Journals an der JLU Gießen (Justus-Liebig Universität)
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Emojis and the Neoliberal Coding of Diversity: A Monocultural Multiculturalism
Get PDFThis article focuses on the representation of ethnic diversity in multicultural emojis. Multicultural emojis are interpreted in this study as a neoliberal representation of diversity that has reincorporated white supremacist ideology traits, namely color classification, and the Vitruvian Man body design. Thus, I argue that multicultural emojis primarily reflect a typical Western worldview which supports a Eurocentric monoculturalism. Multicultural emojis can, therefore, be interpreted as serving as a set of body depictions whose façade shows diversity while keeping the privilege of the Caucasian body at its core. In the context of this article, code refers to both formulation in the form of symbols and signs, and the signs and signals of communication. The neoliberal coding of the human body, then, highlights how the human body is translated into neoliberal signals or symbols. Neoliberalism values a global market and embraces diversity within this rationale. I argue that instead of trying to eliminate racism by valuing diverse identities equally, neoliberalism lays the ground for the assimilation of diversity into the Western model of subjectivity, which, at its best, offers partial and biased perspectives. To discuss my point, I investigate two visual codes of multicultural emojis: color categorization and the Vitruvian Man body template. I propose that different ethnicities are displayed in emojis through a Jim Crow-type segregative mindset, which defines identity as ‘color.’ At the heart of this thinking, one can find the association of ‘whiteness’ with pureness, and ‘blackness’ with evilness. Second, the body template in multicultural emojis is limited to a Western body-drawing tradition rooted in the sketches of the Vitruvian Man; an illustration that has traditionally represented the Caucasian body model against whose proportions the body of others should be measured and considered normal/abnormal
On Visitations
Get PDFIn seiner Monographie Transmitted Wounds. Media and the Mediation of Trauma entwickelt Amit Pinchevski die These, dass moderne Massenmedien Trauma sowohl übertragen als auch tilgen können und plädiert dafür, ‚Trauma‘ als moralische Kategorie zu verstehen. Die Publikation verbindet Gedächtnisstudien, medientheoretische Erkenntnisse und Technikgeschichte und streift klinische und psychologische Beiträge zum Begriff ‚Trauma‘. Damit verknüpft Pinchevski verschiedene Perspektiven auf Gewalt und Technik und leistet einen originellen und inspirierenden Beitrag zu diesen Disziplinen.In his monograph, Transmitted Wounds. Media and the Mediation of Trauma, Amit Pinchevski develops the thesis that modern mass media can transmit and obliterate trauma and pleads for using ‘trauma’ as a moral category. His work interlinks memory, communication and technology studies and touches upon clinical and psychological contributions to notions of ‘trauma.’ Combining numerous views on the echoes of violence and technology, Pinchevski contributes in an inventive and inspirational way to those disciplines.
 
Hiding in Plain Sight: Minoritarian Approaches to Espionage, Forensic Architecture, and In_Visible Co-Producers
Get PDFMinoritarian approaches to current manifestations of espionage and hegemony-critical uses of intelligence unsettle both the common distinction in ‘spying’ (as active intentionality) and ‘witnessing’ (as passive incidentality) as well as the association of activism and visibility.Analyzing investigative practices at the intersections of legal cultures and politicized contemporary arts, the following research question is discussed through the transdisciplinary (Audio-)Visual Culture and Contemporary Art Studies: Which exchange movements and entanglements between contemporary investigative artistic, curatorial, and aesthetic practices on the one hand, and espionage and intelligence on the other, can be discerned, when considered in regards to ambivalences and contradictions of, as well as emancipatory approaches to, in_visibility?By shedding a spotlight on four investigations by the research agency Forensic Architecture (Torture in Saydnaya Prison, The Beirut Port Explosion, The Murder of Halit Yozgat, and Digital Violence: How the NSO Group Enables State Terror), ‘hiding in plain sight’ serves as a guiding motif to scrutinize in which media-political configurations Forensic Architecture, as a different kind of intelligence agency, and espionage of in_visible co-producers concur in the aftermath of the Cold War and the 1968 movements
Pluriversality Is Already Here
Get PDFPluriversale Politik: The Real and the Possible von Arturo Escobar ist ein inspirierendes Buch, das inmitten der zivilisatorischen Krise, mit der wir konfrontiert sind, Hoffnung geben will. Die Sammlung von acht Essays ist ein Aufruf, die Existenz verschiedener Welten — oder verschiedener Ontologien — und die radikale Interdependenz anzuerkennen, die uns alle — Menschen, Nicht-Menschen und Mehr-als-Menschen — einschließt. Das Buch bereichert nicht nur unsere Vorstellungskraft mit den Möglichkeiten der Re-Existenz, wie sie von indigenen oder afro-abstammenden Völkern aus Abya Yala praktiziert werden, sondern bietet auch einige theoretische Werkzeuge, um anders zu denken.Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible by Arturo Escobar is an inspirational book that seeks to offer hope in the middle of the civilizational crisis we are facing. The collection of eight essays is a call to recognize the existence of different worlds — or different ontologies — and the radical interdependence that binds all of us — human, nonhuman, and more-than-human. Beyond enriching our imagination with the possibilities of re-existence enacted by indigenous or Afro-descendant peoples from Abya Yala, the book offers some theoretical tools for extending thought
Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantánamo Diary through the Lens of In_Visibility
Get PDFThis article reads Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantánamo Diary as an intermedial occasion to stage questions on the axis of in_visibility. The concept of in_visibility constructs the methodological and hermeneutical approach of the paper. The book is analyzed as an intermedial example through the lens of the archive structure where two distinct medial voices emerge—one textual, that of the Guantánamo detainee, and one visual, that of the black bars of redacted text that regularly interrupt and brutally abuse Slahi’s narrative. What makes the intermedial work extraordinary is the powerful encounter between visibility and invisibility, concepts that exchange their semiotic significance and are reevaluated. By analyzing the intermedial narratological techniques of Guantánamo Diary, this article describes the complexity of the in_visibility concept and destabilizes its normative connotations
Reclaiming Agency through the Politics of the In_Visible Body: Illegalized Migration and Self-Representation of Women Domestic Workers in Switzerland
Get PDFThis article deepens our understanding of agency in the context of (in)securitized migration by engaging with the experiences of ‘undocumented’ women domestic workers in Switzerland. By linking the securitization framework with gaze theories and ontologies of the body, the following article accounts for migrants’ embodied and gendered experiences of (in)security and agency. In this perspective, the same bodies which are subjected to domination become tools of resistance enacted through a politics of in_visibilities. While these women mobilize strategies of invisibilization (camouflage, spatial practices of avoidance) to resist deportation, they simultaneously reappropriate self-representation by visibilizing their embodied presence within Switzerland’s visual field, creating a counter-gaze to their (in)securitization. This is manifest in the three cases of embodied plural performances studied through a methodology that combines interviews and filmmaking. While protesting, dancing and testifying illustrate how practices of bodily display can be used as collective rehumanizing tools, they also show how this mobilized visibility remains constrained by women’s (in)securitized conditions. Their agency becomes apparent in their ability to navigate this fine line, that is, the ways in which they creatively engage with the liminal spaces between the visible and the invisible to visually and politically inscribe their incarnated existence, overall destabilizing the securitized gaze
Making the ‘Other’ Visible in Ethnographic Research: Reflections through the Lens of Caste and Gender, from a Non-Metropolitan City in West Bengal, India
Get PDFThis paper is an attempt to reflect on my academic journey with regard to the ethico-political and methodological challenges in researching the ‘Other(s).’ The scholarship on the memories of Partition from West Bengal, India (1947) in particular and South Asia in general show that so far the dominant narrative erased markers such as caste, gender and so on in order to foreground a homogenous refugee identity. Thus, I took the hitherto ‘invisibilized’ lower-caste/outcaste (Dalit/Bahujan) women situated in Asansol—a non-metropolitan city in Bengal, where erstwhile rural, Partition-migrants from government camps were rehabilitated to support its industrial development by providing cheap labor—as my protagonists, to rethink the Partition.
However, for such an exercise, the question that became ethically and methodologically crucial was how an academic enterprise by an upper-caste woman, enabled by the consumption of devalued, feminized labor of mostly women from lower-caste/outcaste (Dalit/Bahujan) groups, can seek to ethically understand such lives. Subsequently, in tracing some of the possible answers, in this paper, I argue against a simplistic deployment of self-reflexivity as a method. I propose taking a relational approach that posits not only the upper-caste and lower/outcaste femininity as co-constituted but also the researcher–researched relationship as an extension of that co-constitution. Taking research work as labor that is enabled by other kinds of (in)visible, (un)paid, (de)valued, caste-based labor as an entry point, I seek to further unpack such co-constitution
Phrases with Images: Memes as a Social Phenomenon Online and Offline
No full textJoanna Nowotny und Julian Reidy leisten mit ihrem Buch Memes – Formen und Folgen eines Internetphänomens einen kulturwissenschaftlichen Beitrag zu dem noch recht wenig erforschten Feld der Memes und zeigen, wie vielfältig und gesellschaftlich relevant das Themenfeld ist. Die Autor_innen analysieren umfassend eine Vielzahl an Beispielen und machen so deutlich, dass Memes sehr viel mehr sind als lustige Bilder mit Text.With their book Memes – Formen und Folgen eines Internetphänomens, Joanna Nowotny and Julian Reidy offer an insightful contribution to the still relatively little researched field of memes in cultural studies. Their study illustrates how diverse and socially relevant the subject area is. The authors extensively analyze a variety of examples, thereby demonstrating that memes are much more than funny images with text
The Child Sex Scandal in Ireland — A Remote Past?
No full textThe Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature: Writing the Unspeakable von Joseph Valente und Margot Gayle Backus macht sich die Idee des ‘rätselhaften Signifikanten’ zu nutzen, um die Darstellung traumatischer erster sexueller Erfahrungen in der modernen irischen Literatur zu untersuchen. Es ist ein mutiges und unverblümtes Buch, das sowohl private als auch kollektive Reaktionen auf Pädophilie untersucht und für die Überlegenheit der Literatur gegenüber den Medien bei der Verarbeitung traumatischer Erfahrungen plädiert.The Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature: Writing the Unspeakable by Joseph Valente and Margot Gayle Backus uses the concept of the ‘enigmatic signifier’ to scrutinize the portrayals of children’s traumatic first sexual experiences in modern Irish literature. It is a daring and unapologetic book that investigates both the private and collective reactions to pedophilia and argues for literature’s superiority over the press in dealing with traumatic experiences
Women Artists—Still Invisible Today? A Critical Approach to Strategies of Making Women Artists Visible
Get PDFWhen it comes to the representation of women artists either in art historical research, in the media, or in exhibitions, the viewer and reader cannot avoid observing the in- flationary use of the terms visibility and invisibility. Today, many art historians and other cultural workers try to approach the problem of women artists’ invisibility by launching projects, especially exhibitions, which are specifically dedicated to women artists, and which consider themselves to be contributing to raising awareness thereof. Despite these efforts to correct long-abiding imbalances, some ap- proaches of making women artists visible do manage to increase their visibility, yet at the same time cause other kinds of invisibility. For example, there are attempts to make women artists visible by focusing on their biographies while neglecting to analyze their art works; by employing subjective approaches which lack the necessary critical distance; or by seeing the artists through male gendered lenses. I consider it fundamental to draw attention to these problems because, in the end, these biased approaches do not sufficiently contribute to making women artists visible. Rather they perpetuate historical falsifications and gender-specific hierarchies