Journal articles on the topic 'Missions Material culture Vanuatu'

This Data Atlas of Byzantine and Ottoman Material Culture involves the archiving, storing and making accessible of Medieval and Post-Medieval data from several archaeological missions in the eastern Mediterranean (period 600–2000 ad). The data mainly originate from pottery studies carried out during excavations in four major urban centres and during two surface surveys in their respective surroundings. The urban sites are Butrint in southern Albania, Athens in central Greece, Ephesus in western Turkey and Tarsus in eastern Turkey, the material culture of which is studied in relation to archaeological finds from rural settlements and towns in their hinterlands (e.g., Aetolia, Boeotia).

Abstract The U.S. space race of the 1960s was an enormous undertaking, costing $$25.4 billion (about $$125 billion in 2009 dollars) with only the building of the Panama Canal rivalling the Apollo program's size as the largest nonmilitary technological endeavor ever undertaken by the United States. In the process, the United States built a massive infrastructure to support missions to the Moon. In the aftermath of the successful completion of the program, much of this infrastructure was abandoned, some was altered for other uses, and much torn down. This paper surveys six major cultural landmarks of the Moon race, assessing their differing fates:1. The Apollo Launch Pads——LC 39A and B——Kennedy Space Center, Florida.2. The Vertical Assembly Building (VAB), Kennedy Space Center, Florida.3. Mission Control Center (MCC), Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas.4. Six Apollo landing sites on the Moon.5. Lunar Landing Research Facility, Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia.6. Apollo Command Modules on display in various museums around the nation, and in London.

On the eve of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian Orthodox Church had at least nine missions operating among Siberia's indigenous peoples. The Red victory in the ensuing civil war led to the elimination of all missionary activity, whose resumption was possible only after the fall of the Communist regime seventy years later. The few accounts of Christian missions published in the USSR were tendentious in the extreme. Only in the post-Communist era have scholars in the former Soviet Union been free to explore the rich archival and journalistic resources left by the missionaries. Anatoliy Ablazhei's article was chiefly addressed to scholars in Russia. It explores the extent to which the newly available missionary accounts are useful sources for contemporary scholars investigating native religion and cosmology. His work is reproduced here in translation for several reasons. It exemplifies the new wave of Russian scholarship about missions history, giving us a glimpse of the mass of documentary material available for researchers to use. Its critique of Russian Orthodox perceptions of native religion and the imperfect methods employed to spread Christianity in Siberia provides us with material from a mission field little known in the outside world. This information can prove useful for comparative missiological investigations. Above all, however, its value lies in its contribution to the ongoing debates about contextualization and syncretism, the validity of the Gospel for all peoples, and the appropriation of Christianity by the world's indigenous peoples. It exemplifies the errors of ignorance often committed by outsiders trying to spread the Gospel within a thoroughly alien culture. As Terence Ranger reminded us in the first Adrian Hastings Memorial Lecture at Leeds University in November 2002, authentic Christianity is indeed possible among indigenous peoples. The Holy Spirit can inspire a transformation of their lives and culture, without an excess of Eurocentric accretions.1

Monuments of spiritual and material culture of the Kievan Rus state, later periods of national history show that the general principles of Christian monasticism became known here at the same time as the first information about Christianity itself - first spontaneously, spontaneously, through the Greek colonies of Crimea, trade routes from the south, to the south. Greece, Macedonia and Serbia, and later, under the official baptism of Vladimir - through monasticism, clergy, hierarchs in Greek-Byzantine missions and the clergy settled in Kyiv cities - already as a conscious enyy and steady process of transferring the n soil of the new religion and its basic spiritual and material institutions.

The culture concept is at the core of some prominent political struggles in the Middle East. In contests over land, human rights, religious expression, material culture, development, and even economic policy, advocates shore up moral authority, co-opt or delegitimize opposition, and constitute new collectivities by drawing on the multivalent possibilities contained within the culture concept in its various historically constituted regional and global formations. As a concept that can mean both the sum of a people’s customs, traditions, ideas, etc.,andthe best that humans have thought and said, it contains powerful means for creating solidarities, differences, and hierarchies. Although notions of culture have long been a feature of politics in the region, most notably in nationalist movements and in the civilizing missions of colonial powers and nation-states, their proliferation and commodification over the past thirty years is notable and deserves analysis.

Since the end of the Cold War, Germany has assumed a greater profile in addressing global security concerns. This article analyzes the evolution of Germany's approach to peacebuilding in the post Cold War era. It argues that while Germany could play a unique and important role in such missions, it has largely demurred. The muted quality of German leadership in international peacebuilding reveals a foreign policy role identity that remains circumscribed by a culture of restraint (Kultur der Zurückhaltung). From a constructivist perspective, this “culture of restraint” acts as a cognitive map for political leaders and policy makers, privileging a set of norms that guide policy-making. Peacebuilding missions present opportunities for Germany to operationalize the most fundamental tenets undergirding Germany's postwar foreign policy identity: the preference to cooperate with other states through multilateral institutions, the use of economic instruments to obtain foreign policy goals, and support for supranational institutions to address global problems. But such opportunities are not seized due to the absence of political elite consensus, inter-party, and inter-ministerial dissensus, institutional fragmentation and insufficient material support for international peacebuilding endeavors.

Greater Mexico refers both to the geographic region encompassing modern Mexico and its former territories in the United States, and to the Mexican cultural diaspora. Exhibitions of visual and material culture from greater Mexico have played an important role in articulating identities and affiliations that transcend limited definitions of citizenship. Following an introductory text by Jennifer Josten, five scholars offer firsthand insights into the intellectual, diplomatic, and logistical concerns underpinning key border-crossing exhibitions of the “NAFTA era.” Rubén Ortiz-Torres writes from his unique perspective as a Mexico City–based artist who began exhibiting in the United States in the late 1980s, and as a curator of recent exhibitions that highlight the existence of multiple Mexicos and Americas. Clara Bargellini reflects on a paradigm-shifting cross-border exhibition of the viceregal arts of the missions of northern New Spain. Kim N. Richter considers how the arts of ancient Mesoamerica and the Americas writ large figured within the Getty Foundation’s 2017 Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. Xóchitl M. Flores-Marcial offers insights into productive institutional collaborations with transnational Indigenous stakeholders, focusing on two recent Southern California exhibitions of the Oaxaca-based Tlacolulokos collective. Luis Vargas-Santiago discusses how Chicana/o/x art entered Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes in 2019 as a crucial component of an exhibition about how Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata’s image has migrated through visual culture. Together, these texts demonstrate how exhibitions can act in the service of advancing more nuanced understandings of cultural and political interactions across greater Mexico.

The purpose of teaching English as a foreign language is learners are able use it both in spoken and written language, as well as understand the culture of the target language. Cultural material is seen as important as a learning medium to improve language skills, cultural understanding, and appreciation for diversity. English textbooks carried two important missions, namely language and cultural learning media. This study explores cultural materials in two English textbooks in Kota Metro - Indonesia as a city of education. The research used qualitative approach with content analysis technique. The research object was seven English textbooks used in high schools. Data analysis is done descriptively used Miles and Huberman model. The findings as follow: (1) The cultural materials were divided into three types of source information. (2) The culture materials were mostly presented into text rather than audio-visual. (3) There were four elements of culture in English textbooks: products, persons practices, and perspectives. The cultural materials can create students who have character, moral values who then live and interact in multicultural society.

This article examines the impact on American furniture and clothing styles by women missionaries traveling to Turkey in the Victorian era. Although there has been much discussion of the impact of Western missionaries on Turkey and other parts of Asia, the reciprocal impact on American culture has not been adequately assessed. Missionary work, which started in the 1820s in a modest manner, turned into a systematic and large-scale activity, reaching its climax during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Unlike Western diplomats, whose visits took place in the palaces of Istanbul, far from the realities of everyday life, missionary women had informal contact with ordinary Turkish women. Ottoman Turkish domestic space was highly gendered, so only these missionary women would have had access to authentic Ottoman Turkish interiors and been able to observe them as social spaces. The furniture style and the unique concept of comfort that they observed in Turkey presented an alternative point of view of home life and its organization. After spending years abroad, these women would return to the US to recruit and raise money for their missions by traveling from community to community, often creating interest for their work abroad by presenting examples of material culture. This article will put letters, diaries, travelogues and other contemporary material in the context of American culture of the Victorian era in order to chart the unusual way in which American and Turkish women interacted with each other at this historical moment.

Abstract This paper is about an unsuccessful scientific instrument. Since its conception, the four theodolites Portuguese naval officer, geographer, and later aviation pioneer Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho (1869–1959) ordered from the Italian maker and engineer Angelo Salmoiraghi (1848–1939), which were used in surveying missions to the African colonies, caused problems and disagreements. From the user’s perspective, the instruments were poorly manufactured; from the maker’s perspective, the user’s incompetence was to blame. By focusing on a well-documented set of scientific instruments, I will analyse social features concerning scientific practice, material culture, and instrument trade. I will show how the meaning of an adapted and untrustworthy instrument changed during practice; how a crisis between distanced user and maker, concerning design, precision, and error, developed; and how a clash for scientific and professional authority intertwined moral and scientific attributes.

Australia has been a significant supporter of research into coconut protection, improvement and biotechnology for three decades. Major achievements include a key role in identification of the Cadang Cadang Viroid in Philippines and the Foliar Decay virus in Vanuatu, surveys of coconut genetic diversity in the south Pacific, and the initiation of global collaboration leading to the formation of the Coconut Genetic Resources Network. Another major Australian contribution beginning in the 1980s, has been to the development and refinement of methods of collection and exchange around the world of diverse coconut genotypes under COGENT involving particularly the protocol for embryo transfer and culture. Most recently CO2 enrichment of the in vitro atmosphere has raised cultured embryo growth to a new level at the University of Queensland (UQ). Researchers at UQ have brought somatic embryogenesis, a critical process for multiplication of high-value individual palms, to the verge of commercial application, has and also greatly advanced the technique for preserving genetic material by cryopreservation of the embryo. The development of a healthy and high-value snack food from coconut kernel has also emerged at UQ. Modest additional funding would advance all of these recent projects to the stage of general application, thereby building on the strong record of Australia in helping to secure the future of coconut producers in the community and economy of Pacific nations, and beyond.

This paper argues that a complex of accounting measures — account books, inventories of accumulated wealth, and detailed instructions for production performance — were used to inculcate Western values into the native population located at five Franciscan missions along the San Antonio River in New Spain (present-day Texas) from 1718 to 1794. Bolstered by the need to alleviate communications problems caused by extreme isolation, the missionaries constructed detailed mission documents that described the acquisition of scarce resources, reported the aggregation of material and spiritual mission wealth, and controlled daily production performance of the native population. In short, the resulting mission economic system, which held the Indians to certain notions of accountability, primarily by restricting their choices, nourished the Western view of income distribution based on effort. We propose that these procedures ultimately caused the Coahuiltecans to abandon their native beliefs, and gradually, to be absorbed into Spanish society. The 150 Coahuiltecan tribes ceased to exist as a distinct culture by the early 19th century. The exploitation and ultimate subjugation of the Coahuiltecan Indians parallels strikingly subsequent developments in Canada, Australia, and the Scottish Highlands.

AbstractThe Spaniards established severalcongregacionesor missions in central Petén, Guatemala, shortly after the 1697 conquest of the region to help control local indigenous populations. Recent investigations at the church and community of Mission San Bernabé revealed details about the entangled relations of Mayas and Spaniards. Foucault's four technologies of domination help explicate these power relations as they were played out in the small settlement and the church at its center. Material culture differed in many ways from that of the pre-conquest Itzas, but was clearly predominantly “Maya.” Spanish-style goods and burial patterns were found as were hybrid ceramic wares, the Spanish-style artifacts most common in an elite residence, reflecting that Maya elite acted as brokers with the Spaniards. The occupants also incorporated Spanish domesticates into their diets. Some changes likely resulted from various ethnic groups residing in the same settlement, but others were the product of indigenous adaptations to the situation of contact. Nevertheless, it is clear that the mission anchored a number of strategies of domination that subdued the occupants of San Bernabé.

AbstractThe Spanish missionary entrada (A.D. 1769 to 1833) along the California coast created a series of complex encounters between multiple cultural discourses. The Franciscan mission system directly brought colonial and indigenous cultural metaphorical understandings into play. Missionary and indigenous discourse interacted largely via the media of material culture, animals, embellished architecture, and landscape—media interpreted through preexisting cultural metaphors and understandings. Investigating how metaphors played a role in constituting colonial entanglements is important in understanding cultural interactions and change. Metaphors structured colonial interactions, simultaneously hindering and enabling missionary–indigenous relationships. These relationships created parameters for unforeseen transitory configurations: a process best theorized under the term polyvalence. By adopting polyvalence, the processes of colonialism can be approached without usage of ethnic or racialized terms such as creolization, hybridity, or amalgamation. In the case of indigenous south-central California, it is suggested here that widely different forms of evidence can be better appreciated without recourse to terms laden with racial or ethnic connotations. The evidence suggests that while missions may have failed to create entirely new ethnic groups, missionary endeavors did result in unanticipated outcomes, presenting problems and creative opportunities for indigenous groups living within immediate coastal and extended interior populations.

Greater Mexico refers both to the geographic region encompassing modern Mexico and its former territories in the United States, and to the Mexican cultural diaspora. Exhibitions of visual and material culture from greater Mexico have played an important role in articulating identities and affiliations that transcend limited definitions of citizenship. Following an introductory text by Jennifer Josten, five scholars offer firsthand insights into the intellectual, diplomatic, and logistical concerns underpinning key border-crossing exhibitions of the “NAFTA era.” Rubén Ortiz-Torres writes from his unique perspective as a Mexico City–based artist who began exhibiting in the United States in the late 1980s, and as a curator of recent exhibitions that highlight the existence of multiple Mexicos and Americas. Clara Bargellini reflects on a paradigm-shifting cross-border exhibition of the viceregal arts of the missions of northern New Spain. Kim N. Richter considers how the arts of ancient Mesoamerica and the Americas writ large figured within the Getty Foundation’s 2017 Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. Xóchitl M. Flores-Marcial offers insights into productive institutional collaborations with transnational Indigenous stakeholders, focusing on two recent Southern California exhibitions of the Oaxaca-based Tlacolulokos collective. Luis Vargas-Santiago discusses how Chicana/o/x art entered Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes in 2019 as a crucial component of an exhibition about how Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata’s image has migrated through visual culture. Together, these texts demonstrate how exhibitions can act in the service of advancing more nuanced understandings of cultural and political interactions across greater Mexico.

Greater Mexico refers both to the geographic region encompassing modern Mexico and its former territories in the United States, and to the Mexican cultural diaspora. Exhibitions of visual and material culture from greater Mexico have played an important role in articulating identities and affiliations that transcend limited definitions of citizenship. Following an introductory text by Jennifer Josten, five scholars offer firsthand insights into the intellectual, diplomatic, and logistical concerns underpinning key border-crossing exhibitions of the “NAFTA era.” Rubén Ortiz-Torres writes from his unique perspective as a Mexico City–based artist who began exhibiting in the United States in the late 1980s, and as a curator of recent exhibitions that highlight the existence of multiple Mexicos and Americas. Clara Bargellini reflects on a paradigm-shifting cross-border exhibition of the viceregal arts of the missions of northern New Spain. Kim N. Richter considers how the arts of ancient Mesoamerica and the Americas writ large figured within the Getty Foundation’s 2017 Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. Xóchitl M. Flores-Marcial offers insights into productive institutional collaborations with transnational Indigenous stakeholders, focusing on two recent Southern California exhibitions of the Oaxaca-based Tlacolulokos collective. Luis Vargas-Santiago discusses how Chicana/o/x art entered Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes in 2019 as a crucial component of an exhibition about how Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata’s image has migrated through visual culture. Together, these texts demonstrate how exhibitions can act in the service of advancing more nuanced understandings of cultural and political interactions across greater Mexico.

Greater Mexico refers both to the geographic region encompassing modern Mexico and its former territories in the United States, and to the Mexican cultural diaspora. Exhibitions of visual and material culture from greater Mexico have played an important role in articulating identities and affiliations that transcend limited definitions of citizenship. Following an introductory text by Jennifer Josten, five scholars offer firsthand insights into the intellectual, diplomatic, and logistical concerns underpinning key border-crossing exhibitions of the “NAFTA era.” Rubén Ortiz-Torres writes from his unique perspective as a Mexico City–based artist who began exhibiting in the United States in the late 1980s, and as a curator of recent exhibitions that highlight the existence of multiple Mexicos and Americas. Clara Bargellini reflects on a paradigm-shifting cross-border exhibition of the viceregal arts of the missions of northern New Spain. Kim N. Richter considers how the arts of ancient Mesoamerica and the Americas writ large figured within the Getty Foundation’s 2017 Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. Xóchitl M. Flores-Marcial offers insights into productive institutional collaborations with transnational Indigenous stakeholders, focusing on two recent Southern California exhibitions of the Oaxaca-based Tlacolulokos collective. Luis Vargas-Santiago discusses how Chicana/o/x art entered Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes in 2019 as a crucial component of an exhibition about how Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata’s image has migrated through visual culture. Together, these texts demonstrate how exhibitions can act in the service of advancing more nuanced understandings of cultural and political interactions across greater Mexico.

Greater Mexico refers both to the geographic region encompassing modern Mexico and its former territories in the United States, and to the Mexican cultural diaspora. Exhibitions of visual and material culture from greater Mexico have played an important role in articulating identities and affiliations that transcend limited definitions of citizenship. Following an introductory text by Jennifer Josten, five scholars offer firsthand insights into the intellectual, diplomatic, and logistical concerns underpinning key border-crossing exhibitions of the “NAFTA era.” Rubén Ortiz-Torres writes from his unique perspective as a Mexico City–based artist who began exhibiting in the United States in the late 1980s, and as a curator of recent exhibitions that highlight the existence of multiple Mexicos and Americas. Clara Bargellini reflects on a paradigm-shifting cross-border exhibition of the viceregal arts of the missions of northern New Spain. Kim N. Richter considers how the arts of ancient Mesoamerica and the Americas writ large figured within the Getty Foundation’s 2017 Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. Xóchitl M. Flores-Marcial offers insights into productive institutional collaborations with transnational Indigenous stakeholders, focusing on two recent Southern California exhibitions of the Oaxaca-based Tlacolulokos collective. Luis Vargas-Santiago discusses how Chicana/o/x art entered Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes in 2019 as a crucial component of an exhibition about how Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata’s image has migrated through visual culture. Together, these texts demonstrate how exhibitions can act in the service of advancing more nuanced understandings of cultural and political interactions across greater Mexico.

Greater Mexico refers both to the geographic region encompassing modern Mexico and its former territories in the United States, and to the Mexican cultural diaspora. Exhibitions of visual and material culture from greater Mexico have played an important role in articulating identities and affiliations that transcend limited definitions of citizenship. Following an introductory text by Jennifer Josten, five scholars offer firsthand insights into the intellectual, diplomatic, and logistical concerns underpinning key border-crossing exhibitions of the “NAFTA era.” Rubén Ortiz-Torres writes from his unique perspective as a Mexico City–based artist who began exhibiting in the United States in the late 1980s, and as a curator of recent exhibitions that highlight the existence of multiple Mexicos and Americas. Clara Bargellini reflects on a paradigm-shifting cross-border exhibition of the viceregal arts of the missions of northern New Spain. Kim N. Richter considers how the arts of ancient Mesoamerica and the Americas writ large figured within the Getty Foundation’s 2017 Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. Xóchitl M. Flores-Marcial offers insights into productive institutional collaborations with transnational Indigenous stakeholders, focusing on two recent Southern California exhibitions of the Oaxaca-based Tlacolulokos collective. Luis Vargas-Santiago discusses how Chicana/o/x art entered Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes in 2019 as a crucial component of an exhibition about how Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata’s image has migrated through visual culture. Together, these texts demonstrate how exhibitions can act in the service of advancing more nuanced understandings of cultural and political interactions across greater Mexico.

The paper investigates connections between development of Russian diplomacy and formation of collections of Chinese cultural monuments in Saint-Petersburg in 1802–1917, years when Ministry of Foreign Aff airs of Russian Empire was operating. It is shown that intensifi cation of diplomatic relations led to many diff erent researches and collecting of Chinese cultural monuments in museums. Members of Russian Spiritual Mission in Beijing brought manuscripts and books, works of art, ethnographic materials from China to Saint-Petersburg in the fi rst half of the XIXth century. These objects were transmitted to museums, scientifi c organizations or stayed in private collections for some time. Special attention is given to scantily explored practice of storing Chinese written and material culture monuments in rooms of Asian department of Ministry of Foreign Aff airs in General Staff building. Private collections of diplomats working in China started to form in the second half of the XIXth century. Research in form of expeditions with the help of Russian diplomatic missions in China became possible by the end of the century. Diplomatic success that led to establishing international relations on a new high level helped to gain a lot of diplomatic gifts from China that came to tsars’ collections. Exhibitions in General Staff building of the State Hermitage show how modern exhibition activity with these monuments opens new horizons for scientific work.

This paper, by way of a narrative on the author's participation, explains the limits to a planned cultural changeprogram in a large rural health service. Cultural change was identified by the CEO as crucial to the success of a majorrestructuring of the service, and the attitudes and beliefs of the 'old guard' were considered to be constraining progress.Advocates of cultural integration contend that shared core values across an organisation can overcome such obstacles.This is a matter of faith. An application of Habermasian theory suggests that organisational leaders are drawing ontraditional/religious beliefs and practices to bolster their visions and missions at a time of motivational crisis.Though a need for cultural change in some sectors of the health services is acknowledged, the particular challenges inattempting to manipulate the traditionally embedded culture and sub-cultures of the health services is highlighted.An analysis of some of the ideas and beliefs surrounding authority, deference and discipline is undertaken. It is arguedthat the ritualistic reinforcement of these beliefs and the reproduction of sub-cultures along material and ideal interestsmilitate against the implementation of objectives delineated by the CEO.While cultural analysis has revealed the irrational face of organisations and can bring to conscious awareness the taken-for-granted beliefs which inform behaviour, the cultural integrationists have a further agenda. They aim tomanipulate organisational culture to subtly control employees' beliefs and hence behaviour. Cultural control is a covertform of top down authority that can be just as directive and centralising as bureaucratic control. The author alsomaintains that cultural change programs alone cannot fix a problem that arose in the macro-economic sphere: a chroniclack of resources ever since the state responded to the economic crisis by cutting funds to health and welfare services.

Abstract The Native inhabitants of South Central California produced rock art containing red, orange, black, white, green and blue colours using a range of mineral and organic materials. Many of these same colours were used on material culture and body painting. This paper focuses on a sub-group of the Chumash, called the Emigdiano, who produced an enigmatic blue colour used in the creation of rock art. Here, we focus on the blue pigment at the rock shelter site of Three Springs in the Wind Wolves Preserve in South Central California. The composition of blue pigments has previously been the focus of discussion with suggestions that they were produced either using European pigments taken from Spanish missions, or that azurite from a local quarry was the source. Previous experimental work had demonstrated that it was possible for the blue to be produced from locally available azurite. Here we present the in situ analyses of these enigmatic blue pigments using handheld X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF). Results from pXRF analysis of rock art, quarried azurite samples and experimental rock art reconstructions showed that the Emigdiano Blue at Three Springs were not azurite based and was composed of optical blue (a mixture of black and white or grey materials which mimic the appearance of blue). This paper discusses the surprising implications of the use, given the availability of a ‘true’ blue pigment, and the wider ontological importance of combining multiple colours to produce the effect of blue in a rock art panel.

By and large, “African diaspora art” is a generic label, presently applied with the purpose of broadly situating modern and contemporary artwork by people of African descent in discussions of African art, most often in connection with “traditional” West African ritual sculpture, installation, and performance. I focus on the work that this term has done or has been summoned to do in the US since the late twentieth century. This essay considers several artistic projects and critical and institutional missions linked to African diaspora art and culture: (1) a 1960s essay by art historian Robert Farris Thompson that organizes nineteenth-century material culture under this heading, (2) the black body as icon of the African diaspora in in the work of US artist David Hammons from the 1970s, and (3) the founding of the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco in 2002. We are in the process of institutionalizing African diaspora art, situating it as a cultural consciousness that supersedes other identifications and narratives of association. We value and celebrate this epistemological construct, and, in doing so, reveal that it is also a social formation driven by doubts about racial and national belonging and the desire for a transformative signification and new, organizing logics of being.Cultural identity … is a matter of “becoming” as well as of “being.”Stuart Hall1By and large, “African diaspora art” is a generic label, often summoned to broadly situate modern and contemporary artwork by people of African descent and to connect it to “traditional” West African ritual sculpture, installation, and performance.2 It is a valued and celebrated epistemological construct; it is also a social formation driven by doubts about racial and national belonging and the desire for a transformative signification and organizing logics of difference. We are in the process of institutionalizing African diaspora art, situating it as a cultural consciousness that is meant to supersede other powerful identifications and narratives of political association.

The article reflects on cooperation between Iraq and Ukraine and its history. It is mentioned that the history of diplomatic relations between the two states has lasted for more a quarter of a century. At the turn of 1992, the concurrently accredited Embassy of the Republic of Iraq was opened in Ukraine, although cooperation in different spheres, such as economy, culture, and science had been inaugurated earlier. In ten years, the Embassy of Iraq was opened in Kyiv, thus elevating bilateral relations to a new level. It is stressed that the relations between Iraq and Ukraine have become much closer since 2003, as can be seen from cooperation in a range of domains. Trade turnover has increased, particularly in the private sector. More and more Iraqi people choose Ukrainian universities to study. Numerous bilateral visits of officials of the two states have been held, and a wide range of agreements and memoranda of understanding have been signed; respective ministries of the two states are working upon the further consideration of draft agreements. It is noted that Iraq and Ukraine can boast broad and various opportunities for cooperation. Iraq closely cooperates with the Government of Ukraine for its development and diversification, seeking to bring bilateral relations to the new level in conformity with the potential of the two states and pursuant to the norms of diplomatic and international collaboration that the Government of Iraq abides by in respect of all friendly and peace-loving states. Iraq highly appreciates the long-term fruitful relations between the Embassy of Iraq and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, as confirmed by the development of cooperation in the sphere of diplomacy aimed at the fulfillment of common interests of Iraq and Ukraine. The Embassy of Iraq to Ukraine avails itself of this opportunity to express its gratitude for robust and friendly relations between the two countries, for the history of these relations as well as to express its gratitude to the Directorate-General for Rendering Services to Diplomatic Missions for the publication of this material. Key words: Iraq, diplomatic relations, history, Ambassador, cooperation.

Abstract Defence organisations are unique in that they comprise integrated military and civilian personnel working in partnership with each other (e.g., in headquarters, on bases, on missions, in academic settings). Many defence civilians are supervised by military supervisors and managers, while others are themselves responsible for managing military personnel. At the same time, despite often high levels of partnership and integration, military and civilian personnel are governed by very different personnel management systems, and have distinct cultures. These factors can affect the nature and quality of the collaboration and influence personnel outcomes and organisational effectiveness. Indeed, defence organisations are increasingly recognizing the importance of optimizing integration between their military and civilian workforces, with many adopting organisational terms implying that the military and civilian workforces form a cohesive whole: the Defence Team (Canada), the Whole Force Concept (United Kingdom), One Defence Team (Sweden), and Total Defence Workforce (New Zealand). This paper presents results from the Military–Civilian Personnel Survey (MCPS), which was administered in 11 nations as part of a NATO Research Task Group on the topic of military-civilian personnel collaboration and integration (NATO STO HFM RTG-226). This survey was the first systematic examination of large samples of military and civilian respondents, and the first to examine military–civilian relations from the perspective of both military and civilian personnel. The results presented here are based on three open-ended questions included in the survey, which asked respondents to identify 1) the most important factors for establishing and maintaining positive military-civilian personnel work culture and relations, 2) the challenges of working in a military-civilian environment, and 3) the main advantages of working in a military-civilian environment. Results of 5 nations, including Canada, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (n =1,513 military respondents and n = 2,099 defence civilians) are presented. Results indicate that mixed military-civilian work environments present both unique challenges and advantages, and identified the factors considered to be important for enhancing integration and collaboration between military and civilian personnel. Given that many cross-national patterns emerged, these findings provide useful insights for enhancing military and civilian personnel integration and collaboration across nations. *Adapted from the material first reported in Goldenberg, I. & Febbraro, A.R. (2018; in publication). Civilian and Military Personnel Integration and Collaboration in Defence Organizations. NATO Science and Technology Organization Technical Report - STO-TR-HFM-226. DOI 10.14339/STO-TR-HFM-226. ISBN: ISBN 978-92-837-2092-8.

Interpersonal communication is an important element in the management of a government organization. In diplomatic relations, interpersonal communication tests an individual’s or a group’s ability to convey the message of peace. The ability to convey information clearly and thus avoiding misunderstanding, especially in resolving conflicts that may occur, builds trust among governments. Without skill in interpersonal communication, it becomes difficult for a government to maintain existing relations, or build new ones. This research was carried out to (i) analyse the interpersonal communication implemented by the Malay Sultanates as the main mechanism in resolving diplomatic conflicts, and (ii) explain the implications of the implementation of interpersonal communication in resolving conflicts among kingdoms. Data was collected through library research, and this discussion focuses on Hikayat Hang Tuah and Al-Tarikh Salasilah Negeri Kedah as the primary material. The findings of this study show that the sending of envoys was an effective strategy of interpersonal communication in solving conflicts that arose, whether in terms of existing or new diplomatic relations. These envoys employed various strategies in their interpersonal communication, which were key to the success of their missions. The findings also show that the administration and government of a kingdom stabilized with the development of its economy, politics, culture and society. Keywords: interpersonal communication, conflict, diplomacy, government Abstrak Komunikasi interpersonal merupakan elemen penting dalam pengurusan sesebuah organisasi kerajaan. Dalam hubungan diplomatik, komunikasi interpersonal dapat menguji kemampuan seseorang individu atau secara berkumpulan dalam menyampaikan mesej keamanan. Kebolehan dalam menyampaikan maklumat dengan jelas mampu mengelakkan kesalahfahaman terutamanya, dalam menyelesaikan konflik yang berlaku di samping dapat membina kepercayaan antara kerajaan. Tanpa kemahiran dalam hubungan komunikasi interpersonal, agak sukar sesebuah kerajaan meneruskan hubungan sedia ada mahupun yang ingin membina hubungan baharu. Kajian ini dilakukan untuk (i) menganalisis komunikasi interpersonal yang diimplementasi oleh pemerintah kerajaan Melayu sebagai mekanisme utama dalam penyelesaian konflik hubungan diplomatik, dan (ii) menghuraikan implikasi implementasi komunikasi interpersonal tersebut dalam menyelesaikan konflik yang wujud antara kerajaan. Data yang diperoleh menerusi kaedah kepustakaan dan bahan utama perbincangan berfokuskan pada Hikayat Hang Tuah dan Al-Tarikh Salasilah Negeri Kedah. Hasil dapatan menunjukkan bahawa penghantaran utusan kerajaan merupakan implementasi komunikasi interpersonal yang berkesan dalam menyelesaikan konflik yang wujud sama ada hubungan diplomatik tersebut telah terbentuk ataupun baharu dibentuk. Utusan kerajaan membina pelbagai strategi dalam mengimplementasikan komunikasi interpersonal yang merupakan kunci untuk mencapai misi mereka. Dapatan juga menunjukkan bahawa pemerintahan dan pentadbiran sesebuah kerajaan semakin mantap dengan perkembangan kemajuan ekonomi, politik, budaya dan sosial. Kata kunci: komunikasi interpersonal, konflik, diplomatik, kerajaan

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AbstractThis article analyzes cultural persistence in Guam through plaiting, material culture, and maintenance activities, a set of daily practices that are essential to social continuity and well-being. The colonization of Guam began in 1668 with the Jesuit missions. Jesuit policies utilized maintenance activities to colonize Indigenous lifeways and subjectivities, but we believe those activities also functioned as reservoirs of traditional knowledge. Although plaiting has been situated in different historical contexts across the centuries, it no doubt expresses material continuities stretching from a precolonial past. The article also challenges today’s widespread belief that the search for change is a universal value. It argues that societies appreciate continuity over change in inverse proportion to technological control over nature, asymmetrical relationships of power, and specialized fragmentation of functional tasks. In the absence of such features, the best guarantee of survival lies in maintaining the balance achieved by traditional lifeways.

Abstract In 1751 Pope Benedict XIV made a donation of Amazonian objects to the Istituto delle Scienze in Bologna, a scientific academy located in the city of his birth. This article reconstructs the history of this group of objects back to its origins in the Jesuit missions of the upper Amazon basin, by presenting and examining new documentary evidence. The encounter between a Jesuit missionary and Pope Benedict XIV is analysed in the context of the early modern reception of the New World and its peoples in Catholic Europe. Finally, an overview is presented of the items in this collection, which represent some of the scarcest and oldest known examples of native material culture from the region.

Similarities and differences in aspects of the culture of the Aboriginal people of the Wellesley Islands, has been noted by European writers. This remote island group is situated in the southern region of the Gulf of Carpentaria, northwest Queensland. Observed differences appear to demonstrate dissimilarities in certain cultural manifestations between the North Wellesley Islands (Mornington and Forsyth) and the South Wellesley Islands (Bentinck and Sweers). These include language, social organisation, land-use, ritual and ceremonial practices and manufactured objects of material culture. However, other cultural practices, namely an economy based on marine resources, are shared throughout the region. The data used here focus on items of portable material culture used by the people of the Wellesley Islands and the adjacent mainland coast at a time before intensified social disruptions to Aboriginal people in the area was brought about by increased European presence and by the establishment of missions in the region in the first quarter of the twentieth century. All items are from museum collections and were collected no later than 1916. Using a relational database, the morphological variations present in the objects are quantified and analysed. The study area is divided into three regional zones; the North Wellesley Islands, the South Wellesley Islands and the Adjacent Mainland Coast. In the region, four different languages are spoken and the data are also analysed by language group. The aim of the study is to determine whether quantifiable regional variation can be demonstrated. This article intentionally focuses narrowly on portable objects of material culture. For references to wider cultural aspects of the study area, see Roth (1897, 1901, 1903), Tindale (1977), Trigger (1987), Robins et al. (1998), Evans (2005), Memmott (2010), whose work has previously explored similarity and difference in the culture of the region as well as theoretical discussions of the reasons for these differences.

Abstrak: Kegiatan ini bertujuan untuk membantu Sanggar Baca Jendela Dunia dalam mewujudkan misinya, yaitu memberikan pelatihan di bidang bahasa dan sastra. Selain mewujudkan salah satu misi Sanggar Baca Jendela Dunia. Kegiatan ini juga bertujuan untuk memperingati Bulan Bahasa. Dengan harapan, dapat membina, mengembangkan dan mewariskan Sastra Indonesia kepada generasi muda. Selain itu, kegiatan apresiasi puisi dapat mempertajam perasaan, penalaran, daya khayal serta kepekaan generasi muda terhadap masyrakat, budaya dan lingkungan hidup. Adapun tahap realisasi permasalahannya adalah dimulai dengan pengajaran materi pembacaan puisi kepada para peserta. Hal ini dilakukan dengan harapan agar para peserta memiliki pengetahuan teori tentang pembacaan puisi. selanjutnya, dilakukan pengkajian atau analisis makna yang terkandung dalam puisi. hal ini, bertujuan agar peserta bisa menganalisis dan memahami makna yang terkandung dalam puisi sehingga dalam pembacaan puisi bisa lebih menghayati. Setelah itu dilakukan kritik teks puisi dalam upaya untuk mengetahui kelebihan dan kekurangan dari sebuah teks puisi. Selanjutnya, dilakukan praktek pembacaan puisi dengan harapan agar peserta dapat menerapkan semua teori tentang puisi dalam pembacaannya.Kata Kunci: Apresiasi Puisi, Sanggar Baca Jendela Dunia. Abstract: Lecturer at the Indonesian Literature Study Program at Pamulang University took the initiative to conduct Poetry Appreciation Training at the Window Window Study Studio This activity aims to help Sanggar Baca Jendela Dunia in realizing its mission, which is to provide training in the fields of language and literature. Besides realizing one of the Sanggar Baca Jendela Dunia missions. This activity also aims to commemorate the Language Month. With hope, can foster, develop and pass Indonesian Literature to the younger generation. In addition, poetry appreciation activities can sharpen feelings, reasoning, imagination and sensitivity of the younger generation to society, culture and the environment. The realization stage of the problem is starting with teaching poetry reading material to the participants. This was done with the hope that the participants would have theoretical knowledge about poetry reading. Furthermore, an assessment or analysis of the meaning contained in the poem is carried out. this, aims so that participants can analyze and understand the meaning contained in poetry so that the poetry reading can be more appreciate. After that the poetry text critique is done in an effort to find out the advantages and disadvantages of a poetry text. Furthermore, the practice of reading poetry is done in the hope that participants can apply all theories about poetry in their reading.Keywords: Poetry Appreciation, Sanggar Baca Jendela Dunia

As part of the 100th anniversary celebration of the events of the Ukrainian revolution, a series of historical reference maps «Ukrainian revolution. 1917-1921» have been developed. The purpose of this article is to highlight the mapping features of origin and formation of the national diplomatic service; disclose the state of international relations of the independent state of Ukraine at all stages of the events in 1917-1921 in a series of historical reference maps «Ukrainian revolution. 1917-1921»; justify the choice of mapping indicators and symbols. Main material. As part of the events devoted to the Ukrainian revolution’s 100th anniversary, a series of historical reference maps «The Ukrainian revolution. 1917-1921» has been developed. The series consists of four editions: «Ukrainian Central Rada», «Ukrainian State (Hetmanate)», «Western Ukrainian People’s Republic», and «Directory», covering the main stages of the Ukrainian revolution development. The maps of the series show different aspects of revolutionary events and national state formation - political forces, military action, international relations, science, education, culture, etc. The maps are popular scientific publications for educational purposes. They contain wide textual and illustrative materials in addition to cartographic images. The article highlights the national diplomatic service’s formation and beginning of mapping features, which is implemented on the maps of this series. Individual maps for each of the four stages of the revolution show the international relations and diplomacy status of the young Ukrainian state: international agreements and treaties, diplomatic representation (embassies, consulates, diplomatic missions), and more. The content of international relations and diplomacy maps, their designing features are presented, the mapping indicators and symbols choice is justified. The thematic content of maps is shown on the political maps of Europe and America. The cartographic method of information transfer made it possible to display the typing of countries on the map which have different types according to the historical situation on different maps. The map «Ukrainian State (Hetmanate)» shows the location of foreign diplomatic institutions on the Ukraine capital’s plan, which is a certain evidence of the Ukrainian State’s stability during the kaleidoscope events of Ukrainian revolution. Conclusions. Thus, the series of maps «Ukrainian revolution. 1917-1921» refl ects the formation of Ukrainian national diplomacy at all stages of the Ukrainian revolution. Cartographic images revealed information about the fi rst steps in the development of the diplomatic service of Ukraine. Separate maps for each of the four stages of the revolution show the state of international relations and diplomacy of the young Ukrainian State. Features of designing the maps content are considered, mapping and symbols indicators used to create cartographic works of such subjects, are substantiated.

Digital culture, as we know it, owes much to space exploration. The technological pursuit of outer space has fuelled innovations in signal processing and automated computing that have left an impact on the hardware and software that make our digital present possible. Developments in satellite technologies, for example, produced far-reaching improvements in digital image processing (Gonzalez and Woods) and the demands of the Apollo missions advanced applications of the integrated circuit – the predecessor to the microchip (Hall). All the inventive digital beginnings in space found their way back to earth and contributed to the development of contemporary formations of culture composed around practices dependent on and driven by digital technologies. Their terrestrial adoption and adaptation supported a revolution in information, mediation and communication technologies, increasing the scope and speed of global production, exchange and use of data and advancing techniques of imaging, mapping, navigation, surveillance, remote sensing and telemetry to a point that could only be imagined before the arrival of the space age. Steadily knotted with contemporary scientific, commercial and military endeavours and the fabric of the quotidian, digital devices and practices now have a bearing upon all aspects of our pursuits, pleasures and politics. Our increasing reliance upon the digital shaped the shared surfaces of human societies and produced cultures in their own right. While aware of the uneasy baggage of the term ‘culture’, we use it here to designate all digitally grounded objects, systems and processes which are materially and socially inflecting our ways of life. In this sense, we consider both what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri describe as “those results of social production that are necessary for social interaction and further production, such as knowledges, languages, codes, information, affects, and so forth” (viii), and the material contexts of these products of the social. The effects of digital technologies on the socio-material ambits of human life are many and substantial and – as we want to suggest here – evolving through their ‘extraterrestrial’ beginnings. The contemporary courses of digital cultures not only continue to develop through investments in space exploration, they are themselves largely contingent on the technologies that we have placed in outer space, for instance, global telecommunications infrastructure, GPS, Google maps, weather and climate monitoring facilities and missile grids all rely on the constellation of satellites orbiting the earth. However, we have been increasingly witnessing something new: modes of social production that developed on earth from the technical demands of the space age are now being directed, or rather returned back to have new beginnings beyond the globe. Our focus in this paper is this outward momentum of digital cultures. We do not aim to overview the entire history of the digital in outer space, but instead to frame the extraterrestrial extension of human technologies in terms of the socio-material dimensions of extra-planetary digital cultures. Hannah Arendt described how the space age accelerated the already rapid pace of techno-scientific development, denying us pause during which to grasp its effects upon the “human condition”. Our treacherously fast technological conquest of outer space leaves in its wake an aporia in language and “the trouble”, as Arendt puts it, is that we will “forever be unable to understand, that is, to think and speak about the things which nevertheless we are able to do” (3). This crisis in language has at its core a problem of ontology: a failure to recognise that the words we use to describe ourselves are always, and have always been, bound up in our technological modes of being. As thinkers such as Gilbert Simondon and Bernard Stiegler argued and Arendt derided (but could not deny), our technologies are inseparably bound up with the evolutionary continuum of the human and the migration of our digital ways of life into outer space still further complicates articulation of our techno-logic condition. In Stiegler’s view the technical is the primordial supplement to the human into which we have been “exteriorising” our “interiors” of social memory and shared culture to alter, assert and advance the material-social ambits of our living milieu and which have been consequently changing the idea of what it is to be human (141). Without technologies – what Stiegler terms “organised inorganic matter” (17), which mediate our relationships to the world – there is no human in the inhuman extraterrestrial environment and so, effectively, it is only through the organisation of inert matter that culture or social life can exist outside the earth. Offering the possibility of digitally abstracting and processing the complexities and perils of outer space, space technologies are not only a means of creating a human milieu ‘out there’, but of expediting potentially endless extra-planetary progress. The transposition of digital culture into outer space occasions a series of beginnings (and returns). In this paper, we explore extra-planetary digital culture as a productive trajectory in broader discussions of the ontological status of technologies that are socially and materially imbricated in the idea of the human. We consider the digital facilitation of exchanges between earth and outer space and assign them a place in an evolving discourse concerned with expressing the human in relation to the technological. We suggest that ontological questions occasioned by the socio-material effects of technologies require consideration of the digital in outer space and that the inhuman milieu of the extraterrestrial opens up a unique perspective from which to consider the nascent shape of what might be the emerging extra-planetary beginnings of the post human. Digital Exurbias The unfolding of extra-planetary digital cultures necessitates the simultaneous exteriorisation of our production of the social into outer space and the domestication of our extraterrestrial activities here on earth. Caught in the processes of mediated exploration, the moon, Mars, Pluto and other natural or human-made celestial bodies such as the International Space Station are almost becoming remote outer suburbs – exurbias of earth. Digital cultures are reaching toward and expanding into outer space through the development of technologies, but more specifically through advancing the reciprocal processes of social exchanges between terrestrial and extraterrestrial space. Whether it be through public satellite tracking via applications such as Heavens-Above or The High Definition Earth Viewing system’s continuous video feed from the camera attached to the ISS (NASA, "High Definition") – which streams us back an image of our planetary habitat from an Archimedean point of view – we are being encouraged to embrace a kind of digital enculturation of extraterrestrial space. The production of social life outside our own planet has already had many forms, but perhaps can be seen most clearly aboard the International Space Station, presently the only extraterrestrial environment physically occupied by humans. Amongst its many landmark events, the ISS has become a vigorous node of social media activity. For example, in 2013 Chris Hadfield became a Twitter phenomenon while living aboard the ISS; the astronaut gathered over a million Twitter followers, he made posts on Facebook, Tumblr and Reddit, multiple mini-vids, and his rendition of David Bowie’s Space Oddity on YouTube (Hadfield) has thus far been viewed over 26 million times. His success, as has been noted, was not merely due to his use of social media in the unique environment of outer space, but rather that he was able to make the highly technical lives of those in space familiar by revealing to a global audience “how you make a sandwich in microgravity, how you get a haircut” (Potter). This techno-mediation of the everyday onboard ISS is, from a Stieglerian perspective, a gesture toward the establishment of “the relation of the living to its milieu” (49). As part of this process, the new trends and innovations of social media on earth are, for example, continuously replayed and rehearsed in the outer space, with a litany of ‘digital firsts’ such as the first human-sent extraterrestrial ‘tweet’, first Instagram post, first Reddit AMA and first Pinterest ‘pin’ (Knoblauch), betraying our obsessions with serial digital beginnings. The constitution of an extra-planetary milieu progresses with the ability to conduct real-time interactions between those on and outside the earth. This, in essence, collapses all social aspects of the physical barrier and the ISS becomes merely a high-tech outer suburb of the globe. Yet fluid, uninterrupted, real-time communications with the station have only just become possible. Previously, the Iinternet connections between earth and the ISS were slow and troublesome, akin to the early dial-up, but the recently installed Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPAL), a laser communications system, now enables the incredible speeds needed to effortlessly communicate with the human orbital outpost in real-time. After OPAL was affixed to the ISS, it was first tested using the now-traditional system test, “hello, world” (NASA, "Optical Payload"); referencing the early history of digital culture itself, and in doing so, perhaps making the most apt use of this phrase, ever. Open to Beginnings Digital technologies have become vital in sustaining social life, facilitating the immaterial production of knowledge, information and affects (Hardt and Negri), but we have also become increasingly attentive to their materialities; or rather, the ‘matter of things’ never went away, it was only partially occluded by the explosion of social interactivities sparked by the ‘digital revolution’. Within the ongoing ‘material turn’, there have been a gamut of inquiries into the material contexts of the ‘digital’, for example, in the fields of digital anthropology (Horst and Miller), media studies (Kirschenbaum, Fuller, Parikka) and science and technology studies (Gillespie, Boczkowski, and Foot) – to mention only a very few of these works. Outside the globe material things are again insistent, they contain and maintain the terrestrial life from which they were formed. Outer space quickens our awareness of the materiality underpinning the technical apparatus we use to mediate and communicate and the delicate support that it provides for the complex of digital practices built upon it. Social exchanges between earth and its extra-planetary exurbias are made possible through the very materiality of digital signals within which these immaterial interactions can take place. In the pared down reality of contemporary life in outer space, the sociality of the digital is also harnessed to bring forth forms of material production. For example, when astronauts in space recently needed a particular wrench, NASA was able to email them a digital file from which they were then able print the required tool (Shukman). Through technologies such as the 3D printer, the line between products of the social and the creation of material objects becomes blurred. In extra-planetary space, the ‘thingness’ of technologies is at least as crucial as it is on earth and yet – as it appears – material production in space might eventually rely on the infrastructures occasioned by the immaterial exchanges of digital culture. As technical objects, like the 3D printer, are evolving so too are conceptions of the relationship that humans have with technologies. One result of this is the idea that technologies themselves are becoming capable of producing social life; in this conception, the relationships and interrelationships of and with technologies become a potential field of study. We suggest here that the extra-planetary extension of digital cultures will not only involve, but help shape, the evolution of these relationships, and as such, our conceptions and articulations of a future beyond the globe will require a re-positioning of the human and technical objects within the arena of life. This will require new beginnings. Yet beginnings are duplicitous, as Maurice Blanchot wrote – “one must never rely on the word beginning”; technologies have always been part of the human, our rapport is in some sense what defines the human. To successfully introduce the social in outer space will involve an evolution in both the theory and practice of this participation. And it is perhaps through the extra-planetary projection of digital culture that this will come about. In outer space the human partnership with the objects of technology, far from being a utopian promise or dystopian end, is not only a necessity but also a productive force shaping the collective beginnings of our historical co-evolution. Objects of technology that migrate into space appear designed to smooth the ontological misgivings that might arise from our extra-planetary progress. While they are part of the means for producing the social in outer space and physical fortifications against human frailty, they are perhaps also the beginnings of the extraterrestrial enculturation of technologies, given form. One example of such technologies is the anthropomorphic robots currently developed by the Dextrous Robotics Laboratory for NASA. The latest iteration of these, Robotnaut 2 was the first humanoid robot in space; it is a “highly dexterous” robot that works beside astronauts performing a wide range of manual and sensory activities (NASA, "Robonaut"). The Robonaut 2 has recorded its own series of ‘firsts’, including being the “first robot inside a human space vehicle operating without a cage, and first robot to work with human-rated tools in space” (NASA, "Robonaut"). One of the things which mark it as a potential beginning is this ability to use the same tools as astronauts. This suggests the image of a tool using a tool – at first glance, something now quite common in the operation of machines – however, in this case the robot is able to manipulate a tool that was not designed for it. This then might also include the machine itself in our own origins, in that evolutionary moment of grasping a tool or stealing fire from the gods. As an exteriorisation of the human, these robots also suggest that a shared extra-planetary culture would involve acknowledging the participation of technologic entities, recognising that they share these beginnings with us, and thus are participating in the origins of our potential futures beyond the globe – the prospects of which we can only imagine now. Identifiably human-shaped, Robonauts are created to socialise with, and labour together with, astronauts; they share tools and work on the same complex tasks in the same environment aboard the International Space Station. In doing so, their presence might break down the separation between the living and the nonliving, giving form to Stiegler’s hypothesis regarding the ontology of technical objects, and coming to represent a mode of “being” described as “organized inert matter” (49). The robonaut is not dominated by the human, like a hand-held tool, nor is it dominating like a faceless system; it is engineered to be conducted, ‘organised’ rather than controlled. In addition to its anthropomorphic tendencies – which among other things, makes them appear more human than astronauts wearing space suits – is the robonaut’s existence as part of an assemblage of networked life that links technical objects with wet bodies into an animate system of information and matter. While this “heralds the possibility of making the technical being part of culture” (Simondon 16), it also suggests that extra-planetary digital cultures will harness what Simondon formulates as an “ensemble” of “open machines” – a system of sensitive technologies toward which the human acts as “organizer and as a living interpreter” (13). In the design of our extra-planetary envoys we are evolving toward this openness; the Robonaut, a technical object that shares in digital culture and its social and material production, might be the impetus through which the human and technological acquire a language that expresses a kind of evolutionary dialectic. As a system of inclusions that uses technologies to incorporate/socialise everything it can, including its own relationship with technical objects, digital culture in outer space clarifies how technologies might relate and “exchange information with each other through the intermediacy of the human interpreter” (Simondon 14). The Robonaut, like the tweeting astronaut, provides the test signals for what might eventually become points of communication between different modes of being. In this context, culture is collective cumulative memory; the ‘digital’ form of culture suggests an evolution of both technologic life and human life because it incorporates the development of more efficient means of storing and transmitting memory as cultural knowledge, while recognising the experience of both. Social learning and memory will first define the evolution of the Robonaut. Digital culture and the social expressed through technology – toward a shared social life and cultural landscape established in outer space – will involve the conservation, transmission and setting of common patterns that pool a composite interplay of material, neurobiologic and technologic variables. This will in turn require new practices of enculturation, conviviality with technologies, a sharing, incorporation and care. Only then might this transform into a discussion concerning the ontologies of the ‘we’. (Far from) Conclusions Hannah Arendt wrote that technologic progress could not find full expression in “normal” (3) language and that we must constantly be aware that our knowledge, politics, ethics and interactions with regard to technologies are incomplete, unformulated or unexpressed. It could be said then that our relationship with technologies is constantly beginning, that this need to keep finding new language to grasp it means that it actually progresses through its rehearsal of beginnings, through the need to maintain the productive inquisitive force of a pleasant first meeting. Yet Arendt’s idea emerges from a kind of contempt for technology and her implied separation between ‘normal’ and what could be called ‘technical’ language suggests that she privileges the lay ‘human’ tongue as the only one in which meaningful ideas can be properly expressed. What this fails to acknowledge is an appreciation of the potential richness of technical language and Arendt instead establishes a hierarchy that privileges one’s ‘natural’ language. The invocation of the term ‘normal’ is itself an admission of unequal relations with technologies. For a language to develop in which we can truly begin to express and understand the human relationship with ever-changing but ever-present technologies,, we must first allow the entrance of the language of technology into social life – it must be incorporated, learnt or translated. In the future, this might ultimately give technology a voice in a dialogue that might be half-composed of binary code. Digital culture is perhaps a forerunner of such a conversation and perhaps it is in the milieu of outer space that it could be possible to see advances in our ideas about the mutually co-constitutive relationship between the human and technical. The ongoing extra-planetary extension of the digital cultures have the productive potential to sculpt the material and social ambits of our world, and it is this capacity that may precipitate beginnings which will leave lasting imprints upon the prospects of our shared post-human futures. References Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Blanchot, Maurice. Friendship. Trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Originally published in French in 1971 under the title L’Amitié. Fuller, Matthew. Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. Gillespie, Tarleton, Pablo J. Boczkowski, and Kirsten A. Foot (eds.). Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2014. Gonzalez, Rafael, and Richard E. Woods. Digital Image Processing. 2nd ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002. Hadfield, Chris. “Space Oddity.” YouTube, 12 May 2013. 10 Aug. 2015 ‹https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo›. Hall, Eldon C. Journey to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Guidance Computer. Reston: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1996. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Heavens-Above. ‹http://www.heavens-above.com›. Horst, Heather, and Daniel Miller. Digital Anthropology. London and New York: Berg, 2012. Kirschenbaum, Matthew. Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. Knoblauch, Max. “The 8 First Social Media Posts from Space.” Mashable 13 Aug. 2013. ‹http://mashable.com/2013/08/13/space-social-media-firsts/›. NASA. “High Definition Earth-Viewing.” ‹http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/917.html›.NASA. “Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS).” 13 May 2015. ‹http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/861.html›. NASA. “Robonaut Homepage.” ‹http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov/default.asp›. Parikka, Jussi. “Dust and Exhaustion: The Labour of New Materialism.” C-Theory 2 Oct. 2013. ‹http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=726›. Potter, Ned. “How Chris Hadfield Conquered Social Media from Outer Space.” Forbes 28 Jul. 2013. ‹http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2013/06/28/how-chris-hadfield-conquered-social-media-from-outer-space›. Shukman, David. “NASA Emails Spanner to Space Station - Analysis.” BBC News 19 Dec. 2014. ‹http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30549341›. Simondon, Gilbert. On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. Paris: Aubier, Editions Montaigne, 1958. Trans. Ninian Mellamphy. University of Western Ontario, 1980. Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.

The borderline between fiction and non-fiction is, like much that is liminal, deeply attractive to observers, and among the consequences of this is a proliferation of names; 'faction', 'fictocriticism' and the shifting pairing of docudrama/dramadoc operate to indicate the blending of different types of fictional and non-fictional material. All of these produce that feeling of unease proper to liminal states. In his recent study, Derek Paget notes how it is the seriousness of the truth claims of that version of non-fiction called documentary that makes its mixing with drama so fraught with potential for controversy. In Queensland we might recall some of the arguments over the screening of Joh's Jury, but Paget underpins his analysis of material like the 1992 HBO/Granada production Hostages with reference to the four year sentence imposed in 1997 on German documentary maker Michael Born for faking material for his documentaries (1). Here not making clear the hybridity of the material was not just an impropriety, but a crime. Yet the liminal material that most fascinates me hides its hybrid nature behind a shifting collection of different terms, ones like 'projection', 'forecast', 'extrapolation' or even (on bad days) 'mission statement'. This particular body of writing is accessible non-fiction about the future. As one who has used science fiction as my basic tool for thinking about the future since I was a child, the question 'how do you write non-fictionally about something that has not yet happened?' fascinates me. That it does not seem to bother other people all that much is what seems strange. How is it that non-fiction about the future differs from science fiction about the future (and for those unfamiliar with or disdainful about the genre, sf can be set in the present, the past or the future)? Certainly one can see distinctions at the extremes; the arrival of tentacled telepathic aliens travelling faster than light characterises sf rather than science, but as another space probe sets off for the Red Planet and visionary future missions are planned, how smug can we be about the difference between the projections of what will be found and the calm descriptive passages of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars? Indeed the example of the Mars probe was prompted by my current piece of sf reading -- Paul McCauley's Fairyland -- where the 21st century inhabitants of a nanotech-enhanced Europe pursue their affairs against the background of the arrival of television pictures of the first landing of humans on Mars. Sf really loves to vaunt its relationship to science. Devotees of sf, fans and aware readers alike, can reel off a collection of instances when sf seemed to have predicted future scientific or technological developments. The core one here is Arthur C. Clarke's statement of the principles of communication satellites over a decade before the launch of Telstar. (It is quite possible that those people under the age of 50 who know what Telstar is -- the 'r' is now a very important distinguishing feature -- only do so because of its function in this prime example.) Most of the other examples are at heart ones of naming rather than scientific principles -- waldos are now more or less what Robert Heinlein called them in the novella Waldo, and cyberspace is the word used to name something not very much like the inhabitable virtual space in William Gibson's Neuromancer, though many pretend otherwise. There are more, but they are vastly outnumbered by the instances of irrelevance or worse, failed prediction. Most readers have favourite moments when people in the control room of a space ship reach for a slide rule or feed in punch cards, but sf, especially genre sf (i.e. not literary fiction or utopian allegory set in the future), is in the business of entertainment not prediction. Science fiction needs science to give it generic clout, or as Darko Suvin demands, to provide the cognitive support for its imaginative operations (13). Sf writers, even those given to fantastic elements, like to provide acknowledgement pages where they thank the scientists who aren't to blame for any mistakes but helped a lot. Anne McCaffrey is much given to thanking Jack Cohen, but then so are a lot of other people -- Cohen is a biologist, great fan of the genre and a major deliverer of lectures on scientific topics at sf fan conventions. Writers like David Brin actually are scientists with serious credentials. People heavily involved in sf can trot out reams of these instances as well as mentioning how writers without scientific training can still stay within credible parameters when designing new worlds by feeding the data of their desired planet into a computer program which will give them its physical properties and save them from being bombarded with reader's letters pointing out their mistakes. But all of this wonderful fertile mix of science and fiction comes to an abrupt halt when the field of play is science itself in its public guise. Here science is real, science is earnest and sf is a serious problem -- it gives people bad ideas and worse it is popular, especially with the young. While sf is constantly trying to make claims for its own scientificity, trying to show that science and the fiction that has taken its name are absolutely made for each other, entwined together for ever and ever amen, science keeps disentangling the fictional tendrils, pushing off the importunate lover, and trying to deny it was ever tempted to get involved. Sf has so much to gain from the relationship -- status and difference from its fictional like; science has so much to lose. But there is something for science to gain -- and if it's not as even-handed as Fred Astaire giving Ginger Rogers class while she gave him sex appeal, that is a pretty accurate description of the trade (and yes, to continue the analogy, sf does have to do it backwards and in high heels). Sf is the blonde or the beefcake that pulls in the punters for the serious business of the factual, but having called people in, it must be disowned. If you haven't heard my title, you haven't been watching televised technology programmes like Australia's great export success (forget about Neighbours, I mean Beyond 2000, already operating to overcome the lack of prescience about how long the title would work) and you've been missing some news and current affairs too. It seems particularly common in non-fiction segments on robotics. A small mechanical device shambles towards the camera as a voice-over intones "This may look like science fiction, but it is actually a scene from a laboratory in downtown Tokyo" (or it might be from the Media Labs at MIT -- the difference being in the visible pizza boxes). The viewer has been hailed with something familiar and attractive, which has then been disavowed to allow the truth to shine through. Why does the catch phrase occur? Why invoke science fiction only to deny it? A piece of writing about the future cast in the non-fictional mode calls on science fiction for one of several reasons: it may want to attract readers; it may need an accompanying graphic; or it may want to talk about a wonderful new gizmo of some kind and feel the need to attach the unknown to something (however bizarrely) known. Sf is the solution to all these problems since it is arresting or popular (more fun that dusty old science might be feared to be -- I must say I don't have this view of science, but it underwrites the establishment of organisations for the Public Understanding of Science and other pieces of science PR) and it produces pictures purporting to be of the future that have more appeal than the other bodies of futurological graphics. If you don't use stills from sf films or TV (and these are certainly preferable in terms of respectability to the kind of material used for the covers of sf novels or comics), what you are left with are graphs or architects' drawings and these can only do so much. I don't really know all that many people who share my fondness for the Southern Oscillation Index graph on the weather forecast, after all. I recently came across a different use of sf in something of a scientific context. It was not disavowed quite, and I did not even find it accurate, but it points to the symbiotic elements of the couple which is not a couple. It was a review of Richard Ellis's The Search for the Giant Squid (Guardian Weekly 10 Jan. 99). Much of the material referred to in the book was fictional, but the squid and the core of the book was scientific. Michael Dirda, the reviewer, starts a paragraph in the middle of the review by saying: "When he wants to, Ellis can make his science almost science fictional: 'It is now assumed that the sperm whale captures its prey by emitting sound beams of such intensity that they can stun or even kill the prey.'" Now that doesn't sound science fictional to me -- it sounds pretty much pure David Attenborough. And neither Dirda nor Ellis appear to disavow the sf evoked. It is as if there was a convention by which a scientifically-inflected piece of journalism had to gesture to sf come what may, but only had to deny it if it involved the future where the risk of the truth claims of the scientific being compromised by the sf is presumably greater. The basic requirement in being seen to speak truthfully about the future is to reduce apparent fictionality. The best way to do this is to call on the most powerful available truth-speaking discourse, that is to speak scientifically or even more these days, economically. Science can talk very seriously indeed about the future (though it is being tempted into dangerous waters by computer technology working with terms like nanobots and foglets), but as for economics... Well, it has a whole practice which it calls futures, which is entirely speculative, but which can result in the most hallowed production of the 'real' to be encountered -- actual money. To a surprising, or perhaps that should be suspicious, extent, science disguises the fact that it speaks of the future. It engages in inventions which will become usable, discovers things which will change how current practices will be conducted, projects variations in demand; all these wonderful things which only reveal in the tense of the associated verb that their time of actuality is not quite yet. The area that is most overt about its practice of non-fictional future speaking is actually called futurology. Futurology is centred far more in the social sciences and this makes it comparatively weak from the outset. It may be that its honesty about what it engages in reduces its social power. Announcing oneself a futurologist may work as a chat-up line (though the social occasion at which it did so might give one pause) but it doesn't convert into truth-speaking power -- much better to claim to specialise in futures. Yet, when futurology calls on sf, at least it is not necessary for it to engage in the same processes of disavowal or even denial. Academics get used to being disappointed by articles that sound as if they would be really promising for a current or projected piece of work, but one of my greatest disappointments was with a brief piece by Jim Dator with the great title "What Do 'You' Do When Your Robot Bows, as Your Clone Enters Holographic MTV?". Dator is currently head of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies at the University of Hawaii and chair of the World Future Studies Federation. He is thus someone who constantly works with the problem at the core of my concern. As I recall, when I went in search of the Dator article, I had expectations of an etiquette guide for the multiply present, but what I got was more a piece noting how wow! humans may not (continue to) be the peak of evolution for that much longer. Well, Charles Darwin died for that thought long ago anyway and why would Alan Turing have bothered with his Test if he hadn't suspected something similar. Although it's quite an old article at the speed Dator publishes, its calling on an sf scenario, however low-key, to draw attention to non-fictional writing is characteristic of the practice shared with science. I may have been saddened by its failure to even try to deliver on the promise of its title, but at least futurology does not see the necessity of disavowal. In all the reading I've done over the years in both areas there has only been one occasion when I've encountered any disclaimer in a science fictional work which has any parallel to the insistent disclaimers of science fictionality in science writing. It is not of course a disclaimer of scientificity. Instead it is an emphatic assertion of fictionality. What, you ask could possibly require this in a piece of science fiction? Ah, what but autobiography and within that the suspicion of sexual confession. Nicola Griffith puts a post-note to her most recent novel Slow River (both an ecological and a psycho-sexual thriller). It reads: "There is a disturbing tendency among readers -- particularly critics -- to assume that any woman who writes about abuse, no matter how peripherally, must be speaking from her own experience. This is, in Joanna Russ's terms, a denial of the writer's imagination. Should anyone be tempted to assume otherwise, let me be explicit: Slow River is fiction not autobiography. I made it up." So there you have a hierarchy of threats to status, perhaps: science, science fiction and (women's) autobiography. Observe however that I have not put the economic on the list. References Dator, Jim. "What Do 'You' Do When Your Robot Bows, as Your Clone Enters Holographic MTV?" Futures 21 (4 Aug. 1989): 361-5. Paget, Derek. No Other Way to Tell It: Dramadoc/Docudrama on Television. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1998. Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979 Recommendations Griffith, Nicola. Slow River. New York: Del Rey, 1995. McCauley, Paul. Fairyland. London: Vista, 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Frances Bonner. "This May Look like Science Fiction, But..." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.1 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9902/look.php>. Chicago style: Frances Bonner, "This May Look like Science Fiction, But...," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 1 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9902/look.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Frances Bonner. (1999) This may look like science fiction, but... M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9902/look.php> ([your date of access]).

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(Alexander Schunka, Berlin) Schriften zur Reise Herzog Friedrichs von Sachsen-Gotha nach Frankreich und Italien 1667 und 1668. Eine Edition, 3 Bde., Bd. 1: Reiseberichte; Bd. 2: Planung, Landeskunde, Rechnungen; Bd. 3: Briefe, hrsg. v. Peter-Michael Hahn / Holger Kürbis (Schriften des Staatsarchivs Gotha, 14.1 – 3), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2019, Böhlau, XLVI u. 546 S. / Abb.; 660 S.; 374 S., € 200,00. (Michael Kaiser, Köln) Mulsow, Martin, Radikale Frühaufklärung in Deutschland 1680 – 1720, Bd. 1: Moderne aus dem Untergrund; Bd. 2: Clandestine Vernunft, Göttingen 2018, Wallstein, 502 bzw. 624 S. / Abb., € 59,90. (Helmut Zedelmaier, München) Göse, Frank / Jürgen Kloosterhuis (Hrsg.), Mehr als nur Soldatenkönig. Neue Schlaglichter auf Lebenswelt und Regierungswerk Friedrich Wilhelms I. (Veröffentlichungen aus den Archiven Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Forschungen, 18), Berlin 2020, Duncker &amp; Humblot, 398 S. / Abb., € 89,90. (Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, Berlin/Münster) Füssel, Marian, Der Preis des Ruhms. Eine Weltgeschichte des Siebenjährigen Krieges. 1756 – 1763, München 2019, Beck, 656 S. / Abb., € 32,00. (Florian Schönfuß, Oxford) Flügel, Wolfgang, Pastoren aus Halle und ihre Gemeinden in Pennsylvania 1742 – 1820. Deutsche Lutheraner zwischen Persistenz und Assimilation (Hallische Beiträge zur Geschichte des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, 14), Berlin / Boston 2019, de Gruyter, 480 S. / Abb., € 99,95. (Marianne Taatz-Jacobi, Halle a. d. S.) Braun, Christine, Die Entstehung des Mythos vom Soldatenhandel 1776 – 1813. Europäische Öffentlichkeit und der „hessische Soldatenverkauf“ nach Amerika am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts (Quellen und Forschungen zur hessischen Geschichte, 178), Darmstadt / Marburg 2018, Selbstverlag der Historischen Kommission Darmstadt und der Historischen Kommission für Hessen, 296 S., € 28,00. 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…love is queered not when we discover it to be resistant to or more than its known forms, but when we see that there is no world that admits how it actually works as a principle of living. Lauren Berlant – “Love, A Queer Feeling” As the sun beats down on a very dusty Musgrave Park, the crowd is hushed in respect for the elder addressing us. It is Pride Fair Day and we are listening to the story of how this place has been a home for queer and black people throughout Brisbane’s history. Like so many others, this park has been a place of refuge in times when Boundary Streets marked the lines aboriginal people couldn’t cross to enter the genteel heart of Brisbane’s commercial district. The street names remain today, and even if movements across territory are somewhat less constrained, a manslaughter trial taking place nearby reminds us of the surveillance aboriginal people still suffer as a result of their refusal to stay off the streets and out of sight in homes they don’t have. In the past few years, Fair Day has grown in size. It now charges an entry fee to fence out unwelcome guests, so that those who normally live here have been effectively uninvited from the party. On this sunny Saturday, we sit and talk about these things, and wonder at the number of spaces still left in this city for spontaneous, non-commercial encounters and alliances. We could hardly have known that in the course of just a few weeks, the distance separating us from others would grow even further. During the course of Brisbane’s month-long Pride celebrations in 2007, two events affected the rights agendas of both queer and black Australians. First, The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Report, Same Sex, Same Entitlements, was tabled in parliament. Second, the Federal government decided to declare a state of emergency in remote indigenous communities in the Northern Territory in response to an inquiry on the state of aboriginal child abuse. (The full title of the report is “Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle”: Little Children are Sacred, and the words are from the Arrandic languages of the Central Desert Region of the Northern Territory. The report’s front cover also explains the title in relation to traditional law of the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land.) While the latter issue has commanded the most media and intellectual attention, and will be discussed later in this piece, the timing of both reports provides an opportunity to consider the varying experiences of two particularly marginalised groups in contemporary Australia. In a period when the Liberal Party has succeeded in pitting minority claims against one another as various manifestations of “special interests” (Brett, Gregg) this essay suggests there is a case to be made for queer and black activists to join forces against wider tendencies that affect both communities. To do this I draw on the work of American critic, Lauren Berlant, who for many years has offered a unique take on debates about citizenship in the United States. Writing from a queer theory perspective, Berlant argues that the conservative political landscape in her country has succeeded in convincing people that “the intimacy of citizenship is something scarce and sacred, private and proper, and only for members of families” (Berlant Queen 2-3). The consequence of this shift is that politics moves from being a conversation conducted in the public sphere about social issues to instead resemble a form of adjudication on the conduct of others in the sphere of private life. In this way, Berlant indicates how heteronormative culture “uses cruel and mundane strategies both to promote change from non-normative populations and to deny them state, federal, and juridical supports because they are deemed morally incompetent to their own citizenship” (Berlant, Queen 19). In relation to the so-called state of emergency in the Northern Territory, coming so soon after attempts to encourage indigenous home-ownership in the same region, the compulsion to promote change from non-normative populations currently affects indigenous Australians in ways that resonate with Berlant’s argument. While her position reacts to an environment where the moral majority has a much firmer hold on the national political spectrum, in Australia these conservative forces have no need to be so eloquent—normativity is already embedded in a particular form of “ordinariness” that is the commonsense basis for public political debate (Allon, Brett and Moran). These issues take on further significance as home-ownership and aspirations towards it have gradually become synonymous with the demonstration of appropriate citizenship under the Coalition government: here, phrases like “an interest rate election” are assumed to encapsulate voter sentiment while “the mortgage belt” has emerged as the demographic most keenly wooed by precariously placed politicians. As Berlant argues elsewhere, the project of normalization that makes heterosexuality hegemonic also entails “material practices that, though not explicitly sexual, are implicated in the hierarchies of property and propriety” that secure heteronormative privilege (Berlant and Warner 548). Inhabitants of remote indigenous communities in Australia are invited to desire and enact normal homes in order to be accepted and rewarded as valuable members of the nation; meanwhile gay and lesbian couples base their claims for recognition on the adequate manifestation of normal homes. In this situation black and queer activists share an interest in elaborating forms of kinship and community that resist the limited varieties of home-building currently sanctioned and celebrated by the State. As such, I will conclude this essay with a model for this alternative process of home-building in the hope of inspiring others. Home Sweet Home Ever since the declaration of terra nullius, white Australia has had a hard time recognising homes it doesn’t consider normal. To the first settlers, indigenous people’s uncultivated land lacked meaning, their seasonal itinerancy challenged established notions of property, while their communal living and wider kinship relations confused nuclear models of procreative responsibility and ancestry. From the homes white people still call “camps” many aboriginal people were moved against their will on to “missions” which even in name invoked the goal of assimilation into mainstream society. So many years later, white people continue to maintain that their version of homemaking is the most superior, the most economically effective, the most functional, with government policy and media commentators both agreeing that “the way out of indigenous disadvantage is home ownership.”(The 1 July broadcast of the esteemed political chat show Insiders provides a representative example of this consensus view among some of the country’s most respected journalists.) In the past few months, low-interest loans have been touted as the surest route out of the shared “squalor” (Weekend Australian, June 30-July1) of communal living and the right path towards economic development in remote aboriginal communities (Karvelas, “New Deal”). As these references suggest, The Australian newspaper has been at the forefront of reporting these government initiatives in a positive light: one story from late May featured a picture of Tiwi Islander Mavis Kerinaiua watering her garden with the pet dog and sporting a Tigers Aussie Rules singlet. The headline, “Home, sweet home, for Mavis” (Wilson) was a striking example of a happy and contented black woman in her own backyard, especially given how regularly mainstream national news coverage of indigenous issues follows a script of failed aboriginal communities. In stories like these, communal land ownership is painted as the cause of dysfunction, and individual homes are crucial to “changing the culture.” Never is it mentioned that communal living arrangements clearly were functional before white settlement, were an intrinsic part of “the culture”; nor is it acknowledged that the option being offered to indigenous people is land that had already been taken away from them in one way or another. That this same land can be given back only on certain conditions—including financially rewarding those who “prove they are doing well” by cultivating their garden in recognisably right ways (Karvelas, “New Deal”)— bolsters Berlant’s claim that government rhetoric succeeds by transforming wider structural questions into matters of individual responsibility. Home ownership is the stunningly selective neoliberal interpretation of “land rights”. The very notion of private property erases the social and cultural underpinnings of communal living as a viable way of life, stigmatising any alternative forms of belonging that might form the basis for another kind of home. Little Children Are Sacred The latest advance in efforts to encourage greater individual responsibility in indigenous communities highlights child abuse as the pivotal consequence of State and Local government inaction. The innocent indigenous child provides the catalyst for a myriad of competing political positions, the most vocal of which welcomes military intervention on behalf of powerless, voiceless kids trapped in horrendous scenarios (Kervalas, “Pearson’s Passion”). In these representations, the potentially abused aboriginal child takes on “supericonicity” in public debate. In her North American context, Berlant uses this concept to explain how the unborn child figures in acrimonious arguments over abortion. The foetus has become the most mobilising image in the US political scene because: it is an image of an American, perhaps the last living American, not yet bruised by history: not yet caught up in the processes of secularisation and centralisation… This national icon is too innocent of knowledge, agency, and accountability and thus has ethical claims on the adult political agents who write laws, make culture, administer resources, control things. (Berlant, Queen 6) In Australia, the indigenous child takes on supericonicity because he or she is too young to formulate a “black armband” view of history, to have a point of view on why their circumstance happens to be so objectionable, to vote out the government that wants to survey and penetrate his or her body. The child’s very lack of agency is used as justification for the military action taken by those who write laws, make the culture that will be recognized as an appropriate performance of indigeneity, administer (at the same time as they cut) essential resources; those who, for the moment, control things. However, and although a government perspective would not recognize this, in Australia the indigenous child is always already bruised by conventional history in the sense that he or she will have trouble accessing the stories of ancestors and therefore the situation that affects his or her entry into the world. Indeed, it is precisely the extent to which the government denies its institutional culpability in inflicting wounds on aboriginal people throughout history that the indigenous child’s supericonicity is now available as a political weapon. Same-Sex: Same Entitlements A situation in which the desire for home ownership is pedagogically enforced while also being economically sanctioned takes on further dimensions when considered next to the fate of other marginalised groups in society—those for whom an appeal for acceptance and equal rights pivots on the basis of successfully performing normal homes. While indigenous Australians are encouraged to aspire for home ownership as the appropriate manifestation of responsible citizenship, the HREOC report represents a group of citizens who crave recognition for already having developed this same aspiration. In the case studies selected for the Same-Sex: Same Entitlements Report, discrimination against same-sex couples is identified in areas such as work and taxation, workers’ compensation, superannuation, social security, veterans’ entitlements and childrearing. It recommends changes to existing laws in these areas to match those that apply to de facto relationships. When launching the report, the commissioner argued that gay people suffer discrimination “simply because of whom they love”, and the report launch quotes a “self-described ‘average suburban family’” who insist “we don’t want special treatment …we just want equality” (HREOC). Such positioning exercises give some insight into Berlant’s statement that “love is a site that has perhaps not yet been queered enough” (Berlant, “Love” 433). A queer response to the report might highlight that by focussing on legal entitlements of the most material kind, little is done to challenge the wider situation in which one’s sexual relationship has the power to determine intimate possessions and decisions—whether this is buying a plane ticket, getting a loan, retiring in some comfort or finding a nice nursing home. An agenda calling for legislative changes to financial entitlement serves to reiterate rather than challenge the extent to which economically sanctioned subjectivities are tied to sexuality and normative models of home-building. A same-sex rights agenda promoting traditional notions of procreative familial attachment (the concerned parents of gay kids cited in the report, the emphasis on the children of gay couples) suggests that this movement for change relies on a heteronormative model—if this is understood as the manner in which the institutions of personal life remain “the privileged institutions of social reproduction, the accumulation and transfer of capital, and self-development” (Berlant and Warner 553). What happens to those who do not seek the same procreative path? Put another way, the same-sex entitlements discourse can be seen to demand “intelligibility” within the hegemonic understanding of love, when love currently stands as the primordial signifier and ultimate suturing device for all forms of safe, reliable and useful citizenly identity (Berlant, “Love”). In its very terminology, same-sex entitlement asks to access the benefits of normativity without challenging the ideological or economic bases for its attachment to particular living arrangements and rewards. The political agenda for same-sex rights taking shape in the Federal arena appears to have chosen its objectives carefully in order to fit existing notions of proper home building and the economic incentives that come with them. While this is understandable in a conservative political environment, a wider agenda for queer activism in and outside the home would acknowledge that safety, security and belonging are universal desires that stretch beyond material acquisitions, financial concerns and procreative activity (however important these things are). It is to the possibilities this perspective might generate that I now turn. One Size Fits Most Urban space is always a host space. The right to the city extends to those who use the city. It is not limited to property owners. (Berlant and Warner, 563) The affective charge and resonance of a concept like home allows an opportunity to consider the intimacies particular to different groups in society, at the same time as it allows contemplation of the kinds of alliances increasingly required to resist neoliberalism’s impact on personal space. On one level, this might entail publicly denouncing representations of indigenous living conditions that describe them as “squalor” as some kind of hygienic short-hand that comes at the expense of advocating infrastructure suited to the very different way of living that aboriginal kinship relations typically require. Further, as alternative cultural understandings of home face ongoing pressure to fit normative ideals, a key project for contemporary queer activism is to archive, document and publicise the varied ways people choose to live at this point in history in defiance of sanctioned arrangements (eg Gorman-Murray 2007). Rights for gay and lesbian couples and parents need not be called for in the name of equality if to do so means reproducing a logic that feeds the worst stereotypes around non-procreating queers. Such a perspective fares poorly for the many literally unproductive citizens, queer and straight alike, whose treacherous refusal to breed banishes them from the respectable suburban politics to which the current government caters. Which takes me back to the park. Later that afternoon on Fair Day, we’ve been entertained by a range of performers, including the best Tina Turner impersonator I’ll ever see. But the highlight is the festival’s special guest, Vanessa Wagner who decides to end her show with a special ceremony. Taking the role of celebrant, Vanessa invites three men on to the stage who she explains are in an ongoing, committed three-way relationship. Looking a little closer, I remember meeting these blokes at a friend’s party last Christmas Eve: I was the only girl in an apartment full of gay men in the midst of some serious partying (and who could blame them, on the eve of an event that holds dubious relevance for their preferred forms of intimacy and celebration?). The wedding takes place in front of an increasingly boisterous crowd that cannot fail to appreciate the gesture as farcically mocking the sacred bastion of gay activism—same-sex marriage. But clearly, the ceremony plays a role in consecrating the obvious desire these men have for each other, in a safe space that feels something like a home. Their relationship might be a long way from many people’s definition of normal, but it clearly operates with care, love and a will for some kind of longevity. For queer subjects, faced with a history of persecution, shame and an unequal share of a pernicious illness, this most banal of possible definitions of home has been a luxury difficult to afford. Understood in this way, queer experience is hard to compare with that of indigenous people: “The queer world is a space of entrances, exits, unsystematised lines of acquaintance, projected horizons, typifying examples, alternate routes, blockages, incommensurate geographies” (Berlant and Warner 558). In many instances, it has “required the development of kinds of intimacy that bear no necessary relation to domestic space, to kinship, to the couple form, to property, or to the nation” (ibid) in liminal and fleeting zones of improvisation like parties, parks and public toilets. In contrast, indigenous Australians’ distinct lines of ancestry, geography, and story continue through generations of kin in spite of the efforts of a colonising power to reproduce others in its own image. But in this sense, what queer and black Australians now share is the fight to live and love in more than one way, with more than one person: to extend relationships of care beyond the procreative imperative and to include land that is beyond the scope of one’s own backyard. Both indigenous and queer Australians stand to benefit from a shared project “to support forms of affective, erotic and personal living that are public in the sense of accessible, available to memory, and sustained through collective activity” (Berlant and Warner 562). To build this history is to generate an archive that is “not simply a repository” but “is also a theory of cultural relevance” (Halberstam 163). A queer politics of home respects and learns from different ways of organising love, care, affinity and responsibility to a community. This essay has been an attempt to document other ways of living that take place in the pockets of one city, to show that homes often exist where others see empty space, and that love regularly survives beyond the confines of the couple. In learning from the history of oppression experienced in the immediate territories I inhabit, I also hope it captures what it means to reckon with the ongoing knowledge of being an uninvited guest in the home of another culture, one which, through shared activism, will continue to survive much longer than this, or any other archive. References Allon, Fiona. “Home as Cultural Translation: John Howard’s Earlwood.” Communal/Plural 5 (1997): 1-25. Berlant, Lauren. The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. ———. “Love, A Queer Feeling.” Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis. Eds. Tim Dean and Christopher Lane. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001. 432-51. ———, and Michael Warner. “Sex in Public.” Critical Inquiry 24.2 (1998): 547-566. Brett, Judith. Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class: From Alfred Deakin to John Howard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ———, and Anthony Moran. Ordinary People’s Politics: Australians Talk About Politics, Life and the Future of Their Country. Melbourne: Pluto Press, 2006. Gorman-Murray, Andrew. “Contesting Domestic Ideals: Queering the Australian Home.” Australian Geographer 38.2 (2007): 195-213. Gregg, Melissa. “The Importance of Being Ordinary.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 10.1 (2007): 95-104. Halberstam, Judith. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York and London: NYU Press, 2005 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Same-Sex: Same Entitlements Report. 2007. 21 Aug. 2007 http://www.hreoc.gov.au/human_rights/samesex/report/index.html>. ———. Launch of Final Report of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s Same-Sex: Same Entitlements Inquiry (transcript). 2007. 5 July 2007 . Insiders. ABC TV. 1 July 2007. 5 July 2007 http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2007/s1966728.htm>. Karvelas, Patricia. “It’s New Deal or Despair: Pearson.” The Weekend Australian 12-13 May 2007: 7. ———. “How Pearson’s Passion Moved Howard to Act.” The Australian. 23 June 2007. 5 July 2007 http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21952951-5013172,00.html>. Northern Territory Government Inquiry Report into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse. Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle: Little Children Are Sacred. 2007. 5 July 2007 http://www.nt.gov.au/dcm/inquirysaac/pdf/bipacsa_final_report.pdf>. Wilson, Ashleigh. “Home, Sweet Home, for Mavis.” The Weekend Australian 12-13 May 2007: 7. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Gregg, Melissa. "Normal Homes." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/02-gregg.php>. APA Style Gregg, M. (Aug. 2007) "Normal Homes," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/02-gregg.php>.

Cremer, Annette C. / Martin Mulsow (Hrsg.), Objekte als Quellen der historischen Kulturwissenschaften. Stand und Perspektiven der Forschung (Ding, Materialität, Geschichte, 2), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2017, Böhlau, 352 S. / Abb., € 50,00. (Alexander Georg Durben, Münster) Pfister, Ulrich (Hrsg.), Kulturen des Entscheidens. Narrative – Praktiken – Ressourcen (Kulturen des Entscheidens, 1), Göttingen 2019, Vandenhoeck &amp; Ruprecht, 409 S. / Abb., € 70,00. (Wolfgang Reinhard, Freiburg i. Br.) Krischer, André (Hrsg.), Verräter. Geschichte eines Deutungsmusters, Wien / Köln / Weimar 2019, Böhlau, 353 S. / Abb., € 39,00. (Wolfgang Reinhard, Freiburg i. Br.) Baumbach, Hendrik / Horst Carl (Hrsg.), Landfrieden – epochenübergreifend. Neue Perspektiven der Landfriedensforschung auf Verfassung, Recht, Konflikt (Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, Beiheft 54), Berlin 2018, Duncker &amp; Humblot, 280 S., € 69,90. (Fabian Schulze, Ulm / Augsburg) Ertl, Thomas (Hrsg.), Erzwungene Exile. 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IntroductionThere are two types of Africa. The first is a place where people and cultures live. The second is the image of Africa that has been invented through colonial knowledge and power. The colonial image of Africa, as the Other of Europe, a land “enveloped in the dark mantle of night” was supported by western states as it justified their colonial practices (Hegel 91). Any evidence that challenged the myth of the Dark Continent was destroyed, removed or ignored. While the looting of African natural resources has been studied, the looting of African knowledges hasn’t received as much attention, partly based on the assumption that Africans did not produce knowledge that could be stolen. This article invalidates this myth by examining the legacy of Ethiopia’s indigenous Ge’ez literature, and its looting and abduction by powerful western agents. The article argues that this has resulted in epistemic violence, where students of the Ethiopian indigenous education system do not have access to their books, while European orientalists use them to interpret Ethiopian history and philosophy using a foreign lens. The analysis is based on interviews with teachers and students of ten Ge’ez schools in Ethiopia, and trips to the Ethiopian manuscript collections in The British Library, The Princeton Library, the Institute of Ethiopian Studies and The National Archives in Addis Ababa.The Context of Ethiopian Indigenous KnowledgesGe’ez is one of the ancient languages of Africa. According to Professor Ephraim Isaac, “about 10,000 years ago, one single nation or community of a single linguistic group existed in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Horn of Africa” (The Habesha). The language of this group is known as Proto-Afroasiatic or Afrasian languages. It is the ancestor of the Semitic, Cushitic, Nilotic, Omotic and other languages that are currently spoken in Ethiopia by its 80 ethnic groups, and the neighbouring countries (Diakonoff). Ethiopians developed the Ge’ez language as their lingua franca with its own writing system some 2000 years ago. Currently, Ge’ez is the language of academic scholarship, studied through the traditional education system (Isaac, The Ethiopian). Since the fourth century, an estimated 1 million Ge’ez manuscripts have been written, covering religious, historical, mathematical, medicinal, and philosophical texts.One of the most famous Ge’ez manuscripts is the Kebra Nagast, a foundational text that embodied the indigenous conception of nationhood in Ethiopia. The philosophical, political and religious themes in this book, which craft Ethiopia as God’s country and the home of the Ark of the Covenant, contributed to the country’s success in defending itself from European colonialism. The production of books like the Kebra Nagast went hand in hand with a robust indigenous education system that trained poets, scribes, judges, artists, administrators and priests. Achieving the highest stages of learning requires about 30 years after which the scholar would be given the rare title Arat-Ayina, which means “four eyed”, a person with the ability to see the past as well as the future. Today, there are around 50,000 Ge’ez schools across the country, most of which are in rural villages and churches.Ge’ez manuscripts are important textbooks and reference materials for students. They are carefully prepared from vellum “to make them last forever” (interview, 3 Oct. 2019). Some of the religious books are regarded as “holy persons who breathe wisdom that gives light and food to the human soul”. Other manuscripts, often prepared as scrolls are used for medicinal purposes. Each manuscript is uniquely prepared reflecting inherited wisdom on contemporary lives using the method called Tirguamme, the act of giving meaning to sacred texts. Preparation of books is costly. Smaller manuscript require the skins of 50-70 goats/sheep and large manuscript needed 100-120 goats/sheep (Tefera).The Loss of Ethiopian ManuscriptsSince the 18th century, a large quantity of these manuscripts have been stolen, looted, or smuggled out of the country by travellers who came to the country as explorers, diplomats and scientists. The total number of Ethiopian manuscripts taken is still unknown. Amsalu Tefera counted 6928 Ethiopian manuscripts currently held in foreign libraries and museums. This figure does not include privately held or unofficial collections (41).Looting and smuggling were sponsored by western governments, institutions, and notable individuals. For example, in 1868, The British Museum Acting Director Richard Holms joined the British army which was sent to ‘rescue’ British hostages at Maqdala, the capital of Emperor Tewodros. Holms’ mission was to bring treasures for the Museum. Before the battle, Tewodros had established the Medhanialem library with more than 1000 manuscripts as part of Ethiopia’s “industrial revolution”. When Tewodros lost the war and committed suicide, British soldiers looted the capital, including the treasury and the library. They needed 200 mules and 15 elephants to transport the loot and “set fire to all buildings so that no trace was left of the edifices which once housed the manuscripts” (Rita Pankhurst 224). Richard Holmes collected 356 manuscripts for the Museum. A wealthy British woman called Lady Meux acquired some of the most illuminated manuscripts. In her will, she bequeathed them to be returned to Ethiopia. However, her will was reversed by court due to a campaign from the British press (Richard Pankhurst). In 2018, the V&A Museum in London displayed some of the treasures by incorporating Maqdala into the imperial narrative of Britain (Woldeyes, Reflections).Britain is by no means the only country to seek Ethiopian manuscripts for their collections. Smuggling occurred in the name of science, an act of collecting manuscripts for study. Looting involved local collaborators and powerful foreign sponsors from places like France, Germany and the Vatican. Like Maqdala, this was often sponsored by governments or powerful financers. For example, the French government sponsored the Dakar-Djibouti Mission led by Marcel Griaule, which “brought back about 350 manuscripts and scrolls from Gondar” (Wion 2). It was often claimed that these manuscripts were purchased, rather than looted. Johannes Flemming of Germany was said to have purchased 70 manuscripts and ten scrolls for the Royal Library of Berlin in 1905. However, there was no local market for buying manuscripts. Ge’ez manuscripts were, and still are, written to serve spiritual and secular life in Ethiopia, not for buying and selling. There are countless other examples, but space limits how many can be provided in this article. What is important to note is that museums and libraries have accrued impressive collections without emphasising how those collections were first obtained. The loss of the intellectual heritage of Ethiopians to western collectors has had an enormous impact on the country.Knowledge Grabbing: The Denial of Access to KnowledgeWith so many manuscripts lost, European collectors became the narrators of Ethiopian knowledge and history. Edward Ullendorff, a known orientalist in Ethiopian studies, refers to James Bruce as “the explorer of Abyssinia” (114). Ullendorff commented on the significance of Bruce’s travel to Ethiopia asperhaps the most important aspect of Bruce’s travels was the collection of Ethiopic manuscripts… . They opened up entirely new vistas for the study of Ethiopian languages and placed this branch of Oriental scholarship on a much more secure basis. It is not known how many MSS. reached Europe through his endeavours, but the present writer is aware of at least twenty-seven, all of which are exquisite examples of Ethiopian manuscript art. (133)This quote encompasses three major ways in which epistemic violence occurs: denial of access to knowledge, Eurocentric interpretation of Ethiopian manuscripts, and the handling of Ge’ez manuscripts as artefacts from the past. These will be discussed below.Western ‘travellers’, such as Bruce, did not fully disclose how many manuscripts they took or how they acquired them. The abundance of Ethiopian manuscripts in western institutions can be compared to the scarcity of such materials among traditional schools in Ethiopia. In this research, I have visited ten indigenous schools in Wollo (Lalibela, Neakutoleab, Asheten, Wadla), in Gondar (Bahita, Kuskwam, Menbere Mengist), and Gojam (Bahirdar, Selam Argiew Maryam, Giorgis). In all of the schools, there is lack of Ge’ez manuscripts. Students often come from rural villages and do not receive any government support. The scarcity of Ge’ez manuscripts, and the lack of funding which might allow for the purchasing of books, means the students depend mainly on memorising Ge’ez texts told to them from the mouth of their teacher. Although this method of learning is not new, it currently is the only way for passing indigenous knowledges across generations.The absence of manuscripts is most strongly felt in the advanced schools. For instance, in the school of Qene, poetic literature is created through an in-depth study of the vocabulary and grammar of Ge’ez. A Qene student is required to develop a deep knowledge of Ge’ez in order to understand ancient and medieval Ge’ez texts which are used to produce poetry with multiple meanings. Without Ge’ez manuscripts, students cannot draw their creative works from the broad intellectual tradition of their ancestors. When asked how students gain access to textbooks, one student commented:we don’t have access to Birana books (Ge’ez manuscripts written on vellum). We cannot learn the ancient wisdom of painting, writing, and computing developed by our ancestors. We simply buy paper books such as Dawit (Psalms), Sewasew (grammar) or Degwa (book of songs with notations) and depend on our teachers to teach us the rest. We also lend these books to each other as many students cannot afford to buy them. Without textbooks, we expect to spend double the amount of time it would take if we had textbooks. (Interview, 3 Sep. 2019)Many students interrupt their studies and work as labourers to save up and buy paper textbooks, but they still don’t have access to the finest works taken to Europe. Most Ge’ez manuscripts remaining in Ethiopia are locked away in monasteries, church stores or other places to prevent further looting. The manuscripts in Addis Ababa University and the National Archives are available for researchers but not to the students of the indigenous system, creating a condition of internal knowledge grabbing.While the absence of Ge’ez manuscripts denied, and continues to deny, Ethiopians the chance to enrich their indigenous education, it benefited western orientalists to garner intellectual authority on the field of Ethiopian studies. In 1981, British Museum Director John Wilson said, “our Abyssinian holdings are more important than our Indian collection” (Bell 231). In reaction, Richard Pankhurst, the Director of Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa, responded that the collection was acquired through plunder. Defending the retaining of Maqdala manuscripts in Europe, Ullendorff wrote:neither Dr. Pankhurst nor the Ethiopian and western scholars who have worked on this collection (and indeed on others in Europe) could have contributed so significantly to the elucidation of Ethiopian history without the rich resources available in this country. Had they remained insitu, none of this would have been possible. (Qtd. in Bell 234)The manuscripts are therefore valued based on their contribution to western scholarship only. This is a continuation of epistemic violence whereby local knowledges are used as raw materials to produce Eurocentric knowledge, which in turn is used to teach Africans as though they had no prior knowledge. Scholars are defined as those western educated persons who can speak European languages and can travel to modern institutions to access the manuscripts. Knowledge grabbing regards previous owners as inexistent or irrelevant for the use of the grabbed knowledges.Knowledge grabbing also means indigenous scholars are deprived of critical resources to produce new knowledge based on their intellectual heritage. A Qene teacher commented: our students could not devote their time and energy to produce new knowledges in the same way our ancestors did. We have the tradition of Madeladel, Kimera, Kuteta, Mielad, Qene and tirguamme where students develop their own system of remembering, reinterpreting, practicing, and rewriting previous manuscripts and current ones. Without access to older manuscripts, we increasingly depend on preserving what is being taught orally by elders. (Interview, 4 Sep. 2019)This point is important as it relates to the common myth that indigenous knowledges are artefacts belonging to the past, not the present. There are millions of people who still use these knowledges, but the conditions necessary for their reproduction and improvement is denied through knowledge grabbing. The view of Ge’ez manuscripts as artefacts dismisses the Ethiopian view that Birana manuscripts are living persons. As a scholar told me in Gondar, “they are creations of Egziabher (God), like all of us. Keeping them in institutions is like keeping living bodies in graveyards” (interview, 5 Oct. 2019).Recently, the collection of Ethiopian manuscripts by western institutions has also been conducted digitally. Thousands of manuscripts have been microfilmed or digitised. For example, the EU funded Ethio-SPaRe project resulted in the digital collection of 2000 Ethiopian manuscripts (Nosnitsin). While digitisation promises better access for people who may not be able to visit institutions to see physical copies, online manuscripts are not accessible to indigenous school students in Ethiopia. They simply do not have computer or internet access and the manuscripts are catalogued in European languages. Both physical and digital knowledge grabbing results in the robbing of Ethiopian intellectual heritage, and denies the possibility of such manuscripts being used to inform local scholarship. Epistemic Violence: The European as ExpertWhen considered in relation to stolen or appropriated manuscripts, epistemic violence is the way in which local knowledge is interpreted using a foreign epistemology and gained dominance over indigenous worldviews. European scholars have monopolised the field of Ethiopian Studies by producing books, encyclopaedias and digital archives based on Ethiopian manuscripts, almost exclusively in European languages. The contributions of their work for western scholarship is undeniable. However, Kebede argues that one of the detrimental effects of this orientalist literature is the thesis of Semiticisation, the designation of the origin of Ethiopian civilisation to the arrival of Middle Eastern colonisers rather than indigenous sources.The thesis is invented to make the history of Ethiopia consistent with the Hegelian western view that Africa is a Dark Continent devoid of a civilisation of its own. “In light of the dominant belief that black peoples are incapable of great achievements, the existence of an early and highly advanced civilization constitutes a serious anomaly in the Eurocentric construction of the world” (Kebede 4). To address this anomaly, orientalists like Ludolph attributed the origin of Ethiopia’s writing system, agriculture, literature, and civilisation to the arrival of South Arabian settlers. For example, in his translation of the Kebra Nagast, Budge wrote: “the SEMITES found them [indigenous Ethiopians] negro savages, and taught them civilization and culture and the whole scriptures on which their whole literature is based” (x).In line with the above thesis, Dillman wrote that “the Abyssinians borrowed their Numerical Signs from the Greeks” (33). The views of these orientalist scholars have been challenged. For instance, leading scholar of Semitic languages Professor Ephraim Isaac considers the thesis of the Arabian origin of Ethiopian civilization “a Hegelian Eurocentric philosophical perspective of history” (2). Isaac shows that there is historical, archaeological, and linguistic evidence that suggest Ethiopia to be more advanced than South Arabia from pre-historic times. Various Ethiopian sources including the Kebra Nagast, the works of historian Asres Yenesew, and Ethiopian linguist Girma Demeke provide evidence for the indigenous origin of Ethiopian civilisation and languages.The epistemic violence of the Semeticisation thesis lies in how this Eurocentric ideological construction is the dominant narrative in the field of Ethiopian history and the education system. Unlike the indigenous view, the orientalist view is backed by strong institutional power both in Ethiopia and abroad. The orientalists control the field of Ethiopian studies and have access to Ge’ez manuscripts. Their publications are the only references for Ethiopian students. Due to Native Colonialism, a system of power run by native elites through the use of colonial ideas and practices (Woldeyes), the education system is the imitation of western curricula, including English as a medium of instruction from high school onwards. Students study the west more than Ethiopia. Indigenous sources are generally excluded as unscientific. Only the Eurocentric interpretation of Ethiopian manuscripts is regarded as scientific and objective.ConclusionEthiopia is the only African country never to be colonised. In its history it produced a large quantity of manuscripts in the Ge’ez language through an indigenous education system that involves the study of these manuscripts. Since the 19th century, there has been an ongoing loss of these manuscripts. European travellers who came to Ethiopia as discoverers, missionaries and scholars took a large number of manuscripts. The Battle of Maqdala involved the looting of the intellectual products of Ethiopia that were collected at the capital. With the introduction of western education and use of English as a medium of instruction, the state disregarded indigenous schools whose students have little access to the manuscripts. This article brings the issue of knowledge grapping, a situation whereby European institutions and scholars accumulate Ethiopia manuscripts without providing the students in Ethiopia to have access to those collections.Items such as manuscripts that are held in western institutions are not dead artefacts of the past to be preserved for prosperity. They are living sources of knowledge that should be put to use in their intended contexts. Local Ethiopian scholars cannot study ancient and medieval Ethiopia without travelling and gaining access to western institutions. This lack of access and resources has made European Ethiopianists almost the sole producers of knowledge about Ethiopian history and culture. For example, indigenous sources and critical research that challenge the Semeticisation thesis are rarely available to Ethiopian students. Here we see epistemic violence in action. Western control over knowledge production has the detrimental effect of inventing new identities, subjectivities and histories that translate into material effects in the lives of African people. In this way, Ethiopians and people all over Africa internalise western understandings of themselves and their history as primitive and in need of development or outside intervention. African’s intellectual and cultural heritage, these living bodies locked away in graveyards, must be put back into the hands of Africans.AcknowledgementThe author acknowledges the support of the Australian Academy of the Humanities' 2019 Humanities Travelling Fellowship Award in conducting this research.ReferencesBell, Stephen. “Cultural Treasures Looted from Maqdala: A Summary of Correspondence in British National Newspapers since 1981.” Kasa and Kasa. Eds. Tadesse Beyene, Richard Pankhurst, and Shifereraw Bekele. Addis Ababa: Ababa University Book Centre, 1990. 231-246.Budge, Wallis. A History of Ethiopia, Nubia and Abyssinia. London: Methuen and Co, 1982.Demeke, Girma Awgichew. The Origin of Amharic. Trenton: Red Sea Press, 2013.Diakonoff, Igor M. Afrasian Languages. Moscow: Nauka, 1988.Dillmann, August. Ethiopic Grammar. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2005.Hegel, Georg W.F. The Philosophy of History. New York: Dover, 1956.Isaac, Ephraim. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church. New Jersey: Red Sea Press, 2013.———. “An Open Letter to an Inquisitive Ethiopian Sister.” The Habesha, 2013. 1 Feb. 2020 <http://www.zehabesha.com/an-open-letter-to-an-inquisitive-young-ethiopian-sister-ethiopian-history-is-not-three-thousand-years/>.Kebra Nagast. "The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelik I." Trans. Wallis Budge. London: Oxford UP, 1932.Pankhurst, Richard. "The Napier Expedition and the Loot Form Maqdala." Presence Africaine 133-4 (1985): 233-40.Pankhurst, Rita. "The Maqdala Library of Tewodros." Kasa and Kasa. Eds. Tadesse Beyene, Richard Pankhurst, and Shifereraw Bekele. Addis Ababa: Ababa University Book Centre, 1990. 223-230.Tefera, Amsalu. ነቅዐ መጻህፍት ከ መቶ በላይ በግዕዝ የተጻፉ የእኢትዮጵያ መጻህፍት ዝርዝር ከማብራሪያ ጋር።. Addis Ababa: Jajaw, 2019.Nosnitsin, Denis. "Ethio-Spare Cultural Heritage of Christian Ethiopia: Salvation, Preservation and Research." 2010. 5 Jan. 2019 <https://www.aai.uni-hamburg.de/en/ethiostudies/research/ethiospare/missions/pdf/report2010-1.pdf>. Ullendorff, Edward. "James Bruce of Kinnaird." The Scottish Historical Review 32.114, part 2 (1953): 128-43.Wion, Anaïs. "Collecting Manuscripts and Scrolls in Ethiopia: The Missions of Johannes Flemming (1905) and Enno Littmann (1906)." 2012. 5 Jan. 2019 <https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00524382/document>. Woldeyes, Yirga Gelaw. Native Colonialism: Education and the Economy of Violence against Traditions in Ethiopia. Trenton: Red Sea Press, 2017.———. “Reflections on Ethiopia’s Stolen Treasures on Display in a London Museum.” The Conversation. 2018. 5 June 2018 <https://theconversation.com/reflections-on-ethiopias-stolen-treasures-on-display-in-a-london-museum-97346>.Yenesew, Asres. ትቤ፡አክሱም፡መኑ፡ አንተ? Addis Ababa: Nigid Printing House, 1959 [1951 EC].

Introduction Ever-enduring advancements in science and technology promise to offer solutions to problems or simply to make life a bit easier. However, not every advancement has only positive effects, but can also have undesired, negative ramifications. This article will take a closer look at Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DXHR), a dystopian video game which promises to put players in the position of deciding whether the science of human enhancement is a way to try to play God, or whether it enables us “to become the Gods we’ve always been striving to be” (Eidos Montreal, “Deus Ex: Human Revolution”). In this article I will argue that DXHR creates a space in which players can virtually witness future technologies for human performance enhancement without the need to alter their own bodies. DXHR is special particularly in two respects: first, the developers have achieved a high credibility and scientific realism of the enhancement technologies depicted in the game which can be described as being “diegetic prototypes” (Kirby, “The Future Is Now ” 43); second, the game directly invites players to reflect upon the impact and morality of human enhancement. It does so through a story in line with the cyberpunk genre, which envisions not only the potential benefits of an emergent technology, but has an even stronger focus on the negative contingencies. The game and its developers foresee a near-future society that is split into two fractions due to human enhancement technologies which come in the form of neuro-implants and mechanical prosthetics; and they foresee a near-future setting in which people are socially and economically forced to undergo enhancement surgery in order to keep up with the augmented competition. DXHR is set in the year 2027 and the player takes control of Adam Jensen, an ex-SWAT police officer who is now the chief of security of Sarif Industries, one of the world's leading biotechnology companies that produce enhancement technologies. Augmented terrorists attack Sarif Industries, abduct the head scientists, and nearly kill Jensen. Jensen merely survives because his boss puts him through enhancement surgery, which replaces many parts of his body with mechanical augmentations. In the course of the game it becomes clear that Jensen has been augmented beyond any life-saving necessity that grants him superhuman abilities and allows him to find and defeat the terrorists, but the augmentations also challenge his humanity. Is Jensen a human, a cyborg, or has he become more machine than man? DXHR grants players the illusion of immersion into a virtual world in which augmentations exist as a matter of fact and in which a certain level of control can be practiced. Players take up the role of a character distinctly more powerful and capable than the person in control, exceeding the limits of human abilities. The superior abilities are a result of scientific and technological advancements implying that every man or woman is able to attain the same abilities by simply acquiring augmentations. Thus, with the help of the playable character, Adam Jensen, the game lets players experience augmentations without any irreparable damages done to their bodies, but the experience will leave a lasting impression on players regarding the science of human enhancement. The experience with augmentations happens through and benefits from the effect of “virtual witnessing”: The technology of virtual witnessing involves the production in a reader’s mind of such an image of an experimental scene as obviates the necessity for either direct witness or replication. Through virtual witnessing the multiplication of witnesses could be, in principle, unlimited. (Shapin and Schaffer 60) In other words, simply by reading about and/or seeing scientific advancements, audiences can witness them without having to be present at the site of creation. The video game, hereby, is itself the medium of virtual witnessing whereby audiences can experience scientific advancements. Nevertheless, the video game is not just about reading or seeing potential future enhancement technologies, but permits players to virtually test-drive augmentations—to actually try out three-dimensionally rendered prototypes on a virtual body. In order to justify this thesis, a couple of things need to be clarified that explain in which ways the virtual witnessing of fictional enhancements in DXHR is a valid claim. Getting into the Game First I want to briefly describe how I investigated the stated issue. I have undertaken an auto-ethnography (Ellis, Adams, and Bochner) of DXHR, which concretely means that I have analytically played DXHR in an explorative fashion (Aarseth) trying to discover as many elements on human enhancement that the game has to offer. This method requires not only close observation of the virtual environment and documentation through field notes and screenshots, but also self-reflection of the actions that I chose to take and that were offered to me in the course of the game. An essential part of analytically playing a game is to be aware that the material requires “the activity of an actual player in order to be accessible for scrutiny” (Iversen), and that the player’s input fundamentally shapes the gaming experience (Juul 42). The meaning of the game is contingent upon the contribution of the player, especially in times in which digital games grant players more and more freedom in terms of narrative construction. In contrast to traditional narrative, the game poses an active challenge to the player which entails the need to become better in relation to the game’s mechanics and hence “studying games … implies interacting with the game rules and exploring the possibilities created by these rules, in addition to studying the graphical codes or the narration that unfolds” (Malliet). It is important to highlight that, although the visual representation of human enhancement technologies has an enormous potential impact on the player’s experience, it is not the only crucial element. Next to the representational shell, the core of the game, i.e. “how game rules and interactions with game objects and other players are structured” (Mäyrä 165), shapes the virtual witnessing of the augmentations in just an important way. Finally, the empirical material that was collected was analyzed and interpreted with the help of close-reading (Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum 395). In addition to the game itself, I have enriched my empirical material with interviews of developers of the game that are partly freely available on the Internet, and with the promotional material such as the trailers and a website (Eidos Montreal, “Sarif Industries”) that was released prior to the game. Sociotechnical Imaginaries In this case study of DXHR I have not only investigated how augmented bodies and enhancement technologies are represented in this specific video game, but also attempted to uncover which “sociotechnical imaginaries” (Jasanoff and Kim) underlie the game and support the virtual witnessing experience. Sociotechnical imaginaries are defined as “collectively imagined forms of social life and social order reflected in the design and fulfillment of nation-specific scientific and/or technological projects” (Jasanoff and Kim 120). The concept appeared to be suitable for this study as it covers and includes “promises, visions and expectations of future possibilities” (Jasanoff and Kim 122) of a technology as well as “implicit understandings of what is good or desirable in the social world writ large” (Jasanoff and Kim 122–23). The game draws upon several imaginaries of human enhancement. For example, the most basic imaginary in the game is that advanced engineered prosthetics and implants will be able to not only remedy dysfunctional parts of the human body, but will be able to upgrade these. Apart from this idea, the two prevailing sociotechnical imaginaries that forward the narrative can be subsumed as the transhumanist and the purist imaginary. The latter views human enhancement, with the help of science and technology, as unnatural and as a threat to humanity particularly through the power that it grants to individuals, while the former transports the opposing view. Transhumanism is: the intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. (Chrislenko et al.) The transhumanist imaginary in the game views technological development of the body as another step in the human evolution, not as something abhorrent to nature, but a fundamental human quality. Similar ideas can be found in the writings of Sigmund Freud and Arnold Gehlen, who both view the human being’s need to improve as part of its culture. Gehlen described the human as a “Mängelwesen”—a ‘deficient’ creature—who is, in contrast to other species, not specialized to a specific environment, but has the ability to adapt to nearly every situation because of this deficiency (Menne, Trutwin, and Türk). Freud even denoted the human as a “Prothesengott”—a god of prostheses: By means of all his tools, man makes his own organs more perfect—both the motor and the sensory—or else removes the obstacles in the way of their activity. Machinery places gigantic power at his disposal which, like his muscles, he can employ in any direction; ships and aircraft have the effect that neither air nor water can prevent his traversing them. With spectacles he corrects the defects of the lens in his own eyes; with telescopes he looks at far distances; with the microscope he overcomes the limitations in visibility due to the structure of his retina. (Freud 15) Returning to DXHR, how do the sociotechnical imaginaries matter for the player? Primarily, the imaginaries cannot be avoided as they pervade nearly every element in the game, from the main story that hinges upon human enhancement over the many optional side missions, to contextual elements such as a conference on “the next steps in human evolution” (Eidos Montreal, “Deus Ex: Human Revolution”). Most importantly, it impacts the player’s view in a crucial way. Human enhancement technologies are presented as controversial, neither exclusively good nor bad, which require reflection and perhaps even legal regulation. In this way, DXHR can be seen as offering the player a restricted building set of sociotechnical imaginaries of human enhancement, whereby the protagonist, Adam Jensen, becomes the player’s vessel to construct one’s own individual imaginary. In the end the player is forced to choose one of four outcomes to complete the game, and this choice can be quite difficult to make. Anticipation of the Future It is not unusual for video games to feature futuristic technologies that do not exist in the real world, but what makes DXHR distinct from others is that the developers have included an extent of information that goes beyond any game playing necessity (see Figures 1 & 2). Moreover, the information is not fictional but the developers have taken strategic steps to make it credible. Mary DeMarle, the narrative designer, explained at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2011, that a timeline of augmentation was created during the production phase in which the present state of technology was extrapolated into the future. In small incremental steps the developers have anticipated which enhancement technologies might be potentially feasible by the year 2027. Their efforts were supported by the science consultant, Will Rosellini, who voluntarily approached the development team to help. Being a neuroscientist, he could not have been a more fitting candidate for the job as he is actively working and researching in the biotechnology sector. He has co-founded two companies, MicroTransponder Inc., which produces tiny implantable wireless devices to interface with the nervous system to remedy diseases (see Rosellini’s presentation at the 2011 Comic-Con) and Rosellini Scientific, which funds, researches and develops advanced technological healthcare solutions (Rosellini; Rosellini Scientific). Due to the timeline which has been embedded explicitly and implicitly, no augmentation appears as a disembodied technology without history in the game. For example, although the protagonist wears top-notch military arm prostheses that appear very human-like, this prosthesis is depicted as one of the latest iterations and many non-playable characters possess arm prostheses that appear a lot older, cruder and more industrial than those of Jensen. Furthermore, an extensive description employing scientific jargon for each of the augmentations can be read on the augmentation overview screen, which includes details about the material composition and bodily locations of the augmentations. Figure 1: More Info Section of the Cybernetic Arm Prosthesis as it appears in-game (all screenshots taken with permission from Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011), courtesy of Eidos Montreal) More details are provided through eBooks, which are presented in the form of scientific articles or conference proceedings, for which the explorative gamer is also rewarded with valuable experience points upon finding which are used to activate and upgrade augmentations. The eBooks also reflect the timeline as each eBook is equipped with a year of publication between 2001 and 2022. Despite the fact that these articles have been supposedly written by a fictional character, the information is authentic and taken from actual scientific research papers, whereby some of these articles even include a proper scientific citation. Figure 2: Example of a Darrow eBook The fact that a scientist was involved in the production of the game allows classifying the augmentations as “diegetic prototypes” which are “cinematic depictions of future technologies … that demonstrate to large public audiences a technology’s need, benevolence and viability” (“The Future Is Now” 43). Diegetic prototypes are fictional, on-screen depictions of technologies that do not exist in that form in real life and have been created with the help of a science consultant. They have been placed in movies to allay anxieties and doubts and perhaps to even provoke a longing in audiences to see depicted technologies become reality (Kirby, “The Future Is Now” 43). Of course the aesthetic appearance of the prototypes has an impact on audiences’s desire, and particularly the artificial arms of Jensen that have been designed in an alluring fashion as can be seen in the following figure: Figure 3: Adam Jensen and arm prosthesis An important fact about diegetic prototypes—and about prototypes (see Suchman, Trigg, and Blomberg) in general—is that they are put to specific use and are embedded and presented in an identifiable social context. Technological objects in cinema are at once both completely artificial—all aspects of their depiction are controlled—and normalized as practical objects. Characters treat these technologies as a ‘natural’ part of their landscape and interact with these prototypes as if they are everyday parts of their world. … fictional characters are ‘socializing’ technological artifacts by creating meanings for the audience, ‘which is tantamount to making the artifacts socially relevant’. (Kirby, “Lab Coats” 196) The power of DXHR is that the diegetic prototypes—the augmentations—are not only based on real world scientific developments and contextualized in a virtual social space, but that the player has the opportunity to handle the augmentations. Virtual Testing Virtual witnessing of the not-yet-existent augmentations is supported by scientific descriptions, articles, and the appearance of the technologies in DXHR, but the moral and ethical engagement is established by the player’s ability to actively use the augmentations and by the provision of choice how to use them. As mentioned, most of the augmentations are inactive and must first be activated by accumulating and spending experience points on them. This requires the player to make reflections on the potential usage and how a particular augmentation will lead to the successful completion of a mission. This means that the player has to constantly decide how s/he wants to play the game. Do I want to be able to hack terminals and computers or do I rather prefer getting mission-critical information by confronting people in conversation? Do I want to search for routes where I can avoid enemy detection or do I rather prefer taking the direct route through the enemy lines with heavy guns in hands? This recurring reflection of which augmentation to choose and their continuous usage throughout the game causes the selected augmentations to become valuable and precious to the player because they transform from augmentations into frequently used tools that facilitate challenge and reduce difficulty of certain situations. In addition, the developers have ensured that no matter which approach is taken, it will always lead to success. This way the role-playing elements of the game are accentuated and each player will construct their own version of Jensen. However, it may be argued that DXHR goes beyond mere character building. There is a breadth of information and opinions on human enhancement offered, but also choices that are made invite players to reflect upon the topic of human enhancement. Among the most conspicuous instances in the game, that involve the player’s choice, are the conversations with other non-playable characters. These are events in the game which require the player to choose one out of three responses for Jensen, and hence, these determine to some extent Jensen’s attitude towards human enhancement. Thus, in the course of the game players might discover their own conviction and might compose their own imaginary of human enhancement. Conclusion This article has explored that DXHR enables players to experience augmentations without being modified themselves. The game is filled with various sociotechnical imaginaries of prosthetic and neurological human enhancement technologies. The relevance of these imaginaries is increased by a high degree of credibility as a science consultant has ensured that the fictional augmentations are founded upon real world scientific advancements. The main story, and much of the virtual world, hinge upon the existence and controversy of these sorts of technologies. Finally, the medium ‘videogame’ allows taking control of an individual, who is heavily augmented with diegetic prototypes of future enhancement technologies, and it also allows using and testing the increased abilities in various situations and challenges. All these elements combined enable players to virtually witness not-yet-existent, future augmentations safely in the present without the need to undertake any alterations of their own bodies. This, in addition to the fact that the technologies are depicted in an appealing fashion, may create a desire in players to see these augmentations become reality. 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Suchman, Lucy, Randall Trigg, and Jeanette Blomberg. “Working Artefacts: Ethnomethods of the Prototype.” The British Journal of Sociology 53.2 (2002): 163-79. Image Credits All screenshots taken with permission from Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011), courtesy of Eidos Montreal.

What strikes me about the habits of the people who spend so much time on the Net—well, it’s so new that we don't know what will come next—is in fact precisely how niche in character it is. You ask people what nets they are on, and they’re all so specialised! The Argentines on the Argentine Net and so forth. And it’s particularly the Argentines who are not in Argentina. (Anderson, in Gower, par. 5) The preceding quotation, taken from his 1996 interview with Eric Gower, sees Benedict Anderson reflecting on the formation of imagined, transnational communities on the Internet. Anderson is, of course, famous for his work on how nationalism, as an “imagined community,” gets constructed through the shared consumption of print media (6-7, 26-27); although its readers will never all see each other face to face, people consuming a newspaper or novel in a shared language perceive themselves as members of a collective. In this more recent interview, Anderson recognised the specific groupings of people in online communities: Argentines who find themselves outside of Argentina link up online in an imagined diaspora community. Over the course of the last decade and a half since Anderson spoke about Argentinian migrants and diaspora communities, we have witnessed an exponential growth of new forms of digital communication, including social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), Weblogs, micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter), and video-sharing sites (e.g. YouTube). Alongside these new means of communication, our current epoch of globalisation is also characterised by migration flows across, and between, all continents. In his book Modernity at Large, Arjun Appadurai recognised that “the twin forces of mass migration and electronic mediation” have altered the ways the imagination operates. Furthermore, these two pillars, human motion and digital mediation, are in constant “flux” (44). The circulation of people and digitally mediatised content proceeds across and beyond boundaries of the nation-state and provides ground for alternative community and identity formations. Appadurai’s intervention has resulted in increasing awareness of local, transnational, and global networking flows of people, ideas, and culturally hybrid artefacts. In this article, we analyse the various innovative tactics taken up by migrant youth to imagine digital diasporas. Inspired by scholars such as Appadurai, Avtar Brah and Paul Gilroy, we tease out—from a postcolonial perspective—how digital diasporas have evolved over time from a more traditional understanding as constituted either by a vertical relationship to a distant homeland or a horizontal connection to the scattered transnational community (see Safran, Cohen) to move towards a notion of “hypertextual diaspora.” With hypertextual diaspora, these central axes which constitute the understanding of diaspora are reshuffled in favour of more rhizomatic formations where affiliations, locations, and spaces are constantly destabilised and renegotiated. Needless to say, diasporas are not homogeneous and resist generalisation, but in this article we highlight common ways in which young migrant Internet users renew the practices around diaspora connections. Drawing from research on various migrant populations around the globe, we distinguish three common strategies: (1) the forging of transnational public spheres, based on maintaining virtual social relations by people scattered across the globe; (2) new forms of digital diasporic youth branding; and (3) the cultural production of innovative hypertexts in the context of more rhizomatic digital diaspora formations. Before turning to discuss these three strategies, the potential of a postcolonial framework to recognise multiple intersections of diaspora and digital mediation is elaborated. Hypertext as a Postcolonial Figuration Postcolonial scholars, Appadurai, Gilroy, and Brah among others, have been attentive to diasporic experiences, but they have paid little attention to the specificity of digitally mediated diaspora experiences. As Maria Fernández observes, postcolonial studies have been “notoriously absent from electronic media practice, theory, and criticism” (59). Our exploration of what happens when diasporic youth go online is a first step towards addressing this gap. Conceptually, this is clearly an urgent need since diasporas and the digital inform each other in the most profound and dynamic of ways: “the Internet virtually recreates all those sites which have metaphorically been eroded by living in the diaspora” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Narratives” 396). Writings on the Internet tend to favour either the “gold-rush” mentality, seeing the Web as a great equaliser and bringer of neoliberal progress for all, or the more pessimistic/technophobic approach, claiming that technologically determined spaces are exclusionary, white by default, masculine-oriented, and heteronormative (Everett 30, Van Doorn and Van Zoonen 261). For example, the recent study by Ito et al. shows that young people are not interested in merely performing a fiction in a parallel online world; rather, the Internet gets embedded in their everyday reality (Ito et al. 19-24). Real-life commercial incentives, power hierarchies, and hegemonies also get extended to the digital realm (Schäfer 167-74). Online interaction remains pre-structured, based on programmers’ decisions and value-laden algorithms: “people do not need a passport to travel in cyberspace but they certainly do need to play by the rules in order to function electronically” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Narratives” 405). We began our article with a statement by Benedict Anderson, stressing how people in the Argentinian diaspora find their space on the Internet. Online avenues increasingly allow users to traverse and add hyperlinks to their personal websites in the forms of profile pages, the publishing of preferences, and possibilities of participating in and affiliating with interest-based communities. Online journals, social networking sites, streaming audio/video pages, and online forums are all dynamic hypertexts based on Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) coding. HTML is the protocol of documents that refer to each other, constituting the backbone of the Web; every text that you find on the Internet is connected to a web of other texts through hyperlinks. These links are in essence at equal distance from each other. As well as being a technological device, hypertext is also a metaphor to think with. Figuratively speaking, hypertext can be understood as a non-hierarchical and a-centred modality. Hypertext incorporates multiplicity; different pathways are possible simultaneously, as it has “multiple entryways and exits” and it “connects any point to any other point” (Landow 58-61). Feminist theorist Donna Haraway recognised the dynamic character of hypertext: “the metaphor of hypertext insists on making connections as practice.” However, she adds, “the trope does not suggest which connections make sense for which purposes and which patches we might want to follow or avoid.” We can begin to see the value of approaching the Internet from the perspective of hypertext to make an “inquiry into which connections matter, why, and for whom” (128-30). Postcolonial scholar Jaishree K. Odin theorised how hypertextual webs might benefit subjects “living at the borders.” She describes how subaltern subjects, by weaving their own hypertextual path, can express their multivocality and negotiate cultural differences. She connects the figure of hypertext with that of the postcolonial: The hypertextual and the postcolonial are thus part of the changing topology that maps the constantly shifting, interpenetrating, and folding relations that bodies and texts experience in information culture. Both discourses are characterised by multivocality, multilinearity, openendedness, active encounter, and traversal. (599) These conceptions of cyberspace and its hypertextual foundations coalesce with understandings of “in-between”, “third”, and “diaspora media space” as set out by postcolonial theorists such as Bhabha and Brah. Bhabha elaborates on diaspora as a space where different experiences can be articulated: “These ‘in-between’ spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood—singular or communal—that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation (4). (Dis-)located between the local and the global, Brah adds: “diaspora space is the point at which boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, of belonging and otherness, of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ are contested” (205). As youths who were born in the diaspora have begun to manifest themselves online, digital diasporas have evolved from transnational public spheres to differential hypertexts. First, we describe how transnational public spheres form one dimension of the mediation of diasporic experiences. Subsequently, we focus on diasporic forms of youth branding and hypertext aesthetics to show how digitally mediated practices can go beyond and transgress traditional formations of diasporas as vertically connected to a homeland and horizontally distributed in the creation of transnational public spheres. Digital Diasporas as Diasporic Public Spheres Mass migration and digital mediation have led to a situation where relationships are maintained over large geographical distances, beyond national boundaries. The Internet is used to create transnational imagined audiences formed by dispersed people, which Appadurai describes as “diasporic public spheres”. He observes that, as digital media “increasingly link producers and audiences across national boundaries, and as these audiences themselves start new conversations between those who move and those who stay, we find a growing number of diasporic public spheres” (22). Media and communication researchers have paid a lot of attention to this transnational dimension of the networking of dispersed people (see Brinkerhoff, Alonso and Oiarzabal). We focus here on three examples from three different continents. Most famously, media ethnographers Daniel Miller and Don Slater focused on the Trinidadian diaspora. They describe how “de Rumshop Lime”, a collective online chat room, is used by young people at home and abroad to “lime”, meaning to chat and hang out. Describing the users of the chat, “the webmaster [a Trini living away] proudly proclaimed them to have come from 40 different countries” (though massively dominated by North America) (88). Writing about people in the Greek diaspora, communication researcher Myria Georgiou traced how its mediation evolved from letters, word of mouth, and bulletins to satellite television, telephone, and the Internet (147). From the introduction of the Web, globally dispersed people went online to get in contact with each other. Meanwhile, feminist film scholar Anna Everett draws on the case of Naijanet, the virtual community of “Nigerians Living Abroad”. She shows how Nigerians living in the diaspora from the 1990s onwards connected in global transnational communities, forging “new black public spheres” (35). These studies point at how diasporic people have turned to the Internet to establish and maintain social relations, give and receive support, and share general concerns. Establishing transnational communicative networks allows users to imagine shared audiences of fellow diasporians. Diasporic imagination, however, goes beyond singular notions of this more traditional idea of the transnational public sphere, as it “has nowadays acquired a great figurative flexibility which mostly refers to practices of transgression and hybridisation” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Subjects” 208). Below we recognise another dimension of digital diasporas: the articulation of diasporic attachment for branding oneself. Mocro and Nikkei: Diasporic Attachments as a Way to Brand Oneself In this section, we consider how hybrid cultural practices are carried out over geographical distances. Across spaces on the Web, young migrants express new forms of belonging in their dealing with the oppositional motivations of continuity and change. The generational specificity of this experience can be drawn out on the basis of the distinction between “roots” and “routes” made by Paul Gilroy. In his seminal book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Gilroy writes about black populations on both sides of the Atlantic. The double consciousness of migrant subjects is reflected by affiliating roots and routes as part of a complex cultural identification (19 and 190). As two sides of the same coin, roots refer to the stable and continuing elements of identities, while routes refer to disruption and change. Gilroy criticises those who are “more interested in the relationship of identity to roots and rootedness than in seeing identity as a process of movement and mediation which is more appropriately approached via the homonym routes” (19). He stresses the importance of not just focusing on one of either roots or routes but argues for an examination of their interplay. Forming a response to discrimination and exclusion, young migrants in online networks turn to more positive experiences such as identification with one’s heritage inspired by generational specific cultural affiliations. Here, we focus on two examples that cross two continents, showing routed online attachments to “be(com)ing Mocro”, and “be(coming) Nikkei”. Figure 1. “Leipe Mocro Flavour” music video (Ali B) The first example, being and becoming “Mocro”, refers to a local, bi-national consciousness. The term Mocro originated on the streets of the Netherlands during the late 1990s and is now commonly understood as a Dutch honorary nickname for youths with Moroccan roots living in the Netherlands and Belgium. A 2003 song, Leipe mocro flavour (“Crazy Mocro Flavour”) by Moroccan-Dutch rapper Ali B, familiarised a larger group of people with the label (see Figure 1). Ali B’s song is exemplary for a wider community of youngsters who have come to identify themselves as Mocros. One example is the Marokkanen met Brainz – Hyves (Mo), a community page within the Dutch social networking site Hyves. On this page, 2,200 youths who identify as Mocro get together to push against common stereotypes of Moroccan-Dutch boys as troublemakers and thieves and Islamic Moroccan-Dutch girls as veiled carriers of backward traditions (Leurs, forthcoming). Its description reads, “I assume that this Hyves will be the largest [Mocro community]. Because logically Moroccans have brains” (our translation): What can you find here? Discussions about politics, religion, current affairs, history, love and relationships. News about Moroccan/Arabic Parties. And whatever you want to tell others. Use your brains. Second, “Nikkei” directs our attention to Japanese migrants and their descendants. The Discover Nikkei website, set up by the Japanese American National Museum, provides a revealing description of being and becoming Nikkei: As Nikkei communities form in Japan and throughout the world, the process of community formation reveals the ongoing fluidity of Nikkei populations, the evasive nature of Nikkei identity, and the transnational dimensions of their community formations and what it means to be Nikkei. (Japanese American National Museum) This site was set up by the Japanese American National Museum for Nikkei in the global diaspora to connect and share stories. Nikkei youths of course also connect elsewhere. In her ethnographic online study, Shana Aoyama found that the social networking site Hi5 is taken up in Peru by young people of Japanese heritage as an avenue for identity exploration. She found group confirmation based on the performance of Nikkei-ness, as well as expressions of individuality. She writes, “instead of heading in one specific direction, the Internet use of Nikkei creates a starburst shape of identity construction and negotiation” (119). Mocro-ness and Nikkei-ness are common collective identification markers that are not just straightforward nationalisms. They refer back to different homelands, while simultaneously they also clearly mark one’s situation of being routed outside of this homeland. Mocro stems from postcolonial migratory flows from the Global South to the West. Nikkei-ness relates to the interesting case of the Japanese diaspora, which is little accounted for, although there are many Japanese communities present in North and South America from before the Second World War. The context of Peru is revealing, as it was the first South American country to accept Japanese migrants. It now hosts the second largest South American Japanese diaspora after Brazil (Lama), and Peru’s former president, Alberto Fujimoro, is also of Japanese origin. We can see how the importance of the nation-state gets blurred as diasporic youth, through cultural hybridisation of youth culture and ethnic ties, initiates subcultures and offers resistance to mainstream western cultural forms. Digital spaces are used to exert youthful diaspora branding. Networked branding includes expressing cultural identities that are communal and individual but also both local and global, illustrative of how “by virtue of being global the Internet can gift people back their sense of themselves as special and particular” (Miller and Slater 115). In the next section, we set out how youthful diaspora branding is part of a larger, more rhizomatic formation of multivocal hypertext aesthetics. Hypertext Aesthetics In this section, we set out how an in-between, or “liminal”, position, in postcolonial theory terms, can be a source of differential and multivocal cultural production. Appadurai, Bhabha, and Gilroy recognise that liminal positions increasingly leave their mark on the global and local flows of cultural objects, such as food, cinema, music, and fashion. Here, our focus is on how migrant youths turn to hypertextual forms of cultural production for a differential expression of digital diasporas. Hypertexts are textual fields made up of hyperlinks. Odin states that travelling through cyberspace by clicking and forging hypertext links is a form of multivocal digital diaspora aesthetics: The perpetual negotiation of difference that the border subject engages in creates a new space that demands its own aesthetic. This new aesthetic, which I term “hypertext” or “postcolonial,” represents the need to switch from the linear, univocal, closed, authoritative aesthetic involving passive encounters characterising the performance of the same to that of non-linear, multivocal, open, non-hierarchical aesthetic involving active encounters that are marked by repetition of the same with and in difference. (Cited in Landow 356-7) On their profile pages, migrant youth digitally author themselves in distinct ways by linking up to various sites. They craft their personal hypertext. These hypertexts display multivocal diaspora aesthetics which are personal and specific; they display personal intersections of affiliations that are not easily generalisable. In several Dutch-language online spaces, subjects from Dutch-Moroccan backgrounds have taken up the label Mocro as an identity marker. Across social networking sites such as Hyves and Facebook, the term gets included in nicknames and community pages. Think of nicknames such as “My own Mocro styly”, “Mocro-licious”, “Mocro-chick”. The term Mocro itself is often already multilayered, as it is often combined with age, gender, sexual preference, religion, sport, music, and generationally specific cultural affiliations. Furthermore, youths connect to a variety of groups ranging from feminist interests (“Women in Charge”), Dutch nationalism (“I Love Holland”), ethnic affiliations (“The Moroccan Kitchen”) to clothing (the brand H&M), and global junk food (McDonalds). These diverse affiliations—that are advertised online simultaneously—add nuance to the typical, one-dimensional stereotype about migrant youth, integration, and Islam in the context of Europe and Netherlands (Leurs, forthcoming). On the online social networking site Hi5, Nikkei youths in Peru, just like any other teenagers, express their individuality by decorating their personal profile page with texts, audio, photos, and videos. Besides personal information such as age, gender, and school information, Aoyama found that “a starburst” of diverse affiliations is published, including those that signal Japanese-ness such as the Hello Kitty brand, anime videos, Kanji writing, kimonos, and celebrities. Also Nikkei hyperlink to elements that can be identified as “Latino” and “Chino” (Chinese) (104-10). Furthermore, users can show their multiple affiliations by joining different “groups” (after which a hyperlink to the group community appears on the profile page). Aoyama writes “these groups stretch across a large and varied scope of topics, including that of national, racial/ethnic, and cultural identities” (2). These examples illustrate how digital diasporas encompass personalised multivocal hypertexts. With the widely accepted adagio “you are what you link” (Adamic and Adar), hypertextual webs can be understood as productions that reveal how diasporic youths choose to express themselves as individuals through complex sets of non-homogeneous identifications. Migrant youth connects to ethnic origin and global networks in eclectic and creative ways. The concept of “digital diaspora” therefore encapsulates both material and virtual (dis)connections that are identifiable through common traits, strategies, and aesthetics. Yet these hypertextual connections are also highly personalised and unique, offering a testimony to the fluid negotiations and intersections between the local and the global, the rooted and the diasporic. Conclusions In this article, we have argued that migrant youths render digital diasporas more complex by including branding and hypertextual aesthetics in transnational public spheres. Digital diasporas may no longer be understood simply in terms of their vertical relations to a homeland or place of origin or as horizontally connected to a clearly marked transnational community; rather, they must also be seen as engaging in rhizomatic digital practices, which reshuffle traditional understandings of origin and belonging. Contemporary youthful digital diasporas are therefore far more complex in their engagement with digital media than most existing theory allows: connections are hybridised, and affiliations are turned into practices of diasporic branding and becoming. There is a generational specificity to multivocal diaspora aesthetics; this specificity lies in the ways migrant youths show communal recognition and express their individuality through hypertext which combines affiliation to their national/ethnic “roots” with an embrace of other youth subcultures, many of them transnational. 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