24 Oct 09 • 2:47pm 0
Certainly amusing.
Although, lets not forget how mainstream politics has perpetuated the racialized logic of “Immigration Control = Good Race Relations”.
It’s too easy baiting Griff*n as a holocaust denier, while obfuscating state racisms. And racism isn’t an exceptionalist Nazi ideology, but formative to western modernity.
Filed under: politics
16 Mar 09 • 1:25pm Comments Off
In case you missed this, the presenter (Jay Smooth) offers some useful practical knowledge…
Filed under: anti-racism, racism , anti-racism, racism
14 Mar 09 • 8:38pm Comments Off
Recently, we undertook a major update for darkmatter journal. This involved upgrading wordpress software (which is used to run the journal), and installing a new look/theme Mimbo 2.
I used a live test site, to enable the other darkmatter editors to check developments, as well as ensuring that the plugins were working nicely. On the day of the live update, we had around 3hrs down-time, when the WP database was upgraded, new theme installed, and extensive checking for dead and missing links.
Updating the theme resulted in a fair bit of work – tweaking Mimbo 2 while integrating some of the new features in Mimbo 3. (The updated Mimbo 3 version while having some nifty features, didn’t really work for the journal content presentation, so continued using Mimbo 2).
One hack to mimbo I especially liked was adding a tabbed box on the RHS sidebar, now neatly displaying the Menu, Popular Posts & Comments. Mimbo 2 also needed to be slightly hacked in order for it to rotate Featured posts (on page refreshes), while these not being duplicated in other posts on the homepage page.
I tried cutting back on the number of plugins, but there are still many being used, especially to enhance the journal and maintain some key features (such as co-authors and footnotes).
Also, shifted to using the robust UK universities JISCMAIL for the darkmatter newsletter. Originally, a commercial company – zookoda – was used, which I was never comfortable with. (And I experienced a mini-nightmare retrieving the user database with over 250 subscribers from zookoda as it closed down. Don’t trust the cloud with your data...).
Hope you’re pleased with the new look of the journal. darkmatter while focussed on developing postcolonial critique for the net, is also developed using open-source software and thus, a continuously evolving project .
For posterity, here’s a picture of the original darkmatter site.
darkmatter old-site
Filed under: darkmatter-development-blog , darkmatter, wordpress
11 Mar 09 • 8:52pm 1
Dis-Orienting Rhythms: the politics of the new Asian dance music (1996, Zed books), edited by Sanjay Sharma, John Hutnyk and Ash Sharma.
“This book writes back the presence of South Asian youth into a rapidly expanding and exuberant music scene; and celebrates this as a dynamic expression of the experience of diaspora with an urgent political consciousness. One of the first attempts to situate such production within the study of race and identity, it uncovers the crucial role that South Asian dance musics – from Hip-hop, Qawwali and Bhangra through Soul, Indie and Jungle – have played in a new urban cultural politics …” (Back cover)
To celebrate the landmark edited collection being published over a decade ago, the whole text and individual chapters are available to download as searchable pdf files: darkmatter journal
26 Oct 08 • 12:09pm Comments Off
A poetic journey of war, memory & dialogue
A Premier Launch Event:
Screening of Unravelling – A film by Kuldip Powar, with original score by Nitin Sawhney
Performance of Post-Colonial War Requiem – composed & conducted by Francis Silkstone
Noise of the Past presents two new related commissions produced from a creative call-and-response method to cast a different light on war, colonial soldiers and the art of dialogue.
Unravelling (2008, 17 mins) is the result of a unique film-making process, creatively working with poetry, archive materials, visual art and music. Nitin Sawhney composed a new score in response to an original inter-generational poetic dialogue in Urdu between Sawarn Singh, a WWII Indian soldier who fought for the British in Burma, the Middle East and Africa, before moving to the UK, and his grandson, Kuldip Powar. Working with this haunting score Powar directed an evocative and searching film.
Francis Silkstone has also taken the inter-generational poetic dialogue as the source of inspiration for Post Colonial War Requiem, a new score to be performed in interaction with the phenomenal space of Coventry Cathedral. Benjamin Britten’s original War Requiem inaugurated the newly-built Cathedral in 1962, offering Remembrance without militarism. Though consciously inclusive, it did not reference the contributions of the (now former) colonies.
Saturday 8th November 2008, 7.00pm – 9.30pm
Coventry Cathedral, Priory St, CV1 5AB
(Nearest car park: Cox St, CV1 5LW) http://www.coventrycathedral.org.uk/
Premier Launch followed by Q&A with film director Kuldip Powar and composer Francis Silkstone
A FREE Event & Reception
Unravelling will also be screened from the 11th – 23rd November 2008, The Herbert, Jordan Well, Coventry, CV1 5QP. http://www.theherbert.org/
Saturday 8th November 2008, 1.30 – 5pm
St Mary’s Guildhall, Bayley Lane, Coventry, CV1 5RR.
Speakers include: Alessandro Portelli (Rome), Les Back (Goldsmiths), Prabjot Parmar (Royal Holloway), Kuldip Powar (film director), Francis Silkstone (composer, Goldsmiths). Discussants: Gen Doy (De Montford); Said Adrus (UEL), Shirin Rai (Warwick University).
FREE – Register in advance, email: j.daykin@gold.ac.uk
Further details: www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/methods-lab/noise-past.php
Noise of the Past Project Directors:
Dr Nirmal Puwar (Goldsmiths, University of London – n.puwar@gold.ac.uk)
Dr Sanjay Sharma (Brunel University – sanjay.sharma@brunel.ac.uk)
Filed under: culture, politics , music, postcolonial
14 Sep 08 • 11:57pm Comments Off
Back, Les The Art of Listening, Berg 2007 210 pp.
British Journal of Sociology 59(3) © London School of Economics and Political Science 2008
On the front cover of The Art of Listening there is a striking picture of a woman called Donna. A musical score from Stevie Wonder’s song ‘Isn’t She Lovely?’ is tattooed on the inside of her raised arms. The tattoo is in memory of where Donna held her god-daughter, who died of brain cancer. This inscription of love is one of many poignant moments captured in this uniquely crafted book. There are few academic authors who can write a text committed to Sociology, yet are able to profoundly transcend its disciplinary confines. Social theory, empirical inquiry and the joys and sorrows of daily life are literally rediscovered.
Early on in his book, Les Back declares: ‘I started out as an anthropologist, but I was more interested in what was going on at the local bus stop than some distant shore’ (p. 9). The reader quickly learns that such a stance however, does not generate a parochial perspective. To the contrary, Back compels us towards ‘a global sociological imagination’ (p. 23), grounded in the contested encounters of everyday multiculture. He insists that ‘[g]eopolitical insecurity, political violence and deepening social and economic divisions provide the context and the need for the development of a global sociology’ (p. 151).
The book consists of a series of inter-connected essays, critically weaving together contemporary concerns that demand attention: migration and mobility; urban boundaries and exclusions; bodily inscriptions and expressive love; street portraiture and dialogical research; multiculture after September 11th. Each chapter exemplifies an approach for invigorating the craft of an ethical sociology. The book attempts to re-address an accelerated global culture in which revelation and voyeurism increasingly invade and overcome ‘the ordinary yet remarkable things found in everyday life’ (p. 1). At the heart of this text is a deeply reflexive, ethico-political project committed to listening: paying ‘attention to the fragments, the voices and stories that are otherwise passed over or ignored’ (p. 1). The act of listening is not confined to hearing more carefully. What remains unsaid is as important as what has been said. The project involves crafting sociological attention, ‘a mode of thought that works within and through a “democracy of the senses”‘(p. 25).
Back advocates ‘a literary Sociology that aims to document and understand social life without assassinating it’ (p. 164). Symbolic and epistemic violence are commonplace in academe, and the author is troubled by the parasitic machinery of contemporary academia in its unrelenting quest for knowledge. It would be too easy for Back to glibly declare some kind of postmoderm refusal to document the world in order to avoid the risk of objectification. But he is not interested in empty gestures, and confronts the aporia of directly engaging social life thus: ‘When we listen to people, do they give us their stories or do we steal them? At the heart of all social investigation is a dialectical tension between theft and gift, appropriation and exchange’. (p. 96)
Back persistently questions the public relevance of sociology, especially when he movingly recalls visiting his dying father in hospital, a working-class man who never read any of his son’s books. But the author resists simply romanticizing or sublimating the voiceless and the marginalized. For example, he openly explores his family’s residual working-class racism. And when discussing the rise of religious radicalism in the context of the ‘War on Terror’, he questions why there has been ‘a lack of willingness to ask searching questions about the authoritarianism of the powerless’ (p. 140).
There are risks involved in writing a text which attempts to forge a new trajectory for Sociology (a discipline forever anxious about its boundaries and relevance). The offer of a new programme risks either celebrating relativist anarchistic play (where there are no boundaries or rules for Sociology); or conversely, offering a normative account predicated on a moralizing agenda (an imperious Sociology). Back is aware of such pretensions. His work remains faithful to social inquiry – ‘interpretation without legislation’ (p. 1) – while acknowledging the limits of such a project: ‘Ethnographic representation should aspire to better kinds of failure…’ (p. 94). Similarly, he objects to the institutionalization of academic research when maintaining that a ‘regulatory approach to ethics adds little to our understanding…of sociology in action’ (p. 114).
The Art of Listening is a rare book in its commitment to vitalize an ethical, global sociology for the twenty-first century. Students are encouraging their parents to read it. Everyone needs to read this book – especially jaded academics.
Filed under: culture, politics , globalization, sociology
7 Mar 08 • 5:34pm Comments Off
As the co-editor and web-admin1 of the online journal darkmatter, the opensource blog software platform of WordPress (WP) is used to run the journal. I’m not a proper coder, but a bit of (php, html, css) knowledge really does go a long way with wordpress. And the original theme (Light 1.0) has been modified in order to make it work like a journal.
However, to be able to use WP in this way, a number of plugins are required. Clearly what makes WP stand out from the crowd is its vast plugin community, enabling to remarkably extend its features and make it work more like a CMS.
But there’s a downside. The number of plugins can start to proliferate if you want CMS features. For example, to display multiple authorship for an article requires a plugin (called co-authors, which is relatively new and overcomes the short-comings of an existing multiple authors plugin). While the latest WP has a tagging system it’s still basic, so another plugin is needed for that. Similarly to properly print-format an article, you need another plugin. (And there’s still no properly working PDF conversion plugin). And the workflow is almost non-existent, even with plugins such as role manager.
The problem I’m finding, if you want to do something more than a single authored blog on WP, you need plugins. And plugins need to be continually updated, as WP is constantly upgrading its core package. Plugin updates doesn’t always happen. And then there’s the overhead involved in keeping the site up-to-date and properly functioning.
This constant upgrading (and testing) cycle is high maintenance… Sorry to say, but I may quit using WP for darkmatter.
Therefore, I’m checking out alternatives to WP, which have more integrated features and designed to be used by multiple authors. Some opensource CMS possibilities are Joomla and drupal (the latter seems especially attractive, though has a higher learning curve due to its inherent flexibility). Also there’s OJS, a dedicated opensource journal system. It has solid support, though its workflow system is cumbersome and may not suit our needs on darkmatter as it reproduces the conventions of a print journal.
I’m leaning towards drupal at the moment, but early days yet.
Edit [24/03/08]: Having played around with drupal, it certainly does have a higher learning curve than WP! And is more accurately described as a Content Management Framework (rather than merely a CMS). Clearly powerful and it has many more features integrated compared to WP. But it’s an unfair comparison to make, even though WP is moving beyond blogging capabilities.
The juries still out on whether to go the drupal route (which would take a few months getting to grips with for me). Continuing with WP with a new strategy of only using significant/essential plugins, and not attempting to follow WP core upgrades (apart from security updates). That is, upgrading darkmatter say once every 6 or 12 months would make things more manageable?
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[1] No, I don’t like the maculinist term webmaster
Filed under: darkmatter-development-blog, technology , darkmatter, wordpress
21 Oct 07 • 5:06pm Comments Off
The shambolic, illegal occupation of Iraq by Western powers has resulted in countless deaths (murder) of civilians.
The ‘war against terror’ is as much an info-war as it is one involving brutal death and destruction.
Enter Wikipedia into the affray. It’s an amazing resource. While controversy exists over the accuracy of its contents, a more interesting question is how it contests the authority of conventional (expert) knowledge. Moreover, what Wikipedia reveals is the politics of knowledge itself. A significant example is how the contents of a page about Iraqi “resistance” has been edited to “insurgency“.1
If you are unfamiliar with the principles of a wiki, it enables readers to collectively edit a page, and the page’s edited history is stored. In the case of Wikipedia, if controversy arises, the page can be locked disabling any further edits.
Click the thumbnail image below to compare how the key terms over the entry about Iraq have been edited/altered. A case of rewriting how we are meant to grasp war and violence in Iraq?
Notes
Originally posted on the darkmatter Journal
1For the latest Wikipedia entry now entitled ‘Iraq and Insurgency’, click here. (And has the article reverted back to include the term ‘resistance’?)
15 Oct 07 • 11:02pm Comments Off
There are many ‘web2.0′ video sharing/hosting sites these days, though YouTube (YT) reigns supreme. Now owned by Google, YT is becoming the search site for video.
However, if you’re intending to upload your own video, there are some serious restrictions when using YT. Not only is there a limit to the length of material, but YT’s Terms & Conditions (see especially point 6) leave a lot to be desired.
A comparison between different video sharing sites indicates that YT doesn’t allow Creative Commons licensing and has way-too-liberal rights to reuse your content. (Though according to this post it’s possible to use creative commons with YouTube, though this hasn’t been made public?) More specifically, as argued in a boing boing article – which has now been deleted?1 – by Xeni Jardin, the intentions of how YT may use uploaded content is questionable.
Filed under: darkmatter-development-blog, technology , copyright, darkmatter, video, wordpress
9 Oct 07 • 11:46pm 2
Should we care about privacy? Much privacy talk can come across as anachronistic bourgeois individualism, seemingly getting in the way of what social networking is all about: the flow of information - sharing and multiplying social connections between users.
So when a recent report by Sophos security highlighted that facebook’s privacy practices remain suspect, both in terms of its default settings and common member behaviour, will it affect the average fb member?
Filed under: technology, thought , capitalism, facebook, privacy, surveillance
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