Proposed Panel: Queering Digital Activisms, Intimacies and Subjectivities (in) South Asia
Panel Organisers:
Debanuj Dasgupta, Ohio State University, USA
Rohit K Dasgupta, University of Southampton, UK
We are proposing a panel for the III European Geographies of Sexuality Conference in Rome.
Digital technologies play an important role in the shaping the relation between queer bodies, identities and the State. The role of contemporary digital media (grindr, Planet Romeo, Facebook, different smart-phone apps) in reshaping communication and advocacy within queer communities in the West is well documented (Pullen and Cooper, 2010; Mowlabocus, 2010; McGlotten, 2013), however there has been little work which has been done on non western sexual cultures. In this panel we propose to interrogate the role of digital culture within queer ‘communities’ in South Asia. The digital/virtual space whilst hailed as a disembodied utopic space where signifiers of gender, race and class cease to exist (Rheingold, 2003), we believe it has instead become the very space that reflects and symbolises the anxieties and possibilities of inflection of these categories. Sexuality performs an important role in examining the attitudinal transformation and changes that are currently happening in India- the growth of queer politics, intersectional politics, and assertion of disparate identities. We would welcome abstracts of 200 words focusing on South Asia, digital technologies, and queer/feminist politics. The panel seeks to question the relationship between online and offline spatio-temporal formations, how ideas about the West/East are negotiated through media assemblages? Non-representational approaches to bodies, and pleasures, and digital technologies. Following are some of the themes we would like to highlight from the conference
- the spatialities of the (sexual) encounters favoured by media and technologies: do cities occupy a prominent role? What possibilities do media and technologies in low-density and rural areas offer?
- which possibilities are opened by transmediality in relation both to everyday (sexual) life and the research process itself? Do media and technologies make sexual dissidents’ lives more "liveable"?
- online (sexualized) communities: their aims, compositions, potentialities;
- media, technologies and (sexual) identity. How is desire expressed and reshaped?
- the production of new normativities: which new (sexualized) norms are (re)produced through these instruments?
- “hook-up” apps and social media: which possibilities do they offer? How do institutions use them to control, discipline and repress?
- the appropriation and use of these instruments by sex workers;
- queer politics, feminist politics, and activism online: new forms, possibilities and limits;
-contentious engagements between regional politics, feminist, and queer politics on the internet
- online performances and queer art;
Please send us your 200 word abstract and 50 word bio by 10th April to Debanuj Dasgupta ([email protected]) AND Rohit K Dasgupta ([email protected]
Panel Organisers:
Debanuj Dasgupta, Ohio State University, USA
Rohit K Dasgupta, University of Southampton, UK
We are proposing a panel for the III European Geographies of Sexuality Conference in Rome.
Digital technologies play an important role in the shaping the relation between queer bodies, identities and the State. The role of contemporary digital media (grindr, Planet Romeo, Facebook, different smart-phone apps) in reshaping communication and advocacy within queer communities in the West is well documented (Pullen and Cooper, 2010; Mowlabocus, 2010; McGlotten, 2013), however there has been little work which has been done on non western sexual cultures. In this panel we propose to interrogate the role of digital culture within queer ‘communities’ in South Asia. The digital/virtual space whilst hailed as a disembodied utopic space where signifiers of gender, race and class cease to exist (Rheingold, 2003), we believe it has instead become the very space that reflects and symbolises the anxieties and possibilities of inflection of these categories. Sexuality performs an important role in examining the attitudinal transformation and changes that are currently happening in India- the growth of queer politics, intersectional politics, and assertion of disparate identities. We would welcome abstracts of 200 words focusing on South Asia, digital technologies, and queer/feminist politics. The panel seeks to question the relationship between online and offline spatio-temporal formations, how ideas about the West/East are negotiated through media assemblages? Non-representational approaches to bodies, and pleasures, and digital technologies. Following are some of the themes we would like to highlight from the conference
- the spatialities of the (sexual) encounters favoured by media and technologies: do cities occupy a prominent role? What possibilities do media and technologies in low-density and rural areas offer?
- which possibilities are opened by transmediality in relation both to everyday (sexual) life and the research process itself? Do media and technologies make sexual dissidents’ lives more "liveable"?
- online (sexualized) communities: their aims, compositions, potentialities;
- media, technologies and (sexual) identity. How is desire expressed and reshaped?
- the production of new normativities: which new (sexualized) norms are (re)produced through these instruments?
- “hook-up” apps and social media: which possibilities do they offer? How do institutions use them to control, discipline and repress?
- the appropriation and use of these instruments by sex workers;
- queer politics, feminist politics, and activism online: new forms, possibilities and limits;
-contentious engagements between regional politics, feminist, and queer politics on the internet
- online performances and queer art;
Please send us your 200 word abstract and 50 word bio by 10th April to Debanuj Dasgupta ([email protected]) AND Rohit K Dasgupta ([email protected]