I am presenting at the Cultural Studies Association (USA) on Saturday 12:00-1:00pm CST, 12 June 2021.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/18HEW_27VDtM16T-CtSQkqi6ZSH8nTQ_nRAT15qp1G8c/edit#
The Force of Images: Digital Media, Bodies, and Data in Southeast Asia
Chair: Benjamin Hegarty, The University of Melbourne
Respondent: Tom Boellstorff, University of California Irvine
Indonesian Youth Protesting for/with Social Media
Annisa Beta, The University of Melbourne
Violent Visibilities: Campus Sexual Misconduct Facilitated by Technology in Singapore
Michelle H. S. Ho, National University of Singapore
The Biosocial Body: Data and Visibility Among MSM in Indonesian HIV Programs
Benjamin Hegarty, The University of Melbourne
This panel considers the force of images in shaping the meanings attached to bodies and embodiment in contemporary Southeast Asia. Throughout the region, political upheaval, contestation and technological developments related to the digital are producing new relationships between bodies and the meanings attached to their representation. In this environment, moral harms are transformed into physiological risk in new ways, resulting in emergent forms of exclusion and claims for inclusion. This is transforming both the possibilities and the modes through which claims to autonomy and representation unfold. In an era of new appropriation and force of images what kinds of political mobilisation are possible? What “boundary objects” act as an interface between them? What new models for critical engagement with “data” as and with visual culture can we consider? And how do these operate in and between Asian contexts with specific political cultures rooted in visual culture and appearances, frequently tied to the body and its appearances?
This panel addresses these questions across two intersecting domains through which to consider the force of images: “social media” and “data.” Investigating the way that images are generating new forms of political investment and engagement tied to the body, each paper offers insights into emergent political investments in Southeast Asia. Michelle Ho’s paper addresses the generative role that “violent visibilities” — encompassing data gathering and their life in social media — have had in creating new possibilities for mobilizing against sexual harassment on Singaporean campuses. Annisa Beta’s paper reflects on the “jocular” use of images on social media by young people — in the form of memes and photographs — as an influential political vocabulary in Indonesia’s fraught postauthoritarian political landscape. Benjamin Hegarty considers the way that data-driven cultures of transparency in global programs for HIV targeting “men wo have sex with men” intersect with extant cultural meanings tied to the body, requiring new forms of discipline.
In each case, digital media and data do not live “outside” of culture or of the realm of the body, but emerges from and through it. By drawing on data that illustrates examples of the “force of images” against broader patterns of social and political change in Southeast Asia, this panel will offer insights into the intersections between digital media, data and the body. Remaining attuned to the cultural meanings of images not as a representation but a force in the world refuses a teleological view of cultures of data and the digital, instead opening new horizons for political mobilization and critique.