“Crafting the Digital Subaltern 2.0 through Philanthropy 2.0: Global connection and access through digital microfinance”

- Radhika GajjalaMarch 11, 2015

ForKate Warfield’s Class

On theme of Mediated Bodies/ Digital Subjectivities

Self and Other• “Otherness/alterity: The ‘other’, variously threat, responsibility, alter ego,

and enigma to and of the self, has been a major preoccupation of Western thought. In recent times the figure of the other, hitherto silent and effaced, has made claims to speak, indeed to speak back, disrupting the realm of politics in radical ways: thus women, ‘natives’, minorities, deviants, subalterns, now claim to speak as others. Both epistemologically and politically, therefore, the other is central to our contemporary concerns, in the university as well as the larger world. Postcolonial theory has made questions such as the following urgent: what does the ‘other’ mean to these endeavours? Who is the ‘other’, historically and symbolically? Do self and other translate inevitably into ‘us’ and ‘them’? How is the other known: is knowledge of the other (always) a form of colonization, domination, violence, or can it be pursued as disinterested truth? Can the other know/speak itself?”

• Rajeswari Sunder Rajan and Robert J. C. Young

• -

Radhika Gajjala, 2015

“Subaltern”

subaltern is the social group who are socially, politically, and geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure of the colony and of the colonial homeland. In describing "history told from below", the term subaltern derived from Antonio Gramsci's work on cultural hegemony, which identified the social groups who are excluded from a society's established structures for political representation, the means by which people have a voice in their society. – wikipedia

Radhika Gajjala, 2015

Digital Subaltern 2.0• “As many of us continue to research issues of the digital divide and

information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) we are quick to express excitement at the mere visibility of recognizable difference of any kind represented in online space. We end up celebrating as unproblematic the top-down diffusion of innovation from Global North to the Global South. Thus we confuse the idea of subaltern voice with the imposition of structures and technologies that adopt frameworks and design logics developed through neo- colonial hierarchies that have not been adequately unpacked or examined in honest relation to subaltern everyday contexts. We are quick to point out that the subaltern can indeed speak because of digital access – we have visual evidence in the staging of the obvious. “See? They hold the gadgets,” we say, “and they look happy.” Thus we see a “reconfiguration of the body-as-data-body and of the political as bio-political” (Kuntsman, 2012, p. 9) that most often relies on surface (visual) staging and quantification of access points devoid of context or historicity. The digital subaltern 2.0 produced in this manner is mistaken for and conveniently used to re-present the historically subalternized populations of the world” – Gajjala and Tetteh, 2015

Radhika Gajjala, 2015

Philanthropy 2.0

• “you can make contributions by swiping a credit card, signing the touch screen on the smartphone and then deciding if you want the receipt sent via text or e-mail.”

Radhika Gajjala, 2015

Microfinance• “Microfinance is a source of financial services for

entrepreneurs and small businesses lacking access to banking and related services.”

• “In developing economies and particularly in rural areas, many activities that would be classified in the developed world as financial are not monetized: that is, money is not used to carry them out. “

Radhika Gajjala, 2015

Larger Context for Staging of Digital Subaltern

2.0Market Economy

Service Economy

Monetizing Feelings

Structures and Hierarchies of FeelingsRadhika Gajjala, 2015

Some examples to discuss

• Kiva.org and Digital Giving

• Half the sky Movement and Girl Effect

• Blake Mycoskie and e-commerce initiative

Radhika Gajjala, 2015

Acknowledgements

• Thankyou to all past and current co-authors who contribute to my thinking on these issues.

• Note: this work is drawn from my forthcoming and inprogress book on “Philanthropy 2.0” under contract with Lexington Press.

Radhika Gajjala, 2015