1st Edition

Networking the Globe New Technologies and the Postcolonial

Edited By Florian Stadtler, Ole Birk Laursen Copyright 2016
    136 Pages
    by Routledge

    136 Pages
    by Routledge

    Contemporary events which have catastrophic global ramifications such as the current economic crisis or on-going conflicts across the globe are not only mediated by super-fast digital communication and information networks, but also conditioned by the presence of rapidly advancing technologies. From social network sites like YouTube and Facebook to global satellite news channels like Al Jazeera or the BBC World Service, digital forms of culture have multiplied in recent years, creating global conduits and connections which shape our lives in many ways.

    Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, this book addresses how new technologies have impacted discussions of identity, place and nation, and how they are shifting the parameters of postcolonial thought. Each chapter reflects on current research in its respective field, and presents new directions on the interconnection between new technologies and the postcolonial in a contemporary context. Offering a major intervention in debates around global networks, this thought-provoking collection highlights innovative research on new technologies, and its impact on a ‘postcolonial’ world. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

    Introduction – Networking the globe: culture, technologies, globalization Florian Stadtler and Ole Birk Laursen with Brian Rock

    1. Connecting the peripheries: networks, place and scale in the World Social Forum process Hilde C. Stephansen

    2. Arguing about religion: BBC World Service Internet forums as sites of postcolonial encounter David Herbert, Tracey Black and Ramy Aly

    3. Panopticons within panopticons: surveillance inversions in Willie Doherty’s video installations Paula Blair

    4. The borders of virtual space: new information technologies and European Islamic youth culture Maruta Herding

    5. New media beyond neo-imperialism: Betty Boop and Sita Sings the Blues Sandra Annett

    6. Pluralism and cultural imperialism in the network films Babel and Lantana Vivien Silvey

    7. The global and the postcolonial in post-migratory literature Ahmed Gamal

    8. The cartography of the local in Arun Kolatkar’s poetry Anjali Nerlekar

    Biography

    Florian Stadtler is a Lecturer in Global Literatures at the University of Exeter, UK. He has published on South Asian cinema, fiction and history, including Fiction, Film and Indian Popular Cinema: Salman Rushdie’s Novels and the Cinematic Imagination. He is the reviews editor for Wasafiri: The Magazine of International Contemporary Writing.

    Ole Birk Laursen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research concerns the literature and history of anti-colonial and postcolonial resistances in Britain, focusing especially on anarchism, revolutions and riots.