Thinking with the Archipelago
Dear readers,
Thank you so much for subscribing to my Digital Humanities newsletter and for spreading the word in your circles. I am grateful for your trust and confidence in me.
The theme for the newsletter of this month is “Archipelago”. I am currently a PhD student writing a dissertation titled “Ordinary Aesthetics in Contemporary Indian Ocean Archipelagic Writings. I try to advance the category of the ‘ordinary’ in the textual cultures of the Indian Ocean archipelagos. Can ordinariness in aesthetics inspire radical politics and change?
I hope that coming up with a provisional response to the aesthetic questions about ordinariness will help me address two key tensions in postcolonial environmental literary criticism: how do we represent ordinary environments through aesthetics while remaining attentive to historicism, the contexts, and geopolitics that are not only shaping the emergence of these texts but also the conditions that lead to the creation of these ‘ordinary environments’, in the first place? how do we work towards an ethical literary environmental criticism, if ordinary emerges as a paradoxical aesthetic and political category that is at once reparative against the climate catastrophe of empire as well as violent by not being legible? What does the archipelagic nature of textual production bring to the study of the ‘ordinary’? By centering ordinariness, I aim to revise how literary histories of environmentalism have been told in the Indian Ocean region. I specifically position the usefulness of ordinariness as an aesthetic category which in turn will help me explore the relationship between genres and narrative expression/action. I am currently working with the textual cultures of three Indian Ocean archipelagos: Sundarbans(Tidal Waters), Andamans and Nicobar(Multispecies Waters), Chagos (Displaced Waters).
So, I have been thinking a lot about the archipelago and how does scholarship and practice in Digital Humanities intersect with the archipelago.
As I wrote in my inaugural newsletter, my newsletters will have three sections: Reflections, Practice and Resource. Therefore in today’s newsletter, each of these sections is focused on thinking through an aspect of the archipelago.
Reflections
For this month, I read Tao Leigh Goffe’s essay “Unmapping the Caribbean: Toward a Digital Praxis of Archipelagic Sounding” which theorizes “unmapping” as a digital practice to challenge the colonial practice of two-dimensional cartography. Drawing on her experience of teaching a class titled, “Caribbean Writing, Reggae, and Routes”, she demonstrates how sound can be mobilized as a philosophy and practice to embed the body in the process of “unmapping”. The goal here is to not find a definitive answer but to use the body and sound, as a form of “wayfinding”. If the goal of colonial cartography is to make territory legible through maps, unmapping is inspired by Glissant’s philosophy of opacity, of not necessarily making things legible. I found the concept of “unmapping” and thinking through the sound in the realm of the digital crucial for Indian Ocean archipelagic studies. Though I might not immediately take this up as a project, it would be really interesting to see what the “unmapping” in the digital through sound could look like in the context of the Indian Ocean sonic traditions. What theoretical possibilities will this open up? Whether Sega music in Chagos or folk traditions emerging from Sundarbans, a digital soundscape of the Indian Ocean archipelagos is a much-needed project. I am writing about Sega as a musical form within the literary texts that I am looking at but I need to learn more and research a lot before I take up a project like this. I am thankful to Tao Leigh Goffe for being inspirational.
Here are my other key takeaways from the essay:
a) I really appreciated her reflection about using ArcGIS Story Maps. As Goffe writes, the US based firm Esri has had connections with the US Department of Defense. So, how does one negotiate with the dilemma of using a platform that has neocolonial and imperialist linkages with teaching it in a class where the goal is to challenge the settler-colonial ambitions of the State? I hear and understand the practical considerations that went to the choice of the platform: accessibility, familiarity, and focus on multi-modal narrative. I also take her point that perhaps it is a way of using the “master’s tool” than what it was intended for. These were all the factors that were key when I ended up using StoryMaps for my Oceanic Justice class that I taught in the summer of 2021.
However, part of my brain (and this is me) still cannot come to terms with the fact that I used StoryMaps. Perhaps there is a way of building our own infrastructures and platforms to host stories that are not dependent on corporations. This is time and labor-intensive and requires a skill-set of its own. As a graduate student teaching a six-week summer course while having dependent care responsibilities last summer, this was impossible. But having a conversation with students and awareness about the platform itself are essential: Why are we using it? What is the potential? What are the limits of the platforms? What we could do differently? In other words, first comes the questions, the problems that we are trying to address, and only then if a tool/software/method is adequate to serve the needs and a reflection of the platform itself.
b) The need for collaboration and compensation with digital humanist scholars and activists located in the Global South is key to any dynamic project
c) Using the resources of the university that has settler-colonial foundations and directing it elsewhere to enable digital humanities projects that challenge settler-colonialism is imperative.
A special shoutout to the Archipelagos journal where this article by Dr. Goffe has been published. If you are interested in Digital Humanities and the Caribbean, Archipelagos is a must-read.
Will we have a scholarly journal someday on Indian Ocean Digital Humanities? What are the stakes, methods, and practices needed to be able to develop an Indian Ocean DH?
Practice
I am currently a small part of a collaborative digital humanities archipelagic project titled Delta Lives focusing on the Indian Ocean archipelagic delta Sundarbans. The project is currently ongoing. For the next issue of this newsletter, I plan to write (perhaps co-write) a newsletter dedicated to Delta Lives and Archipelagic DH. Delta Lives deserves space and attention of its own. The website is currently being developed and the write-ups are in their draft stages. If you want to read about the origins of the project, please read here. I am grateful to comrades Barnamala Roy and Pritha Kundu for the opportunity to be a part of this work!
Resource
While working on my dissertation prospectus in the spring and working on my chapter description for Chagos, I came across this wonderful exhibit on Chagos: Cultural Heritage Across Generations. It is helpful as a research and pedagogical resource (though I have not used it yet in the classroom). I especially love, LOVE ! the Chagos Tambour Group Album. I read the song booklet and listen to the songs on repeat while working on my dissertation. Considering the violence that the Chagossian community had to face (and indeed ongoing), I appreciate that the exhibits focus on living heritage and aesthetic traditions. Please check out the exhibits here.