Voicing Subjects: Public Intimacy and Mediation in Kathmandu
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.
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Voicing Subjects: Public Intimacy and Mediation in Kathmandu
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.
34.95 In Stock
Voicing Subjects: Public Intimacy and Mediation in Kathmandu

Voicing Subjects: Public Intimacy and Mediation in Kathmandu

by Laura Kunreuther
Voicing Subjects: Public Intimacy and Mediation in Kathmandu

Voicing Subjects: Public Intimacy and Mediation in Kathmandu

by Laura Kunreuther

Paperback(First Edition)

$34.95 
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Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780520270701
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication date: 03/26/2014
Series: South Asia Across the Disciplines
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 328
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Laura Kunreuther is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bard College.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note on Transliteration and Pseudonyms

Introduction: Public Intimacy and Voicing Subjects in Kathmandu
1. Intimate Callings and Voices of Reform: Law, Property, and Familial Love
2. Seeing Face and Hearing Voice: Tactile Vision and Signs of Presence
3. Making Waves: The Social and Political Context of FM Radio
4. Mero Katha, Mero Git: Affective Publics, Public Intimacy, and Voiced Writing
5. Diasporic Voices: Sounds of the Diaspora in Kathmandu

Epilogue: Royal Victims, Voicing Subjects
Notes
References
Index
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