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.
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