Date: Sat, 29 Mar 1997 18:59:26 -0500 (EST)
From: "Cyberdiva (a.k.a \"Radhika Gajjala\")" <rxgst6+-AT-pitt.edu>
Subject: disjointed semi-explanations


In response to what does the commodification of diaspora have to do with
virtual communities like SAWNET.

If you've seen the article i placed at the website -
(an article, incidentally, written for a SAWnet audience)

My attempts to study sawnet is related to my question regarding
the possibility/impossibility of "cyborg-diaspora"
(i.e. `community through technology' as a disruption of
that `community through memory')
=09

I'm now going to quote from my several papers (chapters, whatever..)
related to this project
(some of it may be on the website - I'm not sure...) and if the
connection is not clear - maybe i can try and clarify the
connection in future posts. What I have included below will definitely
seem a bit disjointed, but as I said - i'm willing to try
and flesh it out in relation to what this audience demands:-).

Of course all this is within the present economic situation -
access to internet is geographically "tilted", so the "postcolonials"
online are the comparatively rich postcolonials...mostly immigrants etc.
living in the US, Canada, UK  and Australia/NZ and
so on.Therefore, the internet is often a "place" for  writing nostalgia
(community through memory)- over
and over and over again (as you know from reading some
of my work, i contribute to this writing of nostalgia).

_____-----

 it would seem that what is happening online is actually
a replaying of discourses that circulate within real life communities.
Whether or not the discourses are exact replays of real
life interactions, it is true that the limit of this discursive community
lies within the actual with-body people who inhabit real life
diasporic spaces and who have access to internet. The discussions
and narrative threads are wholly the product of the kind of people
who are able to get on-line. Virtual communities appear disembodied,
but nonetheless they are discursive reproductions of real life societies.
In the case of virtual communities formed around a  certain
national, ethnic or regional identity the "imagining" of these
communities spills beyond "cyberspace" into RL in ways that
are slightly different from the RL overflow from other kinds of
virtual communities ..


 E-mail lists as Ethnography

There is a blurring of author/reader, audience/performer
distinctions. Aycock and Buchignani have suggested that
online interaction is a form of interactive ethnography
in its own right. Extending this idea to the context of
virtual communities of postcolonials, it is possible to
see virtual communities like SAWNET as interactive ethnographic
texts, where the participants are the informants/ethnographers
at various levels. They share stories about each others=92
lives, they provide textual ethnographic "evidence" of their
experiences to the lurkers/audience and to the other
informants/ethnographers. In addition, they also write
ethnographies, in the form of little notes and messages,
about the host society in which they live.

So, for example, on SAWNET, there might be discussions
about  individual South Asian women=92s experiences
and opinions while simultaneously, there may be
discussions about how mainstream "American" society behaves etc.

Yet because of the apparent "facelessness" of the encounters in
these virtual environments, the level of engagement of
individuals may differ in various ways, depending on personal
preferences and competencies.  While some may be encouraged to share more
opinions than they in face-to-face interaction, others may be
intimidated by the technology and/or by the knowledge that
unlike the spoken word, the written word leaves a visible stain.
While ethnography in any situation (whether in with-body communities
or in virtual communities) is a difficult exercise in
"cross-cultural  and interpersonal understanding and representation"
(Stacey, 1991) ethnography online (or cyberethnography )
is further complicated because the interaction is limited to bare text .



=09 A virtual community of diasporic men and women,
that comes together on grounds of some form of (imagined) shared
ethnic/cultural identity is different from the virtual community that is
formed around particular professional or academic interests. The sharing
of  virtual space in the former case becomes intricately interwoven
with the personal, cultural, ethnic, political, affective and "real life"
community interests of the participants. Discussions often are a replay of
discourses that circulate in real life diasporic communities . 


The fact is that in this situation, the questions regarding power,
authority and exploitation are intricately woven into the very
fabric of the larger diasporic community and representations
already "out there". Representations in various forms - everyday,
popular and academic.

Sara Suleri, Trinh Minh-ha and others have discussed the process by
which non-western (non-white, non-bourgeoisie....) women are "Othered"
and "interpellated by difference" (John, 1996). At the same moment as
we are "Othered" we also learn to be the ideal Other, complicitous with
the existing status quo. As the representative native informants or
ideal reporters from the third-world who have been indoctrinated into
the cultural and linguistic system through our postcolonial education
and our "sanctioned ignorances" (John, 1996) we learn to produce
narratives about our Othered selves that will fit appropriately
within hegemonic narratives concerning third-world cultures. 
We thus contribute actively to reproduction of colonial discourses
by being fashionably multi-cultural.

=09It is this habitual, sometimes even unwitting, complicity that
needs to be interrogated. As Mary John writes :

"Contrary to the assumptions that brought some of us
to the United States, we may thus find ourselves forced
to contend with our places of departure, asked to function as
native informants from "elsewhere". From what position of authority
would we speak?
The very attempt to  become such cultural representatives,
the faltering of our memory, must, then, lead to a different realization:
the need for an examination of the historical, institutional, and
social relations that have, in fact, produced subjects also quite
unlike "the native informant" of old" ( John, 1996, pg 23).



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homepage::  http://www.pitt.edu/~gajjala/

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