Decolonizing Information Narratives: Entangled Apocalyptics, Algorithmic Racism and the Myths of History

In what follows, some contemporary narratives about ‘the information society’ are interrogated from critical race theoretical and decolonial perspectives with a view to constructing a ‘counter-narrative’ purporting to demonstrate the embeddedness of coloniality—that is, the persistent operation of colonial logics—in such discourses

The Counter Narrative: Reframing Success of High Achieving Black and Latino Males in Los Angeles County

This report highlights young men who are the products of high expectations. We take time to shine a spotlight on the resilient, intelligent, and caring young men across Los Angeles County. This report takes an unapologetic stance in stating that these young men who are thriving in their homes, taking on leadership roles in their schools, and making a difference in their communities. This report is not intended to be full of the doom and gloom about what is wrong with young Black and Latino men. To the contrary, we take the time to center their voices, hear their stories, and listen to their takeaways about how they have accomplished what they are doing and the recommendations that they offer on how to support other Black and Latino young men just like them

Domestic Novels of the 1920s: Regulation and Efficiency in The Home-Maker, Twilight Sleep, and Too Much Efficiency

In part because efficiency is made to appear so ludicrous, E.J. Rath’s 1917 Too Much Efficiency projects in bold relief the absurdities of household management. When it is read with Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s 1924 The Home-Maker and Edith Wharton’s 1927 Twilight Sleep, we can see how all three novels contributed to a domestic management counter-narrative that contested the easy solution promoted by home economists of adapting industrial practices to the upper-class and middle-class home. While that counter-narrative directly challenged some of the tenets and assumptions of domestic management, it was most powerful in its reminding readers that the home is not an assembly line

Staging the counter-narrative in Don DeLillo’s Falling Man

The 9/11 attacks provoked an intensified sense of individual and collective vulnerability in the US, and a corresponding effort to reassert the integrity of the body politic – to clearly demarcate self and other, friend and foe. In his 2001 essay ‘In the Ruins of the Future’, DeLillo proposed a ‘counter-narrative’ that would disrupt the fantasized clarity of such boundaries. This chapter presents DeLillo’s 2007 novel Falling Man as a more developed articulation of that ‘counter-narrative’. Using the work of Leo Bersani and Judith Butler, I show how, in Lianne Neudecker’s interactions with the paintings of Giorgio Morandi and with the performance artist ‘Falling Man’, art mediates trauma by constructively repeating it. This allows Lianne to reconceive vulnerability not as a threatened violation of her psychic or bodily integrity, but as its fundamental condition. As such, Falling Man offers a re-description of subjectivity that undermines the fictions of sovereignty and security that sustain neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies

Translating Khan on Singer: Global Solvent Versus Local Interpretation

This work focuses on Peter Singer’s book, One World: The Ethics of Globalisation, and a reading of it recently presented by M. Ali Khan. Khan’s response to Singer is acutely critical, but ultimately fails to situate Singer’s offering in its proper historical context. In this sense, Khan’s response is not sufficient. We demonstrate that Singer’s offering is permeated by a universalising discourse marked by asymmetric power relations clearly described by Edward Said in Orientalism and, more surprisingly, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in The Possessed. We illustrate how Singer’s narrative and the counter-narrative of Khan represent a continuation of a longer historical disputation between the West and the East.Orientalism, Globalisation, Economy, Language, Translation, Communication, Domination, Dialogue, Local, Global, Community

Narrative and Notice in Livy's Fourth Decade: The Case of Scipio Africanus

This paper argues for the importance of Livy's annalistic notices in structuring the author's aims and the reader's reception of the history, as against the standard conception of the notices as archaic memoranda. Taking the later career of Scipio Africanus the Elder as a test case, the paper demonstrates the tension between the formal features of the narrative and the actual content of the notices. As summarized in the eulogy for Africanus (38.53.9-11), Livy constructs a narrative of Scipio's decline emphasizing his peripeteia after the Hannibalic war. This narrative finds corroboration in the confinement of Africanus' subsequent actions chiefly to the annalistic notices. The notices themselves, however, provide a counter-narrative to the main text, albeit in fragmentary and marginal form. Through the interaction of narrative center and periphery the notices thus offer a space for Livy, and the reader, to explore alternative visions of Roman history.Classic

The Divided Self: The Double Consciousness of Faculty of Color in Community Colleges

Through qualitative field methods research addressing faculty of color in four California community colleges, this investigation examines and explains faculty experiences and professional sense making. By combining critical race theory with social identity theory, our perspective underlines the potential social and ethnic identity conflicts inherent in the daily lives of faculty of color. The professional and social identities of faculty of color are not necessarily compatible, leading to a condition of "double consciousness," or what we refer to as "the divided self." © The Author(s) 2013

Decasticization, Dignity, and ‘Dirty Work’ at the Intersections of Caste, Memory, and Disaster

In this qualitative study we examine the role of caste, class, and Dalit janitorial labor in the aftermath of floods in Chennai, India, in 2015. Drawing from a variety of sources including interviews, social media, and news coverage, we studied how Dalit (formerly known as ‘untouchable’) janitors were treated during the performance of janitorial labor for cleaning the city. Our study focuses on two theoretical premises: (a) caste-based social relations reproduce inequalities by devaluing Dalit labor as ‘dirty work’; and (b) Dalit subjectivities, labor, and sufferings including occupational hazards become invisible and ungrievable forcing Dalits to provide a counter narrative to preserve the memory of their trauma and dignity injuries. We find that the discursive construction of janitorial labor as dirty work forced Dalit janitors to work in appalling and unsafe working conditions. Janitors suffered several dignity injuries in terms of social exclusion and a lack of recognition for their efforts and accomplishments. Specifically, we examine various ways through which caste, dirty work, and dignity intersected in the narrative accounts of Dalit janitors. We also explore memory and how processes of remembering and forgetting affected the dignity claims of Dalit janitors