Voicing subjects : public intimacy and mediation in Kathmandu / Laura Kunreuther.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kunreuther, Laura, 1969- author.

Series:

South Asia across the disciplines

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mass media--Nepal--Kathmandu.

Mass media.

Communication--Political aspects--Nepal--Kathmandu.

Communication.

Communication--Political aspects.

Nepal--Kathmandu.

Physical Description:

xv, 303 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2014]

Summary:

Voicing 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. Book jacket.

Contents:

List of illustrations

Introduction: public intimacy and voicing subjects in Kathmandu

Intimate callings and voices of reform : law, property, and familial love

Seeing face/hearing voice : tactile vision and signs of presence

Making waves : social and political context of FM radio

Mero kath, mero gt : affective publics, public intimacy, and voiced writing

Diasporic voices : sounds of the diaspora in Kathmandu

Epilogue: royal victims, voicing subjects

Notes

References

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780520270688

0520270681

9780520270701

0520270703

OCLC:

861677156