Cyberculture and the Subaltern: Weavings of the Virtual and Real

187 Pages·2012·1.656 MB·English

by  Radhika Gajjala (editor)

Cyberculture and the Subaltern

Cyberculture and the Subaltern

Weavings of the Virtual and Real

Edited by Radhika Gajjala

LEXINGTON BOOKS
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cyberculture and the subaltern : weavings of the virtual and real / Radhika Gajjala.
p. cm.
Summary: "Cyberculture and the Subaltern: Weavings of the Virtual and Real, edited by
Radhika Gajjala, maps how voice and silence shape online space in relation to offline
actualities. Thus, it weaves the virtual and real in relation to so-called old and new
technologies using globalization and technology as the frame for examination. Implicit in
this investigation is the question of how offline actualities and online cultures are in turn
shaped by online hierarchies, as well as different kinds of local access to global contexts.
This book reveals the logic of particular global-local directions that emerge within
digital, transnational capital and labor flows. To this end, the contributors to this volume
examine various sites and intersections through critical lenses enabled by conversations
and writings in subaltern studies, affect theory, postcolonial feminist theory, critical
cultural studies, communication studies, critical development studies, and science and
technology studies. Contexts explored in this collection include microfinance online,
handloom contexts from India and Africa in relation to development discourse, new
technologies, and virtual world marketing. Through actual auto-ethnographic
engagement, Cyberculture and the Subaltern reveals the interdependence of the
economic, political, cultural, and social in the production of the subaltern online"--
Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-7391-1853-5 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-0-7391-1854-2 (electronic) 1.
Microfinance--India. 2. Microfinance--Africa. 3. Internet marketing--India. 4. Internet
marketing--Africa. I. Gajjala, Radhika, 1960-
HG178.33.I4C93 2012
332--dc23
2012038972

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: Subaltern Empowerment, Socio-economic Globalization
and Digital Divides 1

1. Producing the Global: Microfinance Online
with Franklin Nii Yartey and Anca Birzescu 35
2. Philanthrophist or Investor? Microlending to the Other
with Anca Birzescu and Franklin Nii Yartey 71
3. Snapshots from Sari Trails, Cyborgs Old and New
with rad Zabibha 93
4. Framing the Loom: An Indian Context
with Seemanthini Niranjana and B. Syamasundari 109
5. Kente Cloth and Adinkra in the Global Market
Precious Yamaguchi and Franklin Nii Yartey 135

Conclusion: Multiple Interfacings with the So-called Subaltern: To Be
Continued 155

Glossary 161
Bibliography 163
Index 175
Contributor Bios 177
Acknowledgments

I dedicate this book mainly to Vedula Sathyavathy, my mother, who is entering her
ninetieth year and can still spin expertly on the charkha and sing anti-mill songs
from pre-1947 socio-political movements as she spins. I also want to note a special
dedication to my eldest brother-in-law (Dr. A. Venkatesh) from who (I’m told) I
seem to have learned to be a teacher and mentor. And a very special ultra special
thankyou to his wife, my eldest sister, Dr. Subbalakshmi Murthy (the most recent
family member to become my facebook friend) who has been a female professional
model for me all my life. All my other siblings, their spouses, my nieces, nephews,
grandnieces and grandnephews are always my inspiration and contribute to my
learning experiences from near and far through real and imagined dia-
logues.performances and debates.
I want to thank all my past RAs and graduate student advisees since 2006 (I
mean Candice Munoz, Phyllis Dako-Gyeke, Yahui Zhang, Samara Anarbaeva, Mike
Delnero, Melissa Altman, Cassandra Jones, Oh Yeon Ju, Sean Watkins and maybe a
couple of others I’ve surely forgotten to mention) since, even though this book ended
up being something else and I did not use what they had collected as data and
worked on with me in discussing readings relevant to that other project – those un-
derstandings and experiences helped me along in these chapters. I also want to
acknowledge members of the seminar on Subalternity and Affect that I taught. And
thank you @Greg Seigworth for your reviews of drafts and constant facebook en-
couragements. I thank Lenore Lautigar for dragging me out of my perpetual doubt
and constant need to add more and quietly reminding me of the final deadlines. I
would also like to thank Johnnie Simpson and the others in the Lexington Press team
that helped behind the scenes.
Thanks to all the young daughters and sons of the handloom weavers in South
India. Thanks to the people I met in Semarang and Jogjakarta and the conversations
that broadened my understandings of local/global non-profit and for-profit dynamics.
Thanks also to all the desi SL avatars, all the SL people who rad ever met and
learned from. Thanks goes also to Latha, Syama, Jagada, Durga, Anjali, Annapurna,
Sridhar, Vanita, and all the past and continuing officers and volunteers and workers
at Dastkar Andhra and workers and managers at Daaram. On this side of the world
(NW Ohio) I want to thank Sheila Roberts, Susan Cayton, members of the Toledo,
Ohio Weaving Guild and Black Swamp Spinning guild as well as my friends on
Ravelry and favorites and others I’ve transacted with on Etsy.com etc. Special
thanks to Franklin and Anca for help with the final formatting and proofing of the
manuscript.
viii Acknowledgments

In memory of Julie Burke, Seemanthini Niranjana and John T. Warren,
each of whom I mourned through obsessive (art) yarn stashing and endless
crocheting.

As the spinning goes on and on
This book may tie the yarn into further knots.
Perhaps then, in the next [and then the next] book, I shall unravel it.
Making new friends, maybe disconnecting with older ones.
Carving my words out in digital leaflets and notes on the gadgets that come my way.
Contradicting myself, re-winding, negotiating the “virtual” and “real.”
Which is virtual?
The yarn or the word? The image or the body?
Which body? Which thought? Which act?
Whose body? Whose conversation?
Con-sequences
Will I hear it, feel it or see it—how shall I know?

That any book project is “single-authored” is a myth. In the initial stages of
work on this book, I struggled to keep up that myth. That anyone writes without
multiple conversations in their heads and outside is also a myth. When I write, I have
a party in my head. In this book, the voices I encountered were real and through our
conversations and the work they contributed to the overall theme of the book, they
materialized as real co-authors.
Chapters one and two contain some restructured and revised material previously
published as Gajjala R. and Birzescu A. (2011) Digital Imperialism through Online
Social/Financial Networks – Special issue of Economic and Political Weekly (Edited
by Rohit Chopra and Aniket Alam). Thanks to Rohit Chopra for helping us articulate
some of these connections.
Chapter three is a reprint of Gajjala R (2011) Snapshots from Sari Trails: Cy-
borgs Old and New, Social Identities (reproduced with permission from Taylor and
Francis). Thanks to the unknown reviewers for helping me develop and expand the
ideas in the first draft I submitted to that journal.
As always, I am thankful for the support (and tolerance of what can only be
termed my madness) provided on a daily basis by Venkat and Pratap.

Radhika Gajjala
Bowling Green, Ohio
May 2012
INTRODUCTION

SUBALTERN
EMPOWERMENT, SOCIO-ECONOMIC
GLOBALIZATION AND DIGITAL DIVIDES

Theoretical and Disciplinary Intersections

Broadly, in this book I map a particular path in examining how voice and silence
shape online space in relation to offline actualities. Implicit in this investigation
is also the question of how offline actualities and online cultures are in turn
shaped by online hierarchies as well as different kinds of local access to global
contexts. Underlying the whole project, of course, is the revealing of a logic of
particular “global/local” trajectories that emerge in the context of digital, trans-
national capital and labor flows. To this end, I have examined various relevant
sites and intersections through critical lenses enabled by conversations and writ-
ings in postcolonial feminist theory (Spivak, 1988; Mohanty, 1988; Alcoff and
Potter, 1993), critical cultural studies, communication studies (Couldry, 2010,
Schiller, 1999) development studies (Escobar, 1995, Tirthankar Roy, 2007;
Parthasarathi, 2001) and science and technology studies (Latour, 2005;
Haraway, 1991). Through interdisciplinary lenses enabled by cultural studies
and feminist methodologies, this work looks at online microfinance, new tech-
nologies and virtual world marketing, and handloom contexts from India and
Africa in relation to development discourse that posits a binary between “tradi-
tion” and modernity. Through actual (auto)ethnographic engagement in all these
contexts, my collaborators and I reveal the interdependence of the economic,
political, cultural and social in the production of the subaltern online. Online
microfinance, it turns out, is a move to globalize microfinance and is therefore a
bit different in operation and process that offline located microfinance. There-
fore claims and observations in this book should not be conflated with micro-
finance in general.
The ways in which we speak of categories such as “third-world,” “South
Asia,” and even “race” in relation to Internet-mediated online/offline environ-
ments have to be much more nuanced than in previous times when we engaged