[Air-l] Abstract (work in progress) from Lisa Nakamura

[Lisa Nakamura]

Having just seen Mark Warshauer's abstract, I think I will post one of my
own.  Unlike his, mine is not a finished paper, so any feedback or help is
appreciated.  Also, please note new email address and affiliation.

There's no title yet.
Abstract:
Postcolonial thinkers have long differed in their stance towards
"imperialist" literary forms.  Ngugi wa Thiongo and Salman Rushdie represent
two opposed positions in this debate, with Thiongo asserting the
indispensibility of native languages in the creation of an "authentic"
postcolonial literature and Rushdie claiming that the "language of the
departed imperialists" can and has been successfully repurposed for
postcolonial writers.  Indeed, Rushdie claims that "English has become an
Indian language.  Its colonial origins mean that, like Urdu and unlike all
other Indian languages, it has no regional base, but in all other ways it
has emphatically come to stay."  Rushdie's position has elicited much
controversy among postcolonial writers.  His assertion that the best writing
to come out of India has been in English, the language of the colonizer, has
infuriated many, firstly because it seems self-promoting (Rushdie's own
writing is in English) and secondly because it seems to deny the importance
of an authentically Indian voice.  The mediation between English literary
forms and language use and native ones arouses uneasiness among scholars who
wish to assert the independence of formerly colonized cultures.

While these concerns seem somewhat removed from questions of new media, the
fear that the adoption of an "imperializing" media form and language may
replicate old colonial power relations is still very much in evidence now.
This paper will assess the extent to which new media forms have "come to
stay" in the context of postcolonial culture, and the challenge to notions
of cultural authenticity that accompany that arrival.  In light of current
debates regarding the best ways to close the digital divide, it may be that,
at least to media critics sympathetic to Ngugi's views such as Ziauddin
Sardar, the question is moot since the divide works to preserve native
cultures from colonizing media incursions from the West.  Indeed, for them
the salient question may be how best to widen this divide.  I intend to
begin this paper by a review of the debate regarding language appropriation
in the context of postcolonia literature and theory because these ideas have
been in play in that arena for several years.  I then intend to retrofit
them onto the case of new media, paying careful attention to instances where
it is profitable and strategic to apply them as well as instances in which
they do not map well.