(dis)place

6 Responses for "(dis)place"

1. alf January 28th, 2009 at 6:58 am 1

   Thanks for sharing this diagram and your thoughts on these 3 mobilities you identified - physical, mental and digital. Here are some thoughts - not necessarily completely organized but let met try and also ask a few questions.
   First of all, I am not sure if I understand exactly the nature of the digital mobility. Is it really of the same “nature” as the physical and the mental? Looking at your diagram it seems to be similar to the social network: do you identify the social network to the digital mobility, the social network being enacted through digital technologies? The technology allows the social network and compensate for the lack of belonging as your example.
   I am not sure I will call this a mobility and I would not describe as “similar”(in nature) to the physical and mental mobilities. One of the reason for my questioning comes from the focus on the digital, the technology. Indeed people have been mobile, have been displaced in the past and they did have another “technology” - writing enacted through correspondences - and letters played a very similar role to all the digital technologies. Of course, there are differences, letters took longer, sometime you needed to ask a public writer (today you might call, or skype…). Yet a study of correspondences (an ongoing project with my colleague and friend Anca Metiu) shows how people have been able to share emotions and develop relationships through letters (a book chapter in Qualitative Research, forthcoming). We also found how intellectuals were able to develop networks through correspondences.

   My second thought concerns displacement and sense of belonging. I understand how when people are forced to move (for economical, political reasons e.g.) there is this tension between physical place and the sense of belonging. Yet, I’m wondering how this relationship works for people like the global souls described by Pico Iyer (Virilio describes similar examples): people who look for this sense of being a stranger, for this constant sense of not belonging (to a certain extent).
   Reading the quotes you posted recently on your blog on two women you met and about their experience of trying to keep in touch with their families and friends, I became once again aware of the luxury of this sense of “not belonging”. Yet this is a reality that needs to be taken into account in your approach. It’s what makes the exercise more interesting too.
   I hope some of this makes sense. I might have misunderstood some of your points.
   Thanks a lot for your thoughts which got me thinking about what I agree with you is important - the relationship between the mobilities.
   cheers,
   al

   while I agree on the intertwining between the physical and the mental, and on the importance of the relationship between the mobilities - more than them taken individually, I am not sure I r

2. alf January 28th, 2009 at 5:32 pm 2

   Yasmine,

   I thought that Paul Virilio’s quote that I posted today is also relevant to the issue of mobility. It refers to these people who never feel at home, who don’t belong. It also refers to another group of people: people who are not physically mobile, but who are still mobile through their digital networks.

   “The nature of being sedentary and nomadic has changed. […] Sedentary people are at home wherever they go. With their cell phones or laptops, [they are] as comfortable in an elevator or on a plane as in a high-speed train. This is the sedentary person. The nomad, on the other hand, is someone who is never at home, anywhere. ”Paul Virilio

   cheers,

   al

3. Yasmine Abbas January 29th, 2009 at 10:39 am 3

   Thank you Anne-Laure for your comments. These are very helpful as they push me to clarify the thinking.

   1. The diagram has evolved from illustrating the relationship between belonging—social network—place to the relationship between mental mobility—physical mobility—digital mobility. When talking about mental, physical and digital mobility, we focus on the individual, and the various positions he places himself at.
   2. Mental mobility = cultural displacements. Being here and longing for there for example. Being a stranger to yourself (Kristeva, 1991); Physical mobility = mobility from point A to point B; Digital mobility = moving through space digitally through the multiplication of the self, avatars.
   3. So if objects were the points of reference, they would move physically (The letter), mentally (imagined/symbolism) and digitally.
   4. I remember talking to Bernadette, the refugee from Rwanda about living in Denmark. I had told her that I was leaving Denmark (because it didn’t fit my nomadic way of life). She said that she did not have a choice, which doesn’t mean that she wasn’t longing for her country (She was afraid of loosing her language, and her identity). It says that certain types of mobilities are a luxury. In a sense she is forced/induced to belong to Denmark. How much you are at ease with that (forced to belong) depends on the treatment you receive as a refugee. Back in 2000, I went to Bosnia-Herzegovina for a postwar reconstruction workshop. There I have met with refugees that were back from Scandinavia and others that were still living in refugee camps. These had a different take on the notion of belonging to a an imagined community, place, a village, a neighborhood…

4. alf January 29th, 2009 at 9:53 pm 4

   Thanks Yasmine for the clarification. I guess I got confused between the diagram (1st version of your theoretical exploration) and the 3 mobilities. It makes sense.
   Just to make sure, by “avatars” your are referring to the definition by Picon of avatars you referred to in your post of January 22nd - “many declensions of the man”.
   On these avatars, I was fascinated by how Virginia Woolf developed different selves (often with different signatures / nicknames) depending on her various correspondents. My question might be then: is it digital per se, or is it “written communication” that allow this multiplication of the self. Yet, I’m not taking away the fact that the current technologies - their ubiquity, their speed - is increasing the phenomenon. I’m just trying to understand the processes at the core of this mobility.
   On the digital mobility, I’ve always been willing to explore this idea of a sense of presence (or identity). I remember watching these people chatting at a bar in Singapore and some being on the phone, others’ text messaging several friends (and today people might also be emailing) while chatting with their friends in the bar… and I wondered in which conversations are they? “where” are they? I guess in all of them - maybe sometime more in one of their virtual conversations than in the co-located ones.

   Thanks for this interesting conversation.

   al

5. Yasmine Abbas February 2nd, 2009 at 12:11 pm 5

   Love the challenge : - ) By avatar, I meant the digital second self in video games, the facebook page… etc. Picon is using the word to write about the multiple identities of Bucky). What I mean though is that by positioning the self in a digital environment, one roams in different [digital] spaces at the same time, and sometimes without the presence of the first self. I would put the different selves developed by Woolf in the mental mobility “box”. If you think about it, various technologies help various mobilities. Hence the relationships between and overlaps of mobilities: digital technologies help the cultural displacements. They help be in other spaces (become the ruler of a kingdom), digital mobility. Digital technologies help organize travel time, physical mobility.

   In terms of mobile phone and co-presence… I remember reading Steve Woolgar, ed., Virtual Society? Technology, Cyberbole, Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

6. alf February 3rd, 2009 at 5:23 pm 6

   OK. I first thought of avatars as digital second selves in online environments but as you mentioned Picon’s definition as a different definition I envision it as a broader notion that what we usually have.
   I guess some people might ask what is the first self: an original one? Turkle’s studies show that for some people the “real” self in fact is the one that is constructed online. Avatar has this sense of “fake”, or “secondary”… Her work is questioning such a hierarchy of self. I am not sure I will embrace such a position but that’s one to consider, and one that current usages of technology leads to consider. What ? who is the self?
   Back to Woolf’s that’s what her correspondence shows: how she’s trying to grasp a sense of self through these different identities she’s developing through these different relationships.
   Related although different, I remember two specific instances where I saw people having an argument using technology and becoming two friendly buddies when meeting face-to-face. Once it was a heated email exchange between two colleagues in an organization and when they met face-to-face the next time I wonder how they will behave, and they just do as nothing has happened - nothing has been written. They just smile and chatted. I had observed a similar situation in a videoconference meeting. These examples illustrate how these technology mediated interactions allow people to take on one self and express feelings that they won’t express in a face-to-face context.

   Thanks for the reference to Woolgar… I’m currently re-reading Woolgar’s five rules of virtuality

   al