Leap of faith

I believe (or want to believe) in the positive effects of globalization, which enable us to break more and more the boundaries that seprate us physically (countries), culturally (languagues & customs), intellectually (education), technologically (internet, social networks, etc.) and economically (transnationalism, corporations). We've become more and more interconnected, and we can take advantage of more opportunities. We can nourish greater ambitions, and break free from previous limitations.

As far as I am concerned, my whole adult life would have been different without "positive globalization". Thanks to the bridges that are constantly created, at every level of global exchanges, I was able to change my life for the better. I was born and raised in Gabon (Central Africa), a former French colony. Because of that, my primary language is French. I experienced the French educational system in Gabon. Later on, I experienced it in France as well, at the University of Bordeaux, where I went to study film. I decided to become a filmmaker, because I watched Hollywood movies during all my chilhood. I took advantage of an exchange program between the University of Bordeaux and the University of California, to experience American Grad school at UCSB. There, I met my future husband, who was an exchange Fulbright fellow from Germany. Even though my German is satisfactory, and his French is acceptable, we communicate in English.

Consequently thanks to "positive globalization," today I can even live in the US, have English as my my new primary language, and ambition to pursue a dual career as an African filmmaker, and as a scholar in America.

However, this week's readings modified my mostly positive outlook on things. Doreen Massey's article "A global sense of place," particularly was the one that affected me the most. For me, "place" is a point of origin, it is both our cultural and geographical point of departure on the globe. Thus, the article left me wondering about how important "the place" (where we live, where we are born, where we work, etc.) was in the construction of our personal identity, as well as our personalities. Because globalization has managed to considerably reduce distances, it has rendered us potentially more nomadic. In our contstruction of identity, the place where we come from defines lees who we are than the place where we live in, or the place where we work, or even the place where we aspire to go. Ultimately, this may considerably affect our sense of who we are, and the convictions that we have about our cultural identity. What place do we actually call "home"? What culture can we eventually call ours? What citizenship is the one that reflects our cultural identity? With globalization, is there virtually no place to belong to? No place to commit to? No place cultural identity to develop? It really depressed me.

The webs that are created with gloabalization have impacted so many aspects of our lives, at so many levels (sometimes that we are not even fully aware of) that at the end, it feels like we are just left hoping that it is actually "mostly positive"...

gpl thought stream - readings week 1 and 2

I put the title in lowercase letters to excuse myself for the fragmentary nature of this post. I could keep these notes to myself, but it feels like a productive step in my own internal process to upload into a shared space. Doesn't require response. Putting it out there is kind of an end in itself. Thanks.

I spent the weekend reading, and still have one article to finish tonight - the Cresswell introduction. How do I read? PDFs on an iPad. I found an app that works pretty well for bookmarking, highlighting and note taking with PDFs. I read pretty slowly, at least when I can afford it. I markup the text, create my own annotated bookmarks, and then switch over to a different note-taking app to write short summaries of the articles I've read and my immediate questions and reactions. Then I wait a little bit and see what sticks in my brain. These are the sticks.

For one, I always experience a little meta-apprehension when I jump into a subject area where I lack experience. Are my questions and reactions valid? Would I be wondering the same things if I had read all the other articles that this article is referencing? Is there a key piece I'm missing? Is it OK that I sometimes make broad conceptual leaps from the theoretical questions being posed to other tangentially related practical topics that I just happen to find interesting? Is that a useful kind of inquiry, or just the outcome of a curious mind that's not actually grounded in the literature and concepts being explored?

I had the hardest time with the Hardt and Negri article. Maybe because I read it first. But the main questions I had coming out of it, were how one might use their language and framework to investigate recent occurrences and practices of interest to me. Is the hacker group 'Anonymous' a non-imperial police force? How could we think about peer-to-peer economic systems such as Bit-Coin within this discussion?

I wondered if Appadurai's statements about how b-grade media products 'reflect and refine' gendered violence were meant more as a provocation and a challenge for deeper explanation and investigation or if it was really an assertion that the relationship was so direct and simple between real and depicted violence.

When Miyoshi talks about TNCs as being more powerful and efficient than nation-states, unencumbered by a need to wrap their activities in any kind of patriotic mythology, I wondered if there is still some other kind of myth-making that those corporations have to do, beyond just their brand identities, what kinds of stories are these giant entities making? I know there must be more than just the myth of profit.

And over all of it, I find that the question sticking in my mind is, 'Why is there no discussion of slavery?' Was the slave trade just such an intrinsic facet of colonialism, imperialism and globalization at large that these authors feel it isn't necessary to address it explicitly? To me, it seems like such an extreme site in which to investigate so many of the issues being raised that it would be an important topic to delve into. I'm thinking about biopower, about mobility. Is human bondage accounted for in the theoretical work being referenced by these authors and I just don't know it? So that the subject is kind of kept outside and on its own? There are references to forced migrations, to the tragedies of the Bangkok sex trade, to the shadow economies of drug and arms smuggling controlled by international cartels, but I didn't see any explicit attempt to engage (past or present) trade and traffic of human life. In the same way that the extreme horrors of war recur as practical illustrations of these concepts, it seems like human trafficking, indentured servitude and other forms of human bondage would be an important (or at least useful?) part of this exploration.

Welcome to CTCS 677 Transnational and Global Media

Hello, and welcome to the blog for CTCS 677 Transnational and Global Media, Fall 2011. You will be using this space throughout the semester to share your thoughts, questions and debates on class material. Looking forward to hearing them!

Best regards,
Nadine Chan (TA)