the colonial to the postcolonial state that the non-Tswana have been regarded as neither constituting tribes nor having the right to tribal land in a territory of their own” (690). Her tribe is not legally recognized by the state and has been discriminated against, preventing the use of their tribal language, Shiyeyi.

Japan

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:19:06 UTC

ISBN: 9780415906166

Citation: Yoshimoto, M. “Images of Empire: Tokyo Disneyland and Japanese Cultural Imperialism.” In Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom, edited by Eric Smoodin, p. 181-202. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Annotation: Yoshimoto takes a postmodernist look at the success of Tokyo Disneyland, pushing back against the idea of the park being an example of the cultural imperialism of Disney’s global media empire. He argues that viewing Tokyo Disneyland in that way is too reductive of an argument because is views Japan, despite being an economic powerhouse, as still culturally a third world country with its obsession with western culture. It also assumes that the domination of the world by western powers cannot change once it happens. Tokyo Disneyland is instead an example of the neocultural imperialism of Japan (p. 190-191). The park eliminates symbols of American nationalism and adapts them to fit the Japanese audience, and repackages American culture as something to be bought and sold. Japan has an active role in adapting, consuming, and shaping the culture of Disneyland to suit their needs rather than being passive recipients of American culture. While this article is interesting, I wonder if its use of postmodern theory makes its critique of Tokyo Disneyland inadequate as Grosfoguel (2008) argues.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:21:01 UTC

Citation: Costanza-Chock, Sasha. Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need. MIT Press, 2020. {open access text}

Annotation: "Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need" by Sasha Constanza-Chock, considers who is left out when we utilize “universal” design approaches and offers ways that we can challenge this type of structural inequality.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:21:59 UTC

ISBN: 9780262539739

Citation: Philip, Kavita. "The Internet will be Decolonized." Your Computer is on Fire. MIT Press, 2021.

Annotation: “The Internet Will Be Decolonized” by Kavita Phillip,takes a “material, infrastructural view” of the internet and the ways in which the political choices embodied in its materiality are inherently entwined with the knowledge created from and through it.

South Asia

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:24:33 UTC

Citation: Sulehria, F. (2018). Introduction In Media Imperialism in India and Pakistan (pp. 1-43). Routledge.

Annotation: Sulehria states that, both in India and Pakistan, “globalization is reinforcing media imperialism”. The media and entertainment industries in these countries appear to be dependent on the West, both in terms of the use of technology and content. Similarly, the biggest TV advertisers in both countries are western multinationals, thus expanding their markets and reaching a wider audience. Farooq Sulehria gives a different view of the globalization of media, indicating how this has impacted local and cultural content, thus promoting a colonized view.

Papua New Guinea

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:25:21 UTC

Citation: Coupaye, L. The living shape of time
Time and technics in the case of Abulës-speakers yams. in Fortis, P., & Küchler, S. (2021). Time and Its Object: A Perspective from Amerindian and Melanesian Societies on the Temporality of Images (1st ed.). Routledge.

Annotation: A fascinating dive in the ceremonies revolving aroung the long yam cultivation by the Abulës-speaking people of the Maprik area (Papua New Guinea). The yams, more than food and ancestral signifiers, are a living medium through which these populations experience an unique temporality, which permeates their organization and experience of time and space. An detailed example of the phenomena of technologies and medium through the natural world, shaping the world as being shaped by it, Peters explores in his book.

South America

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:26:51 UTC

Citation: Brizzi, Y. C. (2021) Ontological Drawings: A collaborative method for research with Amerindian societies. Espaço
Ameríndio, Porto Alegre, v. 15, n. 2, p. 285-309

Annotation: The study of Amerindian onthologies and the understanding of their epistemologies, diverse as they are, have been historically ignored or demeaned by eurocentric modes of analysis and understanding of the organized written language as superior to any other form of shaping media and technologies of those peoples. Through extensive bibliographical research, Cacela Brizzi seeks to exemplify what can be retrieved from drawings and graphisms from many distinct Amerindian ethnicities, exploring those ontologies and what does the imagetic record represent in their relationship with the world.

China

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:27:38 UTC

Citation: Furuhata, Y. (2019) Of dragons and geoengineering: rethinking elemental media. Media+Environment 1 (1). https://doi.org/10.1525/001c.10797.

Annotation: This is a direct response to the elemental media conceptions of The Marvelous Clouds. Furuhata is asking the reader to not just consider the four Greek elements, but instead the Eastern five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, water. By focusing specifically on the high rise buildings of China with “dragon holes” on the side, she breaks down the building through Peters conception and argues for the five elements to be considered instead as a decolonial move and a materialist move. She argues that the focus on the Greek elements is another example of Westernized colonialism and that elemental media are inherently political with prior conceptions and considerations of the infrastructures in place.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:28:27 UTC

Citation: Towns, A. (2019) Black “Matter” Lives. Women's Studies in Communication 41 (4). DOI: 10.1080/07491409.2018.1551985

Annotation: In this essay, Towns also considers the elemental media proposed by Peters to consider the Black and female body. This seems to extend from the last Towns reading that we did by first focusing on the “vibrant matter” of Jane Bennet to discuss “Black female slave bodies, and Black bodies in general, function as media through which Western conceptions of race, gender, and sexuality are materialized” (3). Towns references the last essay but now is extending to think more specifically on the Black female body as “…a vehicle through which man continued to maintain his dominance over nature,” and then references the distinction between matter and media from The Marvelous Clouds (6). While avoiding the discussion, specifically, of elemental media, Towns is drawing attention to how the bodies of Black women perpetuate the Western coloniality. Instead, he draws more specificity to the way Peters discusses McLuhan’s ideas to think about how the bodies at the center of the essay are extensions in the same way the ship or fire are: tools of Westernization.

South Africa

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:29:09 UTC

Citation: Rivers, L. P. (2007). A genealogy of media regulation in South Africa since 1892. South African Law Journal(124)3.

Annotation: Patric Lynn Rivers highlighted how Apartheid survived in post-apartheid media regulation. He underscored that remnants remain even as a post-apartheid agency like the Film and Publication Board (FPB) deploys a regulatory method grounded in the 'classification' and 'certification' of media, as opposed to the outright 'censorship' wielded by the apartheid state. These observations and findings about the history of media regulation in South Africa since 1892 provide readers with insights on how “traditional” media evolves in various contexts and what practices and structures were put in place to achieve such transformation.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:29:48 UTC

Citation: Parks, L. & Walker, J. (2020). Disaster media: Bending the curve of ecological disruption and moving toward social justice. Media+Environment, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.1525/001c.13474.

Annotation: This week, I chose an article from two feminist scholars from UC Santa Barbara, Lisa Parks and Janet Walker. In this article, they define disaster media as “the project of attuning to ways that media are both complicit in the amplification of disastrous occurrence and helpful in the provision of reckoning and relief, support and succor” (4). They look at disaster media through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how satellite media and data visualizations link coronavirus capitalism with digital capitalism.

Yucatán Peninsula

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:30:51 UTC

Citation: Coronado, M.I.N. (2019). El lenguaje ritual del fuego en los mayas del periodo Clásico: un acercamiento. Estudios de Cultura Maya Liv, 54 (91-127).

Annotation: In her paper, Coronado illuminates the special relationship that the Maya had with fire. The Mayans recognized and revered fire, both for its destructive capabilities but also for its role in regeneration, revitalization, and making way for new life. They used fire to communicate political changes (105) and the destruction or creation of new towns (109). Themes of both creation and destruction are frequently addressed. Some of the Mayan rituals for creating fire point to a healthy inclusion and respect for both men and women in Mayan culture. Coronado describes the process in a new fire was created by “[rubbing a male element, a pointed wood, in a concave container, the female element, which contained wood residues and dry leaves; the ‘male toothpick’ rotated alternately in one direction or the other causing a heating, until the coveted flame was generated]” (translated, 106). Her depiction of this ritual is obviously sexual in nature and highlights the importance in Mayan thought of fire to fertility and creation. The presence of fire in holy spaces serves as a sign of the presence of their deity, who facilitates the crossing over between life and death, or from nonexistence into existence (110-113). To relate this paper to the course topic, I considered how fire communicated with the Mayans who revered its destructive and creative attributes. In this way, the medium is the message, fire conveys meaning implicitly. But the Mayans also used the fire to communicate important events and had a variety of complex, context-dependent rituals for fire-starting. How the fire was created was an important facet of the communication and this is very interesting to me – it seems as if the Mayans recognized different kinds of fire, which makes me believe that they recognized and could “read” the nuances of meaning and communication in these different forms of fire.

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Brinellvägen, Stockholm, Sweden

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:32:56 UTC

Citation: Allen, I. K. (2020). Thinking with a feminist political ecology of air-and-breathing-bodies. Body & Society, 26(2), 79-105.

Annotation: In the article, Allen attempts to “track and trace a specifically Feminist Political Ecological engagement with air-and-breathing-bodies, proposing that feminist theory, with its concern for porosity and vulnerability, is poised to open up embodied accounts of air, where air, breath and bodies are taken as inseparable, to inform more nuanced and intimate political–ecological accounts of how they come to matter in intersectional intra-relationship” (96-97). Though not necessarily focused on media studies, Allen focuses on bodies, environment, and air (an element!) in ways that echo Peters’ discussion in Chapter Two of his book (and a bit of Chapter Three with the oxygen talk). Again, this comes from a social theory standpoint, but I think ties in nicely with some of the elemental media conversation.

University of London, London, UK

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:33:47 UTC

Citation: Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer phenomenology: orientations, objects, others. Durham: Duke University Press.

Annotation: Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others by Sara Ahmed takes to task looking at phenomenology through a queer lens that primarily center on the concepts of “orientation.” In a similar fashion to how Peters considers orientation in space with the human body and the media around it, Ahmed is taking the next step by embracing the theory of phenomenology and thinking about “the question of sexual orientation [and] the orientation of orientalism as a point of entry for reconsidering how racism ‘orientates’ bodies in specific ways” (p. 21). It’s the focus on sexual orientation and race that makes Ahmed’s considerations stand out in the field of phenomenology, especially in how she tackles Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. In addition to those orientations in queer and race, Ahmed concludes by thinking about the disorientation caused by ruling, prevailing structures and thinking about the ways that the disorientation can lead the way for a reorientation for the bodies at the center of Ahmed’s study.

Nigeria

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:34:28 UTC

Citation: Dasuki S.I., Abubakar N.H. (2019). The Contributions of WhatsApp to Social Inclusion: A Case of Internally Displaced Persons in Nigeria. In: Nielsen P., Kimaro H.C. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies for Development. Strengthening Southern-Driven Cooperation as a Catalyst. Advances in Information and Communication Technology (551)1. 414-424.

Annotation: In the article, the authors addresses how WhatsApp can be used to improve the lives of internally displaced persons (IDPs) affected by conflict. Their aim was to show how the digital platform contributes to the social inclusion of these population. To theorize the complex relationship between mobile technologies and social inclusion, Sen’s five distinct instrumental freedoms was drawn upon to understand the use of WhatsApp by IDPs affected by Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria and its impact on their social inclusion. And based on a week's fieldwork of an ongoing research, the case narrative presented both the freedom outcomes afforded the IDPs by the use of WhatsApp and also the impediments that hinder the developmental impact. The authors findings shows that the use of this platform by the IDPs result in social and economic opportunities, political participation and transparency, and protective security measures.

Pakistan

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:35:11 UTC

Citation: Eteraz, A. (2013). The Death of the Urdu Script. Medium.

Annotation: In this article, Ali Eteraz writes about his struggles when he tried to make a case for the standard Urdu font on digital media. When this article was published, Urdu was written in the digital world either using Roman/English characters or the Arabic font. A few years later, Apple introduced the original Urdu font in all of its devices. Google and Microsoft devices, however, have not yet changed. You cannot write Urdu in Google docs the way it is supposed to be written. Additionally, many leading media sources (BBC, for example) write news in Urdu using the standard Arabic font. Eteraz argues that this is, in no way, fair to the people who read and write in Urdu. The digital space should be more accessible and inclusive. He requests all the tech companies and smartphone makers “to feel a moment of linguistic humanitarianism and offer us i) an Urdu keyboard in our smartphones with all the letters and ii) to let us render the Urdu in nastaliq. If even then we fail to make Urdu a popular online language, then the onus for its death will be upon us.”

United States

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:36:09 UTC

Citation: Scauso, M. S., FitzGerald, G., Tickner, A. B., Behera, N. C., Pan, C., Shih, C.-yu, & Shimizu, K. (2020). Covid-19, democracies, and (de)colonialities. Democratic Theory, 7(2), 82–93. https://doi.org/10.3167/dt.2020.070211

Annotation: In this article, the authors assert that COVID-19 has reintroduced the “colonial continuities” in the form of discrimination, inequality, and violence towards certain groups of people. The article talks about how in the 18th and 19th centuries colonizers would treat natives as filthy or unsanitary beings even though it was them, the colonizers, who would expose these people to certain foreign viruses. In the times of COVID-19 too, people of Asian descent were particularly blamed in the United States for spreading the virus, leading to racist behaviors. The authors argue that “debates about democracy and pandemic must also go beyond the boundaries delineated by Eurocentric assumptions about democracy’s form and content to focus on substantive issues of equity, analyzing which social forces are exercising power in particular contexts, for whose benefits, and at whose expense” (p. 90). They also suggest that such conversations must include the non-human bodies—including the coronavirus—as part of our ecology.

Ontario, Canada

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:37:02 UTC

Citation: Kimmerer, R.B. (2013). Braiding
sweetgrass, Milkweed Editions.

Annotation: Robin Wall Kimmerer is another Anishnaabe scholar and begins her book with a retelling of Sky Woman falling. Similar to Watts, Kimmerer explores the relationship among human and non-human entities. She shares her lesson from various plants and bodies of water throughout the book, creating a profound story of how all things are interconnected. Placing Kimmerer in the context of elemental media creates a productive tension, just as putting Peters and Watts together does. Kimmerer is not a media scholar. She is a botanist. But the way she interacts with the world fits in with elemental media, which is telling in her reason for choosing her field of study: "I chose botany because I wanted to learn about why asters and goldenrod looked so beautiful together" (39).

Yucatán Peninsula

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:38:01 UTC

Citation: Estrada-Belli, F. (2006). Lightning sky, rain, and the maize god: The ideology of preclassic Maya rulers at Civil, Peten, Guatemala. Cambridge University Press.

Annotation: Estrada-Belli uses archaeological discoveries to demonstrate that the Mayans had rich cultural and ritualistic norms long before the Classic Mayan period. The author draws attention to the importance of the power of the sky and the purity of water. Of particular relevance to this week’s readings is Tlapacoya, the sky monster, and “center of the sky and portal to the sky itself” (69). During the colonial-period, the Quiché, one of a number of Mayan groups referred to Tlapacoya as Hu racan, a supreme god who resides at the center of the sky (70). It is interesting to note that the word hurricane derives from Hu racan and illustrates the power of both the god and the phenomenon. This sky monster is revered, and the location of Mayan pyramids coincides with locations where lightning frequently strikes (66).

Australia

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:38:45 UTC

Citation: McKemey, M.B., , Ens, E.J., Hunter, J.T., Ridges, M., Costello, O. and Reid, N.C.H. (2021), Co-producing a fire and seasons calendar to support renewed Indigenous cultural fire management. Austral Ecology.

Annotation: McKemey et al describe the process of developing a seasons and fires calendar in New South Wales, in a collaboration between Australian researchers and the local Banbai Aboriginal Nation.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:39:22 UTC

Citation: Marshall, W. (2019). "Social Dance in the Age of (Anti-)Social Media: Fortnite, Online Video, and the Jook at a Virtual Crossroads." Journal of Popular Music Studies 31(4): 3-15.

Annotation: In Fortnite, emotes – short avatar animations triggered by the player - are often used to celebrate a victory or to rub a win in another player’s face. But the emotes of Fortnite have bled into the physical world with young white men using the dance emotes to bully and humiliate LGBTQ+ people, people of color, and women as well as “haze” other young white men on online platforms. They would play footage of themselves performing a dance from Fortnite alongside footage of someone describing their experiences with depression, anxiety, gender dysphoria, or suicide in an attempt to make fun of and invalidate their victim’s experiences and reinforce white patriarchy and heteronormativity. Marshall notes how using the dance emotes in this way also divorces the dances from the social dance cultures led by women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people in which they originated.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:40:04 UTC

Citation: Wetzel, G. (2019). "Layered feminist historiography: Composing multivocal stories through material annotation practices." Composition Studies, 47(2), 14-241.

Annotation: Through analyzing an annotated version of an archival text, Wetzel offers how assigning students a layered feminist historiography project can be beneficial as it "yields valuable pedagogical benefits while calling attention to 'the enormous complexity' of the past, the inevitable limitations of history texts, and the importance of approaching history as 'inquiry'. DIY material annotation practices help students critically intervene in the histories that have been handed to them and in doing so builds multimodal composing skills, rhetorical facility, and Composition Studies archival/research capacities" (43-44). I think this is especially relevant to our decolonial project.

Uganda

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:41:06 UTC

Citation: Brian Semujju, Theorizing Dependency Relations in Small Media, Communication Theory, Volume 30, Issue 4, November 2020, Pages 370–387, https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtz032

Abstract: The paper questions the pervasive western intellectual universalism which disregards Global South imaginations for generalized approaches. Using field data from Uganda about Community Audio Towers (CATs), the western-generated community media theory is interrogated, accentuating its failure to account for the intricate relationship between the individual, society, and small media. To cover the gap, the Small Media System Dependency theory is herein introduced as a geocultural response to lack of theory from the South.

Ontario, Canada

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:47:17 UTC

Vanessa Watts (2013). Indigenous place-thought & agency amongst humans and non-humans.

Kilwa Masoko, Tanzania

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 22:49:45 UTC

Kilwa Kisiwani. Atlas Obscura podcast

Color Key for Sources

gcarawa — 2021-09-21 23:23:59 UTC

Pink: Not Categorized

Yellow: Race and Indigenous Studies

Red: Feminism, Gender and Sexuality, Queer Studies

Blue: International Focus (Pinned at Institution of Author)

Green: Race, Ethnicity and Indigenous Studies with International Focus (Pinned at Institution of Author)

Purple: Feminism, Gender and Sexuality, Queer Studies with International Focus (Pinned at Institution of Author)

Lines: Connect the same sources to multiple locations, due to either scholarly focus or to the authors' institutions

Pakistan

gcarawa — 2021-09-22 22:23:12 UTC

Citation: Kohari, A. (2021). How to bring a language to the future. Rest of world.

Annotation: Alizeh Kohari (2021), in this article, talks about the efforts that are being made by individuals in and outside of Pakistan to ensure that Urdu font, typeface, and the language itself does not die in this digital age. With English being the dominant language of the internet, it is quite difficult for other languages to retain their identity, particularly when the script of these languages has nothing in common with English. The article also addresses some of the reasons because of which Urdu, and other non-Euro-American languages, have been lagging behind.

India

gcarawa — 2021-09-22 22:24:03 UTC

Citation: Mushtaq, M. U. (2009, January). Public health in British India: A brief account of the history of medical services and disease prevention in colonial India. Indian journal of community medicine : official publication of Indian Association of Preventive & Social Medicine. Retrieved September 22, 2021, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2763662/.

Annotation: Mushtaq (2009) outlines the history of medical services and disease prevention in colonial India. The author provides an account of how the advent of infectious diseases, mostly as a consequence of colonialism, led to the establishment of health systems and shaped the prevention efforts to improve the health of the citizens. The article provides a detailed history of the establishment of hospitals and educational institutions in India and highlights how some plagues and diseases were handled by the British. He explains that the British government took its time in order to create a strong medical system in colonial India due to a lack of funds—it was a resistance on part of the Indian people to the colonial government. Development eventually took place “as the natives were educated according to the British system.”

United States

gcarawa — 2021-09-22 22:24:48 UTC

Citation: Jackson, Z. I. (2015). Outer worlds: The persistence of race in movement “beyond the human". GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 21(2), 215-218.

Annotation: In this article, Jackson (2015) cautions us against accepting a theory of posthumanism without acknowledging how critical race theory presents implications for how ‘being’ and ‘the human’ have come to be defined. Jackson critiques posthumanism through the lens of critical race theory, addressing the question of what and whose idea of the human we are transcending.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-09-22 22:26:27 UTC

Citation: Schiwy, F. (2009). Digital ghosts, global capitalism and social change. Social Identities, 15(3), 313–330.

Annotation: Schiwy begins her essay by describing the ways in which mainstream digital media, even when it attempts to acknowledge the subaltern perspective and decolonialize, often only serves to reinforce the existing infrastructural and colonial status quo. She argues that despite the beliefs of researchers like Hardt, Negri, and Poster, that the colonial ghosts of exploitation yet haunt the realm of digital media. On the other hand, she demonstrates the ways in which indigenous activists have used digital media to not only bring attention and highlight their relevant human rights crises, but also to generate revenue by selling this media to institutions like Western academia to in turn fund their resistance. “Digital media are allowing for the creation of expanding communication networks among often times remote rural areas. Rather than in the backwaters of Wall Street and the emerging global cities, indigenous peoples in Latin America are at the forefront of experimenting with political and economic alternatives to global capitalism.” Failure to recognize the ways in which these indigenous cultures are embracing digital media to further their goals demonstrates that a paternalistic, colonial blind spot still exists. Schiwy demonstrates how the indigenous activists in both Bolivia and Chiavas have coopted the technology but failure to recognize these phenomena demonstrates an erasure of embodiment and indigenous identity. “Indigenous documentaries thus counter a dominant colonial gaze. In ethnographic film white colonizers and scientists have objectified colonial others and bound viewers into their desires and anxieties.” Indigenous documentaries offer an alternative perspective to the colonial gaze.

Michigan State University, Michigan, USA

gcarawa — 2021-09-22 22:27:29 UTC

Citation: Sano-Franchini, J. L. (2010). Intellectual property and the cultures of BitTorrent communities. Computers and Composition 27 (3), 202-210.

Abstract: In Technics and Time, 1, Bernard Stiegler (1998) challenged the prevalent philosophical distinction between tekhnē and ēpistēmē, arguing that humans are fundamentally technical beings. According to Stiegler, the industrialization of civilization led to a disequilibrium in the evolution of culture and the evolution of technics, with technics evolving more quickly than culture. Stiegler's discussions of technics, culture, time, and memory provide a useful theoretical framework for understanding some of the cultural implications of copyright issues, which are often viewed in terms of economics, legality, and/or ethics. In this article, I focus on the intellectual property debate as it pertains to peer-to-peer networks and the music industry. Drawing from Technics and Time, I theoretically frame these issues as a problem of temporality, memory, and a disconnect in the evolution of culture and technology. I then use small-scale/observational ethnographic analysis to examine a private torrent community to consider how torrent communities are cultural phenomena, the implications of this assumption, and how these considerations might inform or extend existing approaches to issues of intellectual property. More broadly, I ask, what are the affordances of thinking about these economic, legal, and political issues from a cultural framework?

United States

gcarawa — 2021-09-22 22:28:13 UTC

Citation: Gaebl, Gina (2018). On the Liberation of All Women: Socialist Feminism and Materialist Ecofeminism. Acta Cogitata: An Undergraduate Journal in Philosophy 5 (2), 1-8.

Annotation: This week’s contribution to the decolonial archive is Gina Gaebl’s (2018) essay “On the Liberation of All Women: Socialist Feminism and Materialist Ecofeminism.” Gaebl criticizes western feminism’s limitations regarding its colonial undergirding, adherence to capitalism, and erasure of indigenous and other non-western voices. She ultimately recognizes this lack as detrimental to any feminist progress and moves into her argument for (social) feminism’s crucial need for ecofeminism and its materiality. She discusses how ecofeminism aims to counteract the environmentally destructive neo-liberal forces in developing countries by prioritizing land, bodies, and other material things to evince the effects of capitalism (p. 5). The material focus is especially compelling here, which points to how physical (and figurative) impact, devastation, degradation, and resistance are integral to feminist social action.

Guinea

gcarawa — 2021-10-02 19:27:31 UTC

Citation: Waddell, K. "The alphabet that will save a people from disappearing." The Altantic, Nov 16, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/the-alphabet-that-will-save-a-people-from-disappearing/506987/

Annotation: This article covers the development of Adlam, a script invented by two young boys in Guinea to better transcribe their native language, Fulani. In the article, the author writes about both the development of the Fulani script and the Cherokee script because they are at different points of becoming officially recognized. Both have been added to Unicode, but at the time of this article both scripts were having trouble being added to technology platforms. This reveals the complexity that power has with the development of new scripts because although both are now widely used amongst their native language speakers, neither language as full access in the digital world.

South Africa

gcarawa — 2021-10-02 19:28:38 UTC

Title: The Cango Caves on South Africa's Garden Route

Annotation: In this cave, you will learn alot about the geology and formation of these caves. Developed over millions of years, it still looks ancient and beautiful. The long miles of underground passing takes you down deep into the earth. It was discovered 80,000years ago. Meanwhile some caves in it are about 850,000 years old. Exploring this site will show and tell you alot about the existence of ancient technologies.

American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West, New York, NY, USA

gcarawa — 2021-10-02 19:29:33 UTC

Citation: Schildkrout, E. (2004). Inscribing the Body. Annual Review of Anthropology, 33(319–344).

Annotation: This paper describes the ways in which tattoos, scarification, and body paint all enable the "cultural construction of the inscribed body." It further addresses the historical relationship between indigenous cultures and bodily inscription as well as the relatively contemporary phenomenon of mainstream Western interest. The paper addresses the ways in which the human body constitutes a material media.

The Washington Post, K Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA

gcarawa — 2021-10-02 19:30:27 UTC

Citation: Dewey, C. (2013). How the Internet is killing the world’s languages. The Washington Post.

Annotation: This article refers to András Kornai’s (2013) research about the lack of diversity in internet languages. “Less than five percent of current world languages are in use online” which means a huge number of languages do not get any recognition. In modern times, the existence of anything is dependent on its availability and findability on the internet. If so many languages are not being used in the online/digital world, there is a fair chance that these languages will die out in the future.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-10-02 19:31:18 UTC

Citation: Gundaker, G. (1998). Diaspora of signs. In Signs of diaspora / diaspora of signs: Literacies, creolization, and vernacular practice in African America. (pp. 63-94). Oxford University Press, Incorporated. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ncsu/detail.action?docID=272698.

Annotation: In “Diaspora of Signs,” Gundaker (1998) describes the network of signs across the Afro-Atlantic diaspora. This is to reconceptualize traditional ideas of literacy and orality. The author claims that the combination of transatlantic symbolic inscription systems and traditional literacies are characteristic of African American vernacular.

India

gcarawa — 2021-10-02 19:32:01 UTC

Citation: Chakrabarti, P. (2020, July 14). Covid-19 and the Spectres of colonialism. The India Forum. Retrieved September 29, 2021, from https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/covid-19-and-spectres-colonialism.

Annotation: Chakrabarti (2020) provides an interesting take on how the India’s lockdown regulations and vaccine experimentation are mimics of its colonial past. The lockdown restrictions imposed in 2020 were very similar to those invoked by the Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897 which targeted the poor, migrant workers and their movements. In 1895, the colonial government had also introduced the Pilgrim Ships Act that controlled the movement of Haj pilgrims. These two acts established in 1895 and 1897 respectively provided “the colonial authorities almost unrestricted power to restrict the movements of the poor, migrant workers, and Muslim pilgrims.” Chakrabarti gives various examples of how the 1897 act is resurrecting itself today in India’s Covid-19 regulations and claims that the pandemic has “made the return of the spectre of colonialism more real.”

Iowa, USA

gcarawa — 2021-10-02 19:33:02 UTC

DOI: 10.1177/1555412011402676

Citation: Brock, A. (2011). “’When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong’: Resident Evil 5, Racial Representation, and Gamers.” Games and Culture 6(5), p. 429-452. DOI: 10.1177/1555412011402676

Annotation: The article explores the audience reaction to the use of African people as enemies in Resident Evil 5. Brock discusses how video games, like the science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories that inspired them in the golden age of gaming, often draw from Western values of White masculinity and construct worlds that White male protagonist conquer and exploit. The article has a connection to the Towns article and the theory of the use of the black body as a medium; the African bodies used for RE5's zombified antagonists are portrayed as near human but violent in order to justify violence against them (p. 449).

China

gcarawa — 2021-10-02 19:33:40 UTC

Citation: Flad, R. K. (2008). Divination and Power: A Multiregional View of the Development of Oracle Bone Divination
in Early China. Current Anthropology, 49(3), 403–437.

Annotation: Flad (2008) makes an extensive study of divination tools in Chinese Neolithic and Bronze Ages, its status in State power, and its importance in social organization in China's pre- and early history before the development of written codes.

United Kingdom

gcarawa — 2021-10-02 19:35:12 UTC

Citation: Heaven's Vault. (2019) [PC version]. Inkle Ltd

Annotation: In "Heaven's Vault", you play as a jaded archaelogist recruited by her university advisor to help find her missing predecessor. She soon realizes that her investigation demands deciphering a lost ancient language through logic, notes, and wit. It's an engaging sci-fi mystery (the story takes place in a distant galaxy, a la Star Wars) with easy controls for unexperienced players, heavily focusing on story, and an engaging scholarly-friendly tone for students and nerds alike.

Yucatán Peninsula

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 18:20:02 UTC

Citation: Palmer, H. (2020). U nojil a ch'i'ibal: Briceida cuevas cob's poetic empowerment of yucatec maya women. Studies in American Indian Literatures, 32(1), 26-51. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/u-nojil-chiibal-briceida-cuevas-cobs-p

Abstract: Because Cuevas Cob writes in a context distinct from that found in the United States and Canada, I begin my argument with a historical overview of Indigenous writing in Yucatán, Mexico. Neoliberal Translation in Waldemar Noh Tzec," the conversion of Indigenous expressions into a colonial language represents an act of "neoliberal translation" through which "moments of irreconcilable otherness are translated into the terms and structures of the neoliberal multicultural nation-state, thereby reaffirming that nation-state's norms and values" (291). Because the majority of readers, even members of Native communities, lack the linguistic tools to read Indigenous-language texts, they may miss out on these crucial moments of radical difference. [...]Ts'íib is a process that produces physical space [ . . . ] wherein subject formation takes place and knowledge is acquired through the process of creating and experiencing that space through social interaction" (28). Before the Spanish invasion, glyphic inscriptions recorded histories, spiritual lineages, and prophecies to legitimize ruling families.4 During the Colonial Period, the books of the Chilam Balam documented sacred and historical knowledge, validating Indigenous practices and foretelling the return of Indigenous rule.5 In the nineteenth century, letters written to and by the cruz parlante, or talking cross, authorized Caste War rebels to rise up against oppressive landowners and reclaim their ancestral lands.6 The most recent wave of Yucatec Maya literature emerges from this genealogy of writing as power.

Chile

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 18:22:06 UTC

Citation: Catrileo, D. (2020). Antes de escribir, leer. La Última Línea. February 18. Retrieved from https://laultimalinea.cl/antes-de-escribir-leer/.

Annotation: Daniela Cantrileo is a Mapuche writer, philosopher, and activist. In this poem, "Before writing, read," she urges us to read "the signs that existed before the State." She refers to reading the threads of Mapuche weavings, to read nature, to read the rivers and ocean currents, to read the lines in our gradmothers' faces, to reread colonial maps in order to dismantle expropriations of land, and to read the names of those who have been murdered or disappeared. Cantrileo's poem broadens the scope of what "reading" is, suggesting a vast practice of decoding of other marks and signs inscribed in the landscape, the people, and non-alphabetic cultural objects. Her poem refers to the weavings of the Mapuche people, which Ana Millaleo, another Mapuche writer, explains as a non-alphabetic form of writing (see the second source annontation, below).

Chile

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 18:23:38 UTC

Citation: Millaleo, A. (2018). El Witral: La antigua y profunda escritura mapuche manifestada en la textilería ancestral. Territorio Ancestral. Retrieved from: https://www.territorioancestral.cl/2018/03/15/el-witral-la-antigua-y-profunda-escritura-mapuche-manifesta

Abstract: Durante décadas se ha manifestado de que el pueblo Mapuche no conocía la escritura ni la lectura, que la transmisión cultural mapuche se hace por medio de la oralidad (1); y además se ha sostenido que son los hombres mapuche los que ostentan las posiciones de poder al interior del entramado social. Dichas narraciones surgen principalmente del análisis de cronistas en su totalidad hombres ajenos a la cultura mapuche, quienes luego de observaciones superficiales relataban la vida cotidiana de este pueblo, fijándose en los aspectos que les parecían mayormente relevantes desde su perspectiva.

South Asia

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:31:52 UTC

Citation: Tharoor, S. (2015). Britain Does Owe Reparations. OxfordUnion.

Annotation: Tharoor (2015) talks about the impacts of British colonialism on the sub-continent (now India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh). While speaking at the Oxford Union, he cites examples and statistics to prove how the British Raj impacted the economic, social, and cultural aspects.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:33:27 UTC

Citation: Stephanou, A. (2012). Black Metal and the Mouth: Always Serving You as a Meal, or, Infected Orality, Pestilential Wounds and Scars. Glossator 6: Black Metal.

Annotation: (CW: Bodies, gore, bodily descriptions, death--serously has some really disgusting images throughout!) I went to look for a source that discusses the orality of Black Metal; I found it within “Black Metal and the Mouth: Always Serving You as a Meal, or, Infected Orality, Pestilential Wounds and Scars” by Aspasia Stephanou. This essay does two things: 1) defines Black Metal (“…infects life with death, inviting one to participate in an enduring taste of undeath where ‘boundaries between subject and object evaporate, as they are not predicated on a dialectic of consumer and consumed’ (Morton 229)” (50)) and 2) displays the nihilism present within the music genre (“…both human and animal become potential carcasses, consumed in their mutual consummation, open to horror and the abyssal pit/mouth/womb of the earth” (48)). The focus of orality in Stephanou’s essay positions the mouth as a place of convalescing tortured victims within Black Metal's lyrics and imagery. However, this is also at the cost of saying that wounds and scars also act as the mouth of utterances in this because of how “the body is always at the point of decomposition” (55). This take on Black Metal positions the wound and dead body as one holding the power of utterances, and the questionable history of Black Metal can attest to it as it’s a site of pure hatred and derogatory musicians: Hyperborean Black Metal focuses on nihilism to escape these realities. Simultaneously, it horizontalizes the relationships of all things through the presences of open wounds and bodies containing utterances.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:38:39 UTC

Citation: Schmidt, K.M. and Beucher, R. (2020), "Affective intensities: Emotion, race, gender and the push and pull of bodies", English Teaching: Practice & Critique, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 403-416. https://doi-org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/10.1108/ETPC-11-2019-0147

Annotation: For my decolonial archive resource this week (and for my final paper), I’m thinking about the ways in which we can move away from our linear (read: colonial) understanding of orality versus literacy and move toward a more holistic understanding of how these modes of communication are entwined. I’ve chosen an article about a small study of three Black girls that “aims to investigate the ways affective intensities arise in the intra-actions within an assemblage as the girls create multimodal responses to literature” (Schmidt and Beucher 403). While this is still a response to literature, which Newman would be wary about, I think it is an interesting start to moving away from “traditional” notions of communal and communicative meaning-making.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:40:15 UTC

Citation: Cushman, E., Jackson, R., Nichols, A. L., Rivard, C., Moulder, A., Murdock, C., M. Grant, D. M., & Adams, H. B. (2019) Decolonizing Projects: Creating Pluriversal Possibilities in Rhetoric, Rhetoric Review, 38:1, 1-22, DOI: 10.1080/07350198.2019.1549402

Annotation: Another article, one more centered specifically in rhetoric, seeks to examine textual, ethnographic, and pedagogical practices within the field in an attempt to “epistemically delink from the Imperial differences created by the formation of the Rhetorical Tradition and to imagine transrhetorical and pluriversal knowledge making” (22).

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:42:14 UTC

Citation: Williams, A. (2020). Black memes matter: #LivingWhileBlack with Becky and Karen. Social Media + Society, 6(4). http://dx.doi.org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/10.1177/2056305120981047

Annotation: Williams (2020) examines “BBQ Becky [and] Karen memes” through a visual Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA). The author makes the argument that these memes contribute to and shed light on a larger conversation on Black oppression by presenting counternarratives to White supremacist ideologies that proliferate online.

Africa

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:44:44 UTC

Citation:

Annotation: In her speech, Adichie (2021) raises the importance of protecting material objects of Africans which serves as a form for strengthening their identity. She highlighted the relevance of history and art in terms of the appropriation of material objects by the Europeans who were keen on destroying African art." She stresses the need to teach African art and history in institutions - preferable euro/western-centric ones where they can all learn about the truth of her history. She reminded us about the story that Europe tells itself about its colonial history, "it is a story that basically says "yes, colonialism happened BUT..." She noted that in such instances, whatever comes after the but is the focus of the story because it absorbs, frees Europe of responsibility, and allows them the glow of charity - which in itself is colonialism in display

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:46:24 UTC

Citation: Rounds, C. D. (2020). “’Dead Men Make Such Convenient Heroes’: The Use and Misuse of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Legacy as Political Propaganda.” Journal of Black Studies 51(4), p. 315-331. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934720908489.

Annotation: Burke shows how information can be shared to strengthen an ideology when discussing the use of the printing press in the Protestant Reformation. Rounds argues that, similarly, political actors have used the history and memory of MLK as a medium to bolster their political platform, suggesting that, if he were alive, MLK would support their candidacy, position, or initiative. However, MLK can no longer speak for himself, so there’s no guarantee he would be for those things.

South Asia

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:48:07 UTC

Citation: Farooqi, M. (2009). Introduction to Tilism-e Hoshruba. The Annual of Urdu Stories.

Annotation: This article is a brief introduction to one of the oldest and finest dastaans (stories) of South Asia. Tilism-e-Hoshruba is a great example of how oral traditions have been preserved over generations. Another important aspect that this story highlights, in line with what Ong (1985) and Havelock (1986), is the importance of poetry in oral cultures. This entire tale has pages filled with poetry. From describing the characters of a person to narrating the events of a battle, poetry has served all purposes.

Nigeria

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:50:15 UTC

Citation: Shasore, Olasupo (2018). Journey of an African Colony. African on Netflix.

Annotation: The Journey of an African Colony documentary, done by Olasupo and a team of other researchers, takes us through a timeline and history of how Nigeria was formed. From the colonial masters to the founding fathers, many truths were told about the nation's formation and some colonization power effects that took place during its establishment and is still prevalent today. Many myths were debunked and tables were broken to throw light into the real narrative of slavery, post-colonial effects and many more. The documentary proved the point that nationalism is NOT a gift from Europe to African and its nation; rather, it is a novel means of oppression and control.

Russia

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:51:37 UTC

Citation: Wigzell, Faith. 2021. “Traditional Magic or European Occultism? Commercial Fortune-Telling and Magic in Post-Soviet Russia and Their Relationship to Russian Tradition”. FOLKLORICA - Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association 1

Annotation: Wigzell analyzes the role of several forms of fortunetelling in Russia, before, during, and after the Soviet era, in society. She observes that a few of them (cartomancy, oneiromancy, reading coffee cups) were common before the very literacy-oriented and anti-superstition and mysticism Soviet regimen - but they continued in secret of great discretion, through word of mouth, to meet a new place after the end of Soviet Russia.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:52:58 UTC

Citation: adi (2012). "Oral cultures and writing: Where does Deaf culture fit in?" ETEC540: Text, Technologies – Community Weblog, 1 October 2012.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:54:04 UTC

Citation: "Symposium Deafness and Orality: An Electronic Conversation." (1993). Oral Traditions 8(2), pp. 413-437.

Annotation: (Coming Soon)

India

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:55:08 UTC

Citation: Sunil Amrith. (2007). Political Culture of Health in India: A Historical Perspective. Economic and Political Weekly, 42(2), 114–121. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4419132

Annotation: In his article, Amrith draws on the discourses put forth by the National Planning Committee (NPC) in the 1930s with regards to “national health.” The NPC produced a report on national heath, that is, the health of Indian people, and this report was built upon the strands of discourses about health, body, and the nation. The discourse echoed that “poverty was in some sense a ‘natural’ condition in India, and at the root of the problem of public health” (p. 115). The article also discussed in detail how the NPC’s vision of transformation would go much further than what the colonial state had in mind—the NPC imagined a future in which health services and treatments would be dispersed not as charity or something that is made available to people; rather, health would become the “right” of each individual. Amrith also outlined the anti-malaria campaign efforts and the discourses used to define the initial success of the campaign (later on the campaign began to falter). He used an excerpt from a newspaper report in The Hindu that highlighted how this campaign, with the support from WHO, was helping eradicate malaria. Overall, the article shows how political activism has been present in the health messages in India: “The language of sacrifice, the redemptive or even messianic narrative of public health as personal and social liberation never disappeared” from these discourses. (p. 120)

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:56:07 UTC

Citation: Duke Franklin Humanity Institute. (2020, December 17). Left of black: André Brock, Jr. discusses African American cybercultures on the web [Video file]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/JTF4jFcSNus

Annotation: André Brock, Jr. discusses his work on digital Black cybercultures. Brock makes a case for The Green Book as a media environment that helped African Americans navigate the Jim Crow South. With the U.S. highway system serving as its network, The Green Book is an example of distributed technological blackness. Brock’s work is focused on the libidinal or sensual aspect of Blackness online – Black joy as illustrated by hashtags such as #BlackGirlMagic. Brock also discusses his vision of Black Twitter as a space for shared catharsis.

Canada

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:58:31 UTC

Citation: Luker, T. (2017). Decolonizing archives: Indigenous challenges to record keeping in “reconciling” settler colonial states, Australian Feminist Studies, 32(92), pp. 108-125.

Annotation: Luker writes about the role of feminist approaches to affect in context of archiving indigenous artifacts in Australia and Canada. She writes about the destruction of knowledge and how decolonial archival practices must acknowledge the tensions involved in archiving. Power dynamics can easily be reproduced in archival practices, so being aware of the colonial power dynamics of the people whose history and artifacts are being archived is key.

Australia

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 19:58:43 UTC

India

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:00:49 UTC

United Kingdom

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:01:07 UTC

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:02:28 UTC

Annotation: Steele, C. K. (2016). The digital barbershop: Blogs and online oral culture within the African American community. Social Media + Society, 2(4) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2056305116683205

Citation: Steele considers the affordances of the digital world, and specifically blogs, in providing a space for more traditionally oral forms of storytelling in the African American community. Similar to the Gage article, Steele shows a traditionally marginalized group that utilizes infrastructures of power to both critique dominant cultures and maintain the traditions of their own.

Yucatán Peninsula

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:03:22 UTC

Citation: Sell, S., Huet Bautista, N., Méndez Pérez, M. and Hernández-Avila, I., 2017. Chiapas Maya awakening. 6th ed. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

Annotation: This book is a collection of poems and short stories, written in three languages - the Mayan language is presented first, followed by Spanish, and then English. The editors begin the book with an introduction that explains the context - Mayan writers struggling to identify themselves to themselves, their community, and the world.

Nipissing University, College Drive, North Bay, ON, Canada

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:13:05 UTC

Citation: Srigley, K., Zembrzycki, S., & Iacovetta, F. (Eds.). (2018). Beyond Women's Words: Feminisms and the Practices of Oral History in the Twenty-First Century (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi-org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/10.4324/9781351123822

Annotation: Admittedly, I was unable to read this source in its entirety as it’s a full book; however, I think it would be a great resource for not only me but others as well (and it’s free through the library!). The book, Beyond Women’s Words: Feminisms and the Practices of Oral History in the Twenty-First Century contains 25 essays from a diverse group of scholars. This collection of essays “considers Indigenous modes of storytelling, feminism in diverse locales around the globe, different theoretical approaches, oral history as performance, digital oral history, and oral history as community-engagement.” For my purposes, Chapter 17 “Oral Histories for Building Social Movements, Then and Now” by Sarah K. Loose and Chapter 22 “The Medium is Political and the Message is Personal” by Mary A. Larson are the most relevant.

University of Toronto, King's College Circle, Toronto, ON, Canada

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:13:39 UTC

Concordia University, Boulevard de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, QC, Canada

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:14:09 UTC

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:18:50 UTC

Citation: Brown, D. (2007). Bury my heart at wounded knee : An indian history of the american west. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Annotation: Dee Brown tells the story of the invasion of the United States West during the 19th century, from the indigenous peoples' points of view.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:19:50 UTC

Citation: Fleming, D. T. (2018). "'I have a copyright': The Privatization of Martin Luther King's Dream." The Journal of African American History 103(3), 369-401. DOI: 10.1086/698521

Annotation: The article is about how Dexter Scott King, MLK’s second son, attempted to keep his father’s legacy alive in the environment of Reagan era of economics by turning the legacy into a brand. This would standardize the legacy so that it would appear the same all over the world, echoing the marketing strategies of the Coca-Cola company. Fleming argues that Dexter privatized the legacy of MLK by restricting access to his words. But in doing so, as Fleming argues, he played into conservative critics of MLK who wanted to limit the promotion of MLK’s legacy.

Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:21:45 UTC

Citation: Zaugg, I. and Reeve, J. (2021). The Hegemony of Keyboard Defaults. The 22nd Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers.

Annotation: Zaugg and Reeve, in this article, examine the way QWERTY defaults have become a standard. This ‘standard’ has had a bad impact on non-Latin languages, particularly the ones with an oral history. They argue that “No single tool is more fundamental to writing today — and more unexamined — than the computer keyboard” (p. 1). In order to decolonize the digital space and make it accessible, it is important to understand these impacts and create ways in which all languages, Latin or not, get equal opportunities to create, share, and find their content.

Yucatan, Mexico

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:23:57 UTC

Citation: Guerrettaz, A., Chan Dzul, M., & Pomol Cahum, I.Y. (2020). Yucatec-Maya Language Revitalization: A Reconceptualization of Indigeneity and Call for Action. Modern Language Journal, 104 (2):511-519.

Annotation: The authors of this paper, all linguist scholars declare themselves to have a "critical friendship." Chan Dzul and Pomol Cahum are Yucatan Mayas well-versed in a Maya language and the importance of language on cultural identity. Many younger Maya are searching for ways to reclaim their Maya identity and to master the customs and language. This is particularly true for youth who have come to realize that no one in their immediate family can speak the language fluently. Some of their efforts to preserve their heritage come in restructuring and redefining their relationships with the rest of the world. For example, as seen in the quote, most Maya activists prefer the term "originario" is more appropriate than the term "indigeno," a fact often missed even by well-intentioned academics.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:25:16 UTC

Citation: Shadrack, J. H. (2021). Black Metal, Trauma, Subjectivity and Sound: Screaming the Abyss. Emerald Publishing Limited. DOI: 10.1108/9781787569256

Annotation: Black Metal, Trauma, Subjectivity, and Sound: Screaming The Abyss by Jasmine Hazel Shadrack is a study of US Black Metal through a lens of affirmation—opposite to the abusive and often dark history of black metal through patriarchy and masculinities. The author uses auto-ethnography throughout the book to describe experiences and viewpoints within the genre as a way to explore what the genre means for individuals as well as the structure of the genre. While there is not much discussion of temporalities, there were a few instances where time experience and temporalities are mentioned, such as in her description of the scream (17). I think about when I saw the band Liturgy and how, for moments of blistering music and soaring vocals, my own body feels intertwined with the rhythms and time of the music; the body is tethered to experience in the theory of phenomenology, and experience can often lead to altered conceptions of time. Through the experience of the scream, Shadrack is found in a “temporal void plateau”—a space in which time seems to freeze and suspend the participant within the musical act. The move from the internal turmoil that produces the scream, the guitar sounds, or the blast beats can create an exteriorization of time and experience for those around the individual.

South Africa

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:27:27 UTC

Citation: Gitau, S., Marsden, G., & Donner, J. (Apr 10, 2010). After access. Paper presented at the 2603-2606. https://10.1145/1753326.1753720 http://dl.acm.org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/citation.cfm?id=1753720

Annotation: My source this week focused on exploring and understanding the challenges that 1st time mobile users (internet users only) in the developing world experience even after access to these communication technologies. The study reports results of an ethnographic action research study, exploring mobile-centric internet use. Over the course of 13 weeks, eight women, each a member of a livelihoods collective in urban Cape Town, South Africa, received training to make use of the data (internet) features on the phones they already owned. None of the women had previous exposure to PCs or the internet. Activities focused on social networking, entertainment, information search, and, in particular, job searches. Results of the exercise reveal both the promise of, and barriers to, mobile internet use by a potentially large community of first-time, mobile-centric users. Discussion focuses on the importance of self-expression and identity management in the refinement of online and offline presences, and considers these forces relative to issues of gender and socioeconomic status.

India

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:28:18 UTC

Citation: Coming Soon

Annotation: My decolonial source is an interview published in the Times of India. It outlines how colonialism has still persisted during COVID-19, and how it has led to health and vaccine inequalities. It offers an interesting take on how vaccinations lessons were learned from South Asia and taken back to create modern vaccines around the 1800s. It also talks about how the efforts to decolonize global health are still prominently based on what "experts" are saying rather than what the communities need.

Södertörn University, Alfred Nobels allé, Huddinge, Sweden

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:31:48 UTC

Citation: Kuan, A. (2016) Archiving protest digitally: The temporal regime of immediation. International Journal of Communication, 10, 5395-5408.

Annotation: Kuan explores how archiving protests digitally shifts the temporality of archival work to be in a constant state of updating. In the shift away from physical archives, Kuan notes how digital archival work is often at the mercy of other platforms, such as social media, in order to preserve protest communications. The move to digital therefore can put archivists at a loss: “Instead of reclaiming the power over history writing… power shifts to commercial players providing storage and processing possibilities if groups do not consider the infrastructure of the technology that they employ” (Kuan 5405). Kuan suggests using archival platforms that open-source and nonproprietary, such as OMEKA, in order to retain control over an archive.

Mexico

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:34:33 UTC

Citation: Coming Soon

Annotation: My decolonial source is a bit unorthodox. It's a Discord bot that provides several magic and divination tools, all created and coded by a 17 year old LGBTQ+ Mexican person of Native heritage who goes by Witchie. Cabot provides several different tools to connect with the occult through Discord. The bot's official Discord server (available on the link) contains several resources to aid practicioners. Most importantly, Cabot was inspired by Witchie's Christian parents, who wouldn't let him get witchcraft tools, and his own frustration of not being able to test anything before getting them. More importantly, Cabot curates its tools in order to keep Native practices away from being appropriated - by virtue of omission and education, Witchie protects his knowledge and heritage.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:36:19 UTC

Citation: Gray, K. L. (2016). The Internet: Oppression in digital spaces. In The Routledge Companion to Media and Race (pp. 107-116). Routledge.

Annotation: This chapter in The Routledge Companion to Media and Race discusses the racial inequality of the Internet. Gray frames her argument through an exploration of the racial dynamics of industry, Internet usage, and access.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:37:43 UTC

Citation: Suárez, J. A. (2014). Warhol’s 1960s’ Films, Amphetamine, and Queer Materiality. Criticism, 56(3), 623–651.

Annotation: My decolonial source consders the queer materiality of Andy Warhol’s films in the 1960s. There is a mention of Kittler that discusses the ways that art disappears into the mechanical technology through media notation. We see throughout Gramophone, Film, Typewriter Kittler separating art from media from entertainment. Juan Suárez, in this article, is continuing this idea of the materiality of technologies but coding it through queerness. Suárez states, “these material concerns disclose a queer materiality. They open up unsuspected vibrations in the physicalobjectual horizon captured by the camera, rendering that horizon radically strange—or “queer”—and they channel and embody the peculiar sexuality—the queerness—of Warhol’s films” (628). In relation to Kittler, he is often focused on materialism and the technologies through the heteronormative view of men, often delegating women to places of subversion or in the gaze of the media. Suárez is considering, then, how Warhol’s films can embody a turn around from the normative and into the “queer” as the opposite to a normative society. He asks us to consider who are technologies and films for while answering how a queer audience and perception can expand a viewpoint.

Yucatán Peninsula

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:39:18 UTC

Citation: Pryor, E. (2017). Decolonial articulations of gender: queering Buen Vivir in the Tsotsil-Maya documentary film La Pequeña Semilla en el Asfalto. Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 12(1): 48-70, DOI: 10.1080/17442222.2016.1273857

Annotation: For my decolonial narrative this week I chose an article that examines the ways in which the film La Pequeña Semilla en el Asfalto challenges heteronormative stereotypes and encourages an inclusive branding of Buen Vivir (good living) that fosters happiness for all. This reading has little to do with this week’s readings except that it discusses the ways in film is being used for in a variety of ways to push back against the dominant society – it challenges colonialism and “the colonial gaze”, it pushes against heteronormativity and traditional gender norms. Emily Pryor discusses the ways in which the film’s “testimonies, camera shots, editing, and forms of production all contribute to exemplify what Freya Schiwy might call ‘a means of talking back to the colonial gaze” (50). She then suggests that the documentary “redirects the gaze outwards, offering its audience the ‘power and responsibility’ that reside in knowing ‘that the use we make of what we learn extends beyond our engagement with documentary films to our engagement with the historical world represented by such films’ (Nichols 2010, 41).” In a sense, this article contrasts with Kittler’s equation of film with Lacan’s notion of imagination – the documentary film instead presents us with a reality that challenges our previous imaginations and misconceptions.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:40:51 UTC

Citation: Leonard, D. J. (2020). "Virtual Anti-racism: Pleasure, Catharsis, and Hope in Mafia III and Watch Dogs 2." Humanity & Society 44(1), p. 111-130.

Annotation: My next decolonial archive contribution is “Virtual Anti-racism: Pleasure, Catharsis, and Hope in Mafia III and Watch Dogs 2” by David J. Leonard. The article examines two video games with black protagonists and argues how games can be a site of the representation of intervention and transformation against white supremacy. That being said I only skimmed this article so take the article with a grain of salt.

India

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:42:06 UTC

Citation: Sonwalkar, P. (2015). Indian journalism in the Colonial Crucible. Journalism Studies, 16(5), 624–636. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670x.2015.1054159

Annotation: Sonwalkar (2015) talks about the emergence of modern journalism in India in the late eighteenth century. Print journalism in India was (obviously) an adoption of the British model, but it really laid the groundwork for freedom struggles, especially in the colonies of India. Print journalism became a tool of resistance, nationalism, and religious and cultural reforms. It found its home in Calcutta, and soon the first Bengali journal was published. The use of print journalism and the nature of the content it distributed led to panic among British officials, and the colonial government imposed certain restrictions. The overarching theme of this essay is that print journalism in India, from its very beginning, was deeply rooted in politics. Even contemporary newspapers in India show that the reports and articles have an element of politics. For instance, the way COVID vaccination is framed in Times of India hints at what the government has done for the production of vaccines, how the government is distributing vaccines to other countries, how the government plans to reach the various populations in its vaccination drive, etc. This shows that at its root, journalism in India is highly influenced by politics.

Japan

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:42:58 UTC

Citation: Okamoto, T. (2015). “Otaku tourism and the anime pilgrimage phenomenon in Japan.” Japan Forum 27(1), p. 12-36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2014.962565.

Annotation: Okamoto (2015) explores the phenomenon of the “anime pilgrimage,” where fans of anime travel to specific locations in Japan featured in their favorite shows. The article examines the practice as a distinctive travel culture born out of new forms of communication. The article does a good job of placing the phenomenon in a historical/cultural context, arguing that it wasn’t born in a vacuum and instead out of policy/economic decisions that led to and encouraged the phenomenon. The anime pilgrimage is born from a networked community; one must know where the locations featured in the anime are in order to visit them, and the online fan community shares this information. The article also ties into themes for this week, including the use of photography in tourism (fans traveling to locations featured in anime take the photos in the same angle as how it was presented in the anime), and about notions of an imagined community (people going on an anime pilgrimage often update people on their adventures in real time on the internet). I’m not sure this is a completely decolonial article, however. While it examines both the good and bad of tourism and does some ethnography work, it takes a postmodern (and maybe even a little bit neoliberal) look at the phenomenon. It doesn’t so much as “community for whom” as much as it could have. I also have some misgivings about the use of terms such as “animalization.” There are some interesting decolonial points the article makes. Residents of one community were unhappy about the way their town was represented in one anime as the site of a murder mystery story and how the anime pilgrimage was reinforcing this image of the town that they didn’t want. Others complained that the influx of fans do not fit with the “atmosphere” of the community. I think it functions more as a jumping off point for decolonial conversations/further research than a site of decoloniality itself.

Yucatán Peninsula

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:44:13 UTC

Citation: Bennett, J. (2017). "I became more Maya": International Kaqchikel Maya migration in Central America. Universitas Psychologica, 16 (5):1-13. https://doi.org/10.11144/Javeriana.upsy16-5.bmmi

Annotation: Last week my decolonial reading analyzed the documentary film La Pequena Semilla en el Asfalto in which a Chiapas Maya woman is recorded walking through town in a traditional traje. The film addresses the colonial gaze and the efforts of this Maya woman to confront coloniality and to make a stand. Bennet 2017, in contrast, while it still addresses themes of racism towards the Ladino – the other, the indigenous in Mexican culture – demonstrates the ways in which Brenda, another Maya woman, is empowered by her traje once she escapes the oppression of Guatemala City and moves to El Salvador. Here, her “otherness” is celebrated, and it enables her to sell more trinkets, which allows her to commission a greater number and variety of traje in ever increasing quality. In contrast to Pryor 2017, Bennet 2017 demonstrates the ways in which Maya women are empowered by their traditional garb and her traje becomes, in some way, a status symbol.

Africa

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:45:13 UTC

Citation: Dube, A. (Ed.). (2020). Echo zine: Decolonial thought, practices and actions. [zine]. https://issuu.com/nativesoul/docs/web_upload_low_res_echo_decolonial_zine

Annotation: “Echo Zine: Decolonial Thought, Practices, and Action,” imagines a decolonized future by emphasizing various heritages and decolonial practices that confront coloniality in its present and past. It comprises several works by artists and activists, all of which are engaged in decolonization efforts across multiple disciplines and nationalities. This project, the result of “a curiosity and a deep feeling for healing, standing ground, dismantling, [and] bringing forth other knowledge systems,” resists any prescriptive approach to decolonization, focusing instead on its dynamism and the unavoidably intimate nature of this work by having personal histories and expressions guide the zine (p. 3).

South America

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:45:24 UTC

Europe

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:45:46 UTC

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:49:35 UTC

Citation: Licona, A. C. (2012). Zines in third space: Radical cooperation and borderlands rhetoric. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Annotation: Licona looks at media forms and technologies that challenge dominant literacies, knowledge production, and borders. Her book argues that zines possess this oppositional capacity, largely thanks to their self-publishing practices, generation of intertextual conversations, and “third-space” subjects who make them (p. 19). Here, “third-space” is a nongeographical distinction that functions to “materialize what borders serve to divide, subordinate, and obscure” (p. 11). The third space employs a variety of media tactics and strategies that are all counterhegemonic. For example, “the decolonized imaginary” is a tool that allows participants to “reclaim certain spaces in time” and retell their stories in a process of re‑creation and re‑presentation—ultimately through the zine (p. 18).

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:50:24 UTC

Citation: Clark-Parsons, R. (2017). Feminist ephemera in a digital world: Theorizing zines as networked feminist practice. Communication, Culture and Critique, 10(4), 557-573. https://doi-org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/10.1111/cccr.12172

Annotation: This week’s decolonial source discusses how specific self-published works, like the zine, emerge in digital networks as a form of social practice. More broadly, it considers a tension that new media technologies bring to older forms: namely print media. The media she discusses are feminist zines, which “call a counterpublic into being that legitimizes the intimate politics of everyday life through discursive representations” that then foster deep and uninterrupted connections (567). This essay delves into the digital’s ability to disrupt boundaries and transform older media, ultimately making them more accessible and visible on the internet. This restructuring of space doesn’t detract from this physical media form, however; instead, digital networks function as boundary spaces that “democratize access” and “enable points of contact” between makers and readers (568). And rather that this being a result of these newer terrains, Clark-Parsons discusses how the ability of these networks is determined by the specific media that exist within them.

France

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:52:31 UTC

Citation: Scherker, A. (2019). The forgotten women who hand-painted the first color films. Artsy. Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-forgotten-women-hand-painted-first-color-films

Annotation: This article discusses a twofold lack in cinematic history: the missing hand-colored films in early film history and women’s labor that was relied on to make these films. These films and these women have been neglected; many early films were ruined by time and the lack of preservation knowledge/efforts, and the forgotten work can be attributed to classifications of commonality and femininity. This article seeks to reveal the intricate labor and materiality that comprise films that were (and still are) celebrated. In many ways, Scherker is complicating gendered ideas about mainstream media and storage technologies, which conveniently lean into binaries that are frequently factually unsound. This is especially the case for female colorists whose hands shaped this media in some of its earliest forms.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:56:24 UTC

Citation: Ganteaume, C. R. (2020). ‘Developing Stories: Native Photographers in the Field’ Presents Contemporary Native Experiences from the Inside.

Annotation: This article talks about a photo exhibition last year: a collaborative project to combat colonial portrayals of the Genízaro people in Abiquiú and to display the authenticity and complexity of their lives today. These photos involve a mutual involvement between the photographer and the photographed, both indigenous peoples, and therefore disrupt the hierarchy that is frequently present in photography. The project discussed in this article exemplifies photography’s continued function and impact, all while confirming political and social dispositions of the photograph.

Africa

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:58:15 UTC

Citation: Y.Z. Ya'u (2004) The new imperialism & Africa in the global electronic village, Review of African Political Economy, 31(99), 11-29, DOI: 10.1080/0305624042000258397

Annotation: After reading Jin (2013) article on Platform Imperialism, I was inspired to search for how the concept of ICTs and Platform imperialism relates to Africa. I was lucky to find Ya'u (2010) article which discusses how globalisation is enabled by new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and has made it easy to move vast quantities of market information and intelligence, as well as capital, around the world. Conscious of the importance of ICTs in the globalisation process, the author noted that the “World Trade Organization (WTO) developed a vision for structuring the ICT sector in developing countries. [However], although embedded in international efforts to address the digital divide, itself occasioned by uneven access to ICTs at a range of geographic scales, WTO strategy for configuring the ICT sectors of developing countries appears to work in the interest of multinational corporations, which have tended to exacerbate the digital divide” (p. 11). His statement goes hand-in-hand with Jin’s idea on platform imperialism. The author highlighted the resurgence of imperialism in this time as highly represented by knowledge dependence. While locating the marginality of Africa in cyberspace within its colonial past,Ya'u argues that current international attempts at bridging the digital divide are part of wider efforts to not only secure the virgin markets of developing countries, but also to configure the world in the interest of the new imperial powers. Within this context, therefore, Africa faces the challenge of imperialism anew. His paper discusses the substance of this challenge, and argues that while isolationism cannot be promoted as a counter-force to globalisation, Africa must re-establish the basis of its integration into a globalising world by developing a framework that challenges the dominant assumptions of processes of globalisation promoted by the WTO. Other nuggets such as globalization pathways and the challenges facing Africa were discussed. No doubt that this article is a factual resource to inform my final paper.

India

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 20:59:02 UTC

Citation: Sen, N. D. (1994). Secondary Orality: How words speak through television. Indian Literature, 37(5 (163)), 125–141. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44295586

Annotation: Sen (1994) talks about secondary orality in the Indian television, and contends that the television shows, news, advertisements, and other programs serve to reinstate the dominant ideology. She asserts that technological advancements do not necessarily mean progress under such conditions, rather the technology becomes a tool to propagate certain beliefs and ideas. She then goes on to define secondary orality in Ong’s terms and classifies the dialogues that take place on TV as a form of secondary orality. Television in India speaks in multiple voices—"the institutional voice, the bureaucratic voice, the didactic voice, the entertaining voice, the academic voice, the titillating voice, the political rhetoric, the informative voice”—but all of these voices are created out of the dominant ideologies. Sen also draws on the use of formulas, of music, visuals, and phrases that the audience is familiar with, and how they’re used to create new structures of presentation. An interesting point she makes about the TV’s orality is that the West regards it as an inferior cultural medium—the one for the un-intellectuals—because of its predominantly oral nature. Her main idea here, as she states at the very beginning of the essay, is that television in India doesn’t let you question the ideology but rather reinforce it by means of various presentations. These ideologies, thus, can also become social identities.

USA

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 21:00:05 UTC

Citation: Russel, L. (2020). Glitch Feminism. Verso.

Annotation: Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russel explores what it means to be a glitch or to use a glitch in order to create disruption of one's identity within a structure. Russel states, “Here, in that disruption, with our collective congregation at that trippy and trip-wired crossroad of gender, race, and sexuality, one finds the power of the glitch. A glitch is an error, a mistake, a failure to function” (7). For me, I have been struggling with the way that infrastructural and materialist studies forgo and obfuscate the individual experience, especially to those who are in marginalized or minority groups. This book looked at how this would work in the case of digital technologies and how one can announce themself as different and lively. Russel claims, “The glitch challenges us to consider how we can ‘penetrate…break…puncture…tear’ the material of the institution, and, by extension, the institution of the body” (25). It’s the institution of black metal that I am hoping to discuss in my essay about Transcendental Black Metal and one artist within the changing field of black metal, but it's something that I think fits within other music genres as well.

Sweden

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 21:02:05 UTC

Citation: Brazelton, B. (2020). “On the 10-year anniversary of Minecraft: Two interventions in extractive colonialism.” Cultural Geographies 27(3), p. 491-497. DOI: 10.1177/1474474019890319.

Annotation: This article explores the many ways Minecraft is a “foundational digital text of settler colonialism,” (p. 492). The default skin is coded white and coded according to western ideas of gender, reflecting how colonizers brought patriarchy with them to the lands they colonized. There’s an immediate antagonistic relationship to many of the mobs that spawn in the game world, reflecting how colonial narratives often frame the actions of settlers as in self-defense when it’s really a projection of their own messed up violence. The procedural nature of the seemingly infinite world of Minecraft reflects the colonialist idea that resources are infinite. The article then points to two other ludic projects that deconstruct colonial gameplay. This article is a bit flawed. There’s no mention of the villager mob - the game’s closest parallel to indigenous people (even more so than the monster mobs that the article names as the indigenous people). The analysis is a bit too focused on the content of the game, though it does go into the procedural nature of the virtual world. It also doesn’t consider ways the player can resist these colonial narratives within Minecraft, such as engaging in more sustainable practices in the game, changing the default skin, or installing mods that let you harvest resources from animals without killing them. Also, while the connections to colonial narratives are valid, some of the connections are reaching a bit. But the article is a great jumping off point for discussions of the authorship of algorithms and how they change the procedural rhetoric of games - how colonial, eurocentric data can make procedural rhetoric colonial and eurocentric.

Middle East

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 21:03:26 UTC

Citation: Keller, J. M. (2012). VIRTUAL FEMINISMS: Girls' blogging communities, feminist activism, and participatory politics. Information, Communication & Society, 15(3), 429-447. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2011.642890

Annotation: While this article is a little outdated (it’s almost ten years old and is limited to blogs, not necessarily social network sites), it is still relevant as blog use has only increased since its publication and it recognizes the digital activism of an often-overlooked population: young girls. This study focuses on two case studies of popular teenage feminist blogs and interviews four girls who engage with these two blogs: three girls from the United States and one from the Middle East. The article analyzes the community building, agency, and activism of these young women and women like them.

USA

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 21:03:36 UTC

USA

gcarawa — 2021-11-15 21:06:14 UTC

Nigeria

gcarawa — 2021-11-18 17:38:35 UTC

Citation: Dasuki, I. S., & Abubakar, H. N. (2019). The contributions of WhatsApp to social inclusion: A case of internally displaced persons in Nigeria. Petter Nielsen Honest Christopher Kimaro Eds.) Information and Communication Technologies for Development: Strengthening Southern-driven cooperation as a catalyst for ICT4D, Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries, 15(1), 414 – 424.

Annotation: Dasuki’s et al (2019) article explores how WhatsApp can improve the lives of internally displaced persons (IDPs) affected by conflict. Using the IDPs in Nigeria as a case study, the authors theorize the complex relationship between mobile technologies and social inclusion. They also used Sen’s five distinct instrumental freedoms to understand the use of WhatsApp by IDPs affected by Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria and its impact on their social inclusion. The five instrumental freedoms are, (a) Political Freedoms: Freedom of expression and the freedom to scrutinize and criticize authorities, to enjoy a free press and multi-party elections, (b) Transparency Guarantees: Freedom to trust others and to ensure that information is honestly disclosed, (c) Economic Facilities: Opportunities people have to participate in economic activities, (d) Social opportunities: Freedom to health facilities and education, (e) Protective Security: Opportunities available to prevent vulnerable people from abject deprivation. Based on a one-week ethnographic fieldwork of an ongoing research, the case narrative presented both the freedom outcomes afforded the IDPs by the use of WhatsApp and also the impediments that hinder the developmental impact. Finally, they conclude by providing some implications for research and practice.

Egypt

gcarawa — 2021-11-18 17:39:20 UTC

Citation: Behkalam, Kaya and Knut Ebeling. “The Augmented Archive: History in Real Time. An Archaeology of Images of the Egyptian Revolution.” International Journal of Communication, vol. 14, 2020, pp. 5092-5107.

Annotation: Behkalam and Ebeling explore the implications of archival work, specifically in the colonial context and in the context of their archival project, The Augmented Archive. They ask poignant questions about whether or not archival work can truly be decolonial in nature. However, they propose that their approach to archival work which places photos and videos in the context of their original physical location is an act of decentering that works well within a decolonial context.

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-18 17:41:17 UTC

Citation: Steele, C. K. (2021). Digital Black Feminism. New York University Press.

Annotation: In this book, Dr. Steele analyzes Black women’s technology use as a virtual beauty shop. One specific metaphor that stands out in the book is Dr. Steele’s analysis of braiding as technology as she explores the emergence of Black technoculture. She cites Andréa Rose Clarke’s description and argument that braiding is structured by rules similar to algorithms. “The beautician’s own complex system of codes, braiding is a mathematical and artistic design experience… they are a way to understand how Black technoculture culture comes to be” (p. 39).

United States

gcarawa — 2021-11-19 17:41:05 UTC

Citation: Endres, D. (2009). The rhetoric of Nuclear Colonialism: Rhetorical exclusion of American Indian arguments in the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste siting decision. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 6(1), 39–60.

Annotation: The article I’m submitting this week fits well into our discussions of coloniality, however it should be mentioned that the author, Danielle Endres, is a rhetorical scholar from the U.S. Still, the article (citation listed below) contains a review of nuclear colonialism as a material process prior to elaborating its more discursive elements, and I think it fits well into Grosfoguel’s argument of ‘coloniality’ as an ongoing, contemporary occurrence. In fact, Endres cites both Spivak and Shome (also cited in Grosfoguel, 2008) in her review and similarly argues that “Although postcolonialism is a crucial area of study, it unfortunately implies that colonialism is over” (p. 43). Ultimately, while it may not fit entirely into our decolonial media archive, I chose this article because it is in line with my research interests in environmental communication, where, in the context of CRD 701, we might consider energy and natural resource infrastructures as media. Furthermore, the focus on U.S. coloniality, and specifically American indigenous people/land, is a space I hope to explore this semester.