Notes from Loehwing and Motter, “Cultures of Circulation: Utilizing Co-Cultures and Counterpublics in Intercultural New Media Research.” China Media Research 8 (4): 2012. 29-
This post is merely to record definitions and characterizations of key theories that inform this article and might be useful for my diss.
Counterpublic theory:
- attention to discursive circulation as the foundation for counterhegemonic identity and culture construction (29)
- a ‘critical term’ that fixes scholars’ focus on the exclusions of a ‘wider public’ and marginalized groups’ inability to gain access to decision-making mechanisms (32)
- three key features: oppositionality, constitution of a discursive arena, dialectic of retreat from and engagement with other publics
- counterpublics emerge in relation to a wider public
- counterpublics engage in the constitution of a discursive arena ‘through mutual recognition of exclusions in wider publics, set themselves against exclusionary wider publics, and resolve to overcome these exclusion’ (32)
- a dialectic of retreat from and engagement with other publics provide the possibilities where the location and disruption of power become key issues for counterpublic scholars interested in describing how exclusion functions to suppress difference
- emerge as groups circulate alternative discourses to dominate narratives
- focus on the means by which counterpublic identity is constituted by communication itself (35)
Co-culture theory:
- attends to the communicative strategies developed by members of co-cultures seeking to negotiate their marginalized status in everyday interactions with members of more dominate groups (30)
- draws on insights of phenomenology in conceiving of co-cultural members as “co-researchers” [sic] engaged in generating research outcomes based on their personal experiences of communication within asymmetrical power structures (30)
- proceeds from marginalized status–it takes as a given the prior constitution of dominant and nondominant relationships, and then identifies as co-researchers individuals who already subscribe to the particular nondominate group under study (35)
Shared features of co-cultural and counterpublic theory:
- a core social justice mission that is animated by the unequal power relationships structuring contemporary life and privileging certain groups over others at particular moments in time (34)
- feature the development of communicative strategies for contesting and potentially overcoming the power inequalities that marginalized or nondominant groups face (34)
- document real-world struggles not only to bolster the theoretical apparatus’s usefulness for a scholarly community, but to afford previously excluded groups a new stage on which their voices can be legitimized (34)
But, each focus on different moments of nondominant communications.
- co-cultural theory research looks at kinds of encounters members of co-cultures experience in relatively private moments of their everyday lives; centers on day-to-day lived experiences of domination and exclusion, and interrogates patterns of oppression in order to find the methods by which co-culture members routinely and innovately address the cultural norms that perpetuate their subordinate status (34)
- counterpublic research emphasizes the moments where members of nondominant groups publicize their identities, interests and needs in ways that challenge the norms built on their exclusion and are designed to resonate and circulate through public circles far exceeding one-on-one private communication
New media:
- as part of expanding discursive arenas, new media become an important way communicative interaction is accomplished through diffusion, not singular channels that can be easily controlled
- new media, particularly social media, tend toward ‘many-to-many’ [sic] communicative exchanges that may require hybrid methodological approaches designed to address changing communication contexts (34)
- intercultural new media research points to the centrality of power and identity as key forces defining contemporary communicative trends (35)
- power and identity matter in investigations
- scholars have called for further inquiry into the precise ways in which power and identity exert influence in mediated intercultural practices
- while new media dramatically alter the potential sites available for intercultural communicative exchanges, we should be cautious in viewing increasing access as an automatic indication of equal opportunitiesco-cultures and counterpublics remind us that identity and self-representation never occur in a vacuum
- consider how the mere existence of discursive space presumably open to all may yet facilitate powerful normative exclusions that privilege some voices over others–even when all voices are ostensibly heard (36)
- just like co-culture and counterpublics must innovate strategies for negotiating a hegemonic culture in which their identities are constructed in negotiating a hegemonic culture in which their identities are constructed in negative ways by dominant groups, new media users must also innovate strategies for overcoming existing negative representations that simultaneously circulate and constrain the emancipatory potential of self-representation (36)
- new media implicate not only new communicative practices, but unheralded methods of identity, community, and culture formation
Key questions:
- What would a theory of counterpublics look like that took account of unpublicized, everyday communicative strategies developed by members of counterpublics?
- How might a theory of co-cultures attend to the circulation of nondominant communicative strategies? (34-35)
Queer/strokes/ 