Once a refugee: selfie activism,visualized citizenship and the space of appearance

ABSTRACT

This article examines the social media campaign “Once I was a refugee” by former refugees as a response to the increasingly hostile political climate in Finland against refugees. With selfie activism, the campaign expanded the “space of appearance” and introduced new voice and visuality to the public debate. The case depicts politics of claiming citizenship and social value through self-presentation to counter views of refugees as economic burden, noncitizens, and surplus humanity. The empirical material is based on analysis of the Facebook and Twitter campaign and interviews with the participants. It is argued that selfie activism may occasionally, through new voice and visibility, expand the space of appearance and contribute to the rise of affective or counter-publics that can come together and make use of digital media for political action. However, the case also reveals how difficult it is to speak from a refugee position without being drawn into the discourse of deservingness.     

Does the subaltern speak? Migrant voices in digital Europe

ABSTRACT

This article examines a number of digital initiatives where refugees and migrants speak with/to Europe in the context of the “migration crisis.” The analysis of four institutional and grassroots initiatives illustrates digital Europe’s symbolic articulations of borders that divide people and territories. As argued, the mediated visibility and voice of refugees and migrants matter precisely as the order of appearance (in Arendt’s terms) in digital Europe represents a fundamental dimension of the continent’s communicative order: revealing who speaks and who is silenced, which actors are heard and which are sidelined in the context of Europe’s “migration crisis.” The incorporation of refugee and migrant voices in digital Europe shows that voice does not guarantee recognition; rather, its incorporation reveals the complex politics of digital representation: on occasions challenging hegemonic power structures but most often digitally reaffirming bordering power and its symbolical articulations.     

“Sharenting,” parent blogging,and the boundaries of the digital self

ABSTRACT

This article asks whether “sharenting” (sharing representations of one’s parenting or children online) is a form of digital self-representation. Drawing on interviews with 17 parent bloggers, we explore how parents define the borders of their digital selves and justify what is their “story to tell.” We find that bloggers grapple with profound ethical dilemmas, as representing their identities as parents inevitably makes public aspects of their children’s lives, introducing risks that they are, paradoxically, responsible for safeguarding against. Parents thus evaluate what to share by juggling multiple obligations—to themselves, their children in the present and imagined into the future, and to their physical and virtual communities. The digital practices of representing the relational self are impeded more than eased by the individualistic notion of identity instantiated by digital platforms, thereby intensifying the ambivalence of both parents and the wider society in judging emerging genres of blogging the self.     

Re-examining public opinion preferences for migrant categorizations: “Refugees” are evaluated more negatively than “migrants” and “foreigners” related to participants’ direct,extended, and mass-mediated intergroup contact experiences

Although migrant categorizations (e.g. “migrants”, “refugees”) are often conflated in political and academic discourse, they may be ascribed to different people and inspire different preferences in public opinion. Previous research in Western Europe has identified more positive attitudes toward “refugees” than toward “migrants” due to the legitimate need for international protection of “real refugees” compared to the perceived illegitimate claims by “economic migrants”. However, little evidence suggests that the same preference also exists in Eastern European countries that have historically received smaller numbers of refugees and had fewer frequent experiences with migrants and foreigners compared to West European countries. Moreover, the term “refugee” was intensively recategorized as “bogus” and de-legitimized in East European political discourse. To provide new evidence, we conducted a pre-registered comparative survey-based study with a sample of young Slovak adults (N = 873) to compare evaluations of three commonly used migrant categorizations in Slovakia -- “refugees”, “migrants”, and “foreigners” -- on multiple attitudinal and behavioural measures. In addition, we also tested the intergroup contact hypothesis about the relationship between participants’ evaluations and their experiences of direct, extended, and mass-mediated contact with these target groups. We found that “refugees” invoked less favourable feelings, attitudes, trust, and greater social distance compared to “migrants” and “foreigners”. These evaluations related to the valence (and less to the quantity) of participants’ experience of intergroup contact. These results challenge previous findings about public opinion preferences for “refugees” over “migrants”, support the intergroup contact hypothesis, and make a case for a more contextualized research.     

Embodied inter-referencing: encounters with and among “Asian” students in the Australian classroom

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the pedagogical practice of referencing my experiences as a transnational Korean American woman in the classroom and considers how it opens up space for domestic and international students of East, Southeast, and South Asian backgrounds to reflect on their different identities, histories, and cultures. In particular, it focuses on how this practice enables Asian students to share their experiences of and insights about racial difference, racism, and whiteness in Australia and other parts of the world. Building on the concept of Asian “inter-referencing” from Chua Beng Huat (2015), I coin the term “embodied inter-referencing” to describe the strategic ways I use autobiographical narrative to create an inclusive, interactive, and mutually respectful learning space. I centre here on how some Asian students respond to this strategy by telling their own stories and in the process, create transnational, diasporic, and inter-Asian affective communities inside and outside the classroom.     

Refugee testimonies enacted: voice and solidarity in media art installations

ABSTRACT

This article examines how two media art installations in which celebrity actors enact refugee storytelling create awareness of the complexities of representation and solidarity with refugees. The celebrity actor produces familiarity, or “audibility,” for contents of the stories. Yet at the same time, the familiarity of the actor alerts the visitor to the politics of listening. The artworks therefore produce the potential for ethical listening, which requires interrogation into the privileges of the listener. The artworks produce a kind of sociality different from that of typical celebrity advocacy. Instead of being at the center of attention, the actors’ presence draws critical attention to the politics of listening.     

Gamers versus zombies? Visual mediation of the citizen/non-citizen encounter in Europe’s ‘refugee crisis’

ABSTRACT

This article identifies the visual representation of Europe’s “refugee crisis” in the media as a key dimension of the communicative architecture of the crisis and its aftermath. Effectively, it argues, the powerful, even iconic, imagery that the media produced and shared during the 2015 “crisis” affirmed ideological frames of incompatible difference, perpetually dividing European citizens and refugees. The article focuses on some of the fundamental elements of the 2015 crisis’s visual grammar to demonstrate how they have (re-)produced popular fears of strangeness and the need for containment and control of foreign bodies. This visual grammar, we argue, imitated and procreated recognizable representations of popular culture to exaggerate newcomers’ strangeness and incompatible difference from the national subject. On the one hand, many news media simulated zombies’ threatening strangeness in images of refugee massification; on the other, many news media images reaffirmed the decisive power of the national subject over refugees’ fate, not unlike the video game player who unilaterally controls a game and takes action when confronted by zombies. This grammar, we argue, symbolically predetermines encounters between citizens and refugees, by emphasizing their incompatible difference and newcomers’ strangeness.     

“I will not hate myself because you cannot accept me”: Problematizing empowerment and gender-diverse selfies

ABSTRACT

While selfies of beautiful cisgender women are declaimed by mainstream media as narcissistic and facile, some body-positive feminists and queer theorists argue that selfies can be empowering. They claim self-representation by traditionally stigmatized people can challenge normative presentations of beauty and gender. This article problematizes “empowerment” as a definitive and/or productive frame and argues instead for observation and analysis of “privilege” in situated practice. In this article I combine analysis of a collection of online cultural artifacts (including nonbinary selfies on Tumblr) and interviews with a small group of trans* social media storytellers to explore theoretical tensions between gender fluidity and identity fragmentation across multiple social media sites and practices. Gender-diverse digital self-representation encompasses both “consistent” androgyny, nonbinary, agender, and so on, and “emergent” presentations-in-flux. I assert that the ongoing iteration of self across social media—implied by self (re)presentation—can have simultaneous and contradictory political significance. I conclude that networked interpersonal complications frame understandings of empowerment, as perhaps they always have done.     

Symbolic bordering: The self-representation of migrants and refugees in digital news

ABSTRACT

In this article, I combine theorizations of the selfie as an aesthetic and technological practice of digital self-representation with a theatrical conception of spectatorship, inspired by Adam Smith, in order to argue that the selfie has the potential to operate as a significant ethico-political spectacle in the spaces of Western publicity. I exemplify my argument by using the remediation of migrant and refugee selfies in mainstream news as a case study of “symbolic bordering”—as a technology of power that couples the geopolitical bordering of migrants in the outskirts of Europe with practices of “symbolic bordering” that appropriate, marginalize, or displace their digital testimonies in Western news media.     

Geolocating popular memory: Recorded images of Hashima Island after Skyfall

ABSTRACT

This article examines efforts to document Japan’s Hashima Island following its appearance in the popular film Skyfall. It describes how the film’s commercial success led to an effort by Google to produce images of the island’s built environment using digital navigation technologies. It further describes how this effort led the Japanese government to include Hashima Island in a bid to gain Unesco heritage status for Meiji-era sites of industrialization. Drawing from visual studies, critical media studies, and from interdisciplinary approaches to collective memory, this article analyzes how the circulation of images depicting Hashima Island in popular culture affects continuing efforts to hold Japan accountable for injustices committed there in the past. By narrowing on the moment “after” Skyfall, the article concludes with an assessment of the island’s Google Street View archive in terms of its broader impact on the uses of navigation, spatial presence, and digital heritage.     

Same-sex intimacies in Syariffudin's Mairil and the queering of authenticity

ABSTRACT

The rise in LGBT-themed novels in Indonesia over the last decade demonstrates the sea-change in social attitudes and the public presence of sexual and gender minorities in Indonesia. The genre emerges from the popularity of sexually-charged novels by female authors such as Ayu Utami and Djenar Maesa Ayu. However, many novels were criticised for the supposed westernisation of Indonesian culture that threatens the national identity and moral disposition of its readers. This article explores the underlying themes of these criticisms—nationhood, cultural authenticity, and morality—and juxtaposes them with the claims of cultural authenticity and legitimacy made by gay and lesbi Indonesians. Representations of “traditional” homoeroticisms in the novel Mairil by Syarifuddin bring these lines of arguments together and synthesise a discursive space where cultural and national authenticities are “queered.” It is my contention that religious and traditional elements that foster same-sex practices offer a key to queer legitimacy for Indonesian sexual minorities.     

Complicating cosmopolitanism: Ethno-cultural and sexual connections among gay migrants

ABSTRACT

Contemporary migrants are described as “connected migrants,” as they maintain multiple connections using digital and social media. This article explores how this leads to processes of cosmopolitanism and/or encapsulation in a particular group, voluntary gay migrants in Belgium, focusing on the intersection between ethno-cultural and sexual identifications and connections. Drawing on in-depth interviews, the cosmopolitan outlook of the participants becomes clear, as their national and ethno-cultural connections are relatively weak while they identify more strongly with cosmopolitan LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) culture. However, while more salient, sexuality is not all-defining either, bespeaking their rather privileged position as a group of migrants who are self dependent and not strongly encapsulated in ethno-cultural nor sexual communities, with neither minority identity causing excessive stigmatization. As a consequence, they use digital and social media to simultaneously connect to different social spheres, although most do manage their self-presentation to avoid the clash or “collapse” of different social contexts online.     

When is a discovery? The affective dimensions of discovery in music consumption

ABSTRACT

This article explores the concept of music discovery and seeks to provide a definition of the act of discovering music content. Research on music consumption has weakly theorized what the moment of “discovery” consists of, since it has been more preoccupied with debates about the conditions of discoveries, which either highlight the importance of individuals’ social milieus or the enhanced technological agency that they enjoy in the digital age. Drawing on qualitative data about musical experiences, this article frames discoveries as affective responses to music content that occur within individuals’ life narratives and mediate their interpretation and definition of music.     

Giacomo Casanova: Three Episodes from His Life as a Charlatan

This paper will analyse three major episodes of Casanova's Histoire de ma vie during which Casanova comes to grips with practices of charlatanism or magic, either as a “patient” or actively: 1. His cure, as a child by the sorceress of Murano to whom he is taken by his beloved grandmother.

2. His guest in the little Italian village of Cesena for a buried treasure whic he prides himself on being able to discover with the help of a sacred knife.

3. His inventive, libertine scenarios elaborated for the particular purpose of “regenerating” (dazzling and pleasuring) the marquise d'Urfé, known as Séramis, an old aristocrat with a passion for occult knowledge.

Casanova's attitude towards all that has to do with gambling, deception, chance, and all the ways to influence it is thoroughly complex and ambiguous. It is one of the features of his Venetian mentality; and it is also a phenomenon of the time, which is wrongly called the “century of the Enlightenment”. More narrowly, close scrutiny of these three occasions should allow us to grasp how Casanova saw his place in the couple of the dupe and the trickster. This paper will show how he understood the world and its underlying forces, and what type of intelligence — more baroque than Cartesian in inspiration — was at work in him.     

Voices of Refugee Women: Adaptation and Identification

ABSTRACT

Refugees and other displaced people have been the object of much research related to how people are adapting. Few have focused specifically on women even though women and children are by far the majority of refugees in general and especially in Utah. One of the few focused on narratives of newly arrived women refugees. Narratives are an important method for hearing authentic lived experiences versus assuming researchers can know the answers. However, questions arose about how those narratives might change after being in the U.S. for a longer period of time. Eleven refugee women who had been in the U.S. longer than 10 years were interviewed for this study.

Narratives allowed us to present this scholarship in a way that is accessible to anyone. Five themes were found: language, education, family, assistance, and transition. These themes demonstrate both the resilience of the women and the difficulty and complexity of long-term adaptation.     

Bade logon ki tarah: pregnant and poor in the city

Abstract

This paper shores up the overdetermined web of fear-desire-helplessness-aspiration that impinges on the birthing experiences of women at the economic periphery of urbanity, i.e. the urban poor, positioned at the borders of the urban and its outside, affluence and its lack. The urban poor (pregnant) woman, by dint of being physically located in the city remains unable to be part of the state healthcare network in rural areas; at the same time she is marked by an inability to purchase healthcare from high-end urban private providers. Consequently, she is positioned in an in-between space of access and care, aspirations and resistance, occasionally getting (even physically) trapped in a limbo between the hospital/institution and its outside. For this woman, the materiality of the hospital symbolises development-modernity; in accessing the hospital, the urban poor woman accesses an ontology that is “like the well-off people,” the “legitimate” claimants of the city. Between her dreams of approximating the space of urbanity and development, and an experience of being pushed back to the city's periphery—locationally and metaphorically, the urban poor woman gets inscribed by conflicting and counterpoised experiences of birthing, which is what this paper maps.     

The trajectory of the “Third World” in early modern Chinese thought

In this essay, I trace two aspects of the thought on the “Third World” in early modern China: how to understand the world revolution, and how to create a new China. While focusing on two trendy notions at that time, i.e. “Chinese revolution” (Zhongguo geming), and “nong country” (nongguo), I argue that the thought on the “Third World” in early modern China breaks free of the shackle of fashionable theories and draws upon local circumstances and China’s own repertoire of power when exploring an ideal of a new world. While the difficulty in confronting the “Third World” consciousness in today’s China is still overwhelming, the fact that we now remember “the spirit of Bandong” signals some progress.     

The making of Gòng/ Kyō – visual archive and the common in contemporary East Asia

ABSTRACT

This study will take two cases from East Asia to illustrate how visual archive/archiving has become or potentially becomes new space where image, heterogeneous temporalities and ideas of the common may lead to a redefinition or at least reconsideration of the binaries between public and private, between image and visual, between past and future. In contrast to historical archives, such visual archives not only aim for documentation and conservation but also become the sites of creating agencies and provoking critical reflections on the idea of the public. The first case is “Center for Remembering 3.11”¹ initiated by Sendai Mediatheque (SMT), where civic participation and the archiving of the post-311 Tohoku Earthquake images of the disaster-ridden region were solicited and made into an online archive. The second case is Multitude.asia, a digital archive initiated by Taiwanese activist and scholar Huang Sun-quan, who works in collaboration with students, artists, and researchers from Mainland China and Taiwan in sorting, interviewing, and editing videos and texts about alternative cultural activities and space in Asia. While discussions on the archive and the public discourse are predominated by theories from Europe and the US, the current study intends to contextualize the concepts of “the public” (gōng/ōyake), “the private” (sī/watakushi), and “the common” (gòng/ kyō) in Chinese and Japanese languages in the discourse of archive in cultural specificity.