Both radio activism and gender advocacy within F/OSS illustrate how
technologies acquire political meanings within technical communities. In
examining these sites, we can observe how activists who are concerned with
expressing political beliefs do so through engagement with technologies. Geek
communities are important because they are situated…[Read more]

At the turn of the millennium, scholars and pundits reflected on how communica- tion systems could shape events and societies, often while basking in the perceived glow of the then-novel Internet. Others pled for reasoned engagement with the interplay between communication infrastructures and the social life of knowledge, a much-needed corrective…[Read more]

Dance music is a medium and social practice that has in some cases functioned as a site of refuge for people and communities whom mainstream society marks “deviant” or “uncivilized. Foundational movements in dance music emerge from particular spaces and times where communities are able to center bodies and practices that subvert or contradict…[Read more]

(First paragraph): “Any DJ could tell you that you don’t know what music really means until you see it in people’s bodies. A DJ establishes a relationship between audio recordings and the crowd, responding to the speed and intensity of their movements, the symbolism of physical attitudes and gestures, their vocalizations, and the simple pre…[Read more]

Desde 1912, inúmeros textos – romances, programas de rádio, histórias em quadrinhos, seriados de televisão, filmes – produziram e articularam representações da África em narrativas envolvendo Tarzan, criado pelo estadunidense Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950). Tomando o nome de “África” como referência, os textos que orbitam e habitam o nome d…[Read more]

Spanish Abstract: De la conjunción de ‘Neuromante’ y de ‘Blade Runner’, con un toque de ́Matrix ́, surgen el manga y serie de películas de animación ‘Ghost in the Shell’. El dilema de ‘Ghost in the Shell (2): Innocence’ versa sobre la identidad personal: si es replicable, si es imitable, si consiste en signos, ¿dónde está la esencia de la humanid…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: Análisis de la estructura narrativa de ´Shutter Island´ (Martin Scorsese, 2010), una película en la que el espectador se introduce en el mundo ficticio de una isla prisión / institución total, sólo para descubrir más adelante que no se trata del mundo social efectivo del protagonista, sino del mundo de su visión alucinat…[Read more]

I argue that an indirect and imaginative route through subversive humor offers a means to
raise consciousness about covert oppression and the mechanisms underlying it, reveal the errors
of those with power who complacently sustain systematic oppression, and even open those people
up to changing their minds. Subversive humor confronts serious…[Read more]

Some of Dave Chappelle’s uses of storytelling about seemingly mundane events, like his experiences with his “white friend Chip” and the police, are examples of what W.E.B. Du Bois calls “Positive Propaganda.” This is in contrast to “Demagoguery,” the sort of propaganda described by Jason Stanley that obstructs empathic recognition of others, and u…[Read more]

Abstract: The freedom of research is a cornerstone of our civilisation; in many ways it can even be seen as a human right. However, freedom of research does not mean the liberty to cheat. Cheating in science – deliberate falsification of evidence to support a hypothesis – is not only academic misconduct; it is also a crime against society and the…[Read more]

Short description (video lecture) of what you can do, when you “do chresiology”, part 2 (slides).

Book review of Low Power to the People

Review of Low Power to the People: Pirates, Protest, and Politics in FM Radio Activism

The United States ushered in a new era of small-scale broadcasting in 2000 when it began issuing low-power FM (LPFM) licenses for noncommercial radio stations around the country. Over the next decade, several hundred of these newly created low-wattage stations took to the airwaves. In Low Power to the People, Christina Dunbar-Hester describes the…[Read more]

Hacking, as a mode of technical and cultural production, is commonly celebrated for its extraordinary freedoms of creation and circulation. Yet surprisingly few women participate in it: rates of involvement by technologically skilled women are drastically lower in hacking communities than in industry and academia. Hacking Diversity investigates…[Read more]

This chapter examines how activist ideals manifest in the realm of practice, emphasizing the reality of technical expertise running afoul of participatory goals in the practice of radio activism. A major plank of the radio activists’ work was the promotion of technical participation to novices through various activities such as radio s…[Read more]

Twenty people spent a weekend gathered around two refrigerator-sized FM radio transmitters inside a large truck parked on a busy street. These large machines were unwieldy: over thirty years old, they were heavy to move, frustratingly dark to work in, and required high electric current to operate. They were not in working order; they were filthy…[Read more]

This article follows radio activists engaged in a combination of policy advocacy and broadening access to technology and skills through hands-on work. In practice, this largely played out as a systematic elevation of “technical” work and downplaying of policy/advocacy expertise, even though both were salient features of their work. The article arg…[Read more]

Libertarias (1996) and Land and Freedom (1995) explore the complex situation
of women militia during the Spanish Civil War. A queer reading of the female
body in these films highlights wartime female masculinity (Halberstam) and
female solidarity. In renegotiating worn expectations of sexuality and gender,
the films question and ultimately…[Read more]

This article names and examines carbon vitalism, a strain of climate denial centered on the moral recuperation of carbon dioxide—and thus fossil fuels. Drawing on interconnections between CO2, plant life, and human breath, carbon vitalists argue that carbon dioxide is not pollution but the stuff of life itself and thus possesses ethical and e…[Read more]