Voicing Subjects: Public Intimacy and Mediation in KathmanduVoicing Subjects traces the relation between public speech and notions of personal interiority in Kathmandu. It explores two seemingly distinct formations of voice that have emerged in the midst of the country’s recent political and economic upheavals: a political voice associated with civic empowerment and collective agency, and an intimate voice associated with emotional proximity and authentic feeling. Both are produced and circulated through the media, especially through interactive technologies. The author argues that these two formations of voice are mutually constitutive and aligned with modern ideologies of democracy and neoliberal economic projects. This ethnography is set during an extraordinary period in Nepal’s history that has seen a relatively peaceful 1990 revolution that re-established democracy, a Maoist civil war, and the massacre of the royal family. These dramatic changes have been accompanied by the proliferation of intimate and political discourse in the expanding public sphere, making the figure of voice ever more critical to an understanding of emerging subjectivity, structural change and cultural mediation. |
Contents
Public Intimacy and Voicing | 1 |
Tactile Vision | 87 |
The Social and Political Context | 124 |
Affective Publics Public Intimacy | 161 |
Sounds of the Diaspora in Kathmandu | 215 |
Notes | 255 |
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Common terms and phrases
activists affective public āmāko mukh herne Anamika angsa argues āwāj uṭhāune bikās boläune broadcast brother CALLINGS AND VOICES chapter context conversations cultural darśan daughters democratic diaspora DIASPORIC VOICES discourse discuss dukha emerging ethnography everyday expression FACE AND HEARING FM broadcasts FM programs FM radio FM stations gender ghar GĪT HEARING VOICE Hindu holiday ideas India INTIMATE CALLINGS jana ändolan Kalyan Kantipur Katha Kathmandu Kathmandu Post king King Gyanendra language Laxmi Devi letters liberal listeners live mäiti Maoist mass media medium Mero Git Mero Kathā middle-class modern mother neoliberal Nepali diaspora Nepali language Newar one's Panchayat person phatic political practices present public intimacy public sphere radio hosts Radio Nepal Rana relations ritual romantic love Rumpum Connection semiotic sentiments social South Asian speak speech story story-letters talk telephone tion transparency urban VOICES OF REFORM women मेरो