Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

In what is a watershed moment in Communication Studies, recent conversations on what constitute diversity and excellence have created an opening for articulations of the problem of racism in the discipline. That Communication Studies as a discipline has historically operated on and reproduced racist norms emerged as the site of organizing. The long-hidden racist codes of the discipline, which so many of us at the margins struggled against and were all too aware of in our individual struggles, became visible. The intuition that disciplinary and sub-disciplinary awards, modes of recognition, and pathways for progress are racist was crystallized in the sudden-visibility of documents that have otherwise been hidden behind opaque structures and processes meant to evaluate merit. The normative constructions of Whiteness that are systematically written into the everyday structures of the discipline, tucked away under the polite language of diversity and inclusion, were rendered vis...

Special Section of First Amendment Studies Race, coloniality & free speech Guest Editors: Anjali Vats and Mohan Dutta Full manuscripts Due: January 20, 2020 In this special focus on “Race, Coloniality, and Free Speech” in First Amendment Studies we seek 2,500-3,000 word manuscripts that interrogate the racial and colonial structures that animate free speech, including connections between free speech and Whiteness and the ways in which these connections are deployed in academia to protect and perpetuate racist hate. We also invite submissions that theorize frameworks for resisting the Whiteness of free speech.  We are particularly interested in essays that push us to think about the intersections between race, coloniality, and free speech differently, using new and evolving theories drawn from critical race studies, ethnic studies, cultural studies, decolonial theory, and so on, at a national and/or international level. While we welcome critical legal perspectiv...

(Note: The generalizable threads in this piece can apply to a wide range of totalitarian power operating globally. The consolidation of totalitarian power as a global trend often works under the veneer of fighting corruption, as we see in the recent instance of the rise of fascist totalitarianism of Bolsonaro in Brazil through the elite deployment of techniques of fighting corruption) Totalitarian power consolidates its control and keeps intact its power through a variety of techniques of disciplinary performance. These disciplinary techniques of performance are given the appearance on the surface of a commitment to cleanliness, of good governance. You hear terms such as "clean governance," "transparency," and "accountability," that prop up the regime's disciplinary techniques as methods to monitor, control, and check corruption. The articulation of corruption becomes a communicative tool that is deployed by power, as the rationale for fo...

The ideology of Whiteness excludes by delineating its boundaries, marking the "other" as the outside of these boundaries, as an inferior category that is not yet human. Setting up its own rules for what counts and how, Whiteness then goes on to circulate its hegemonic form through the active exclusion of the other. Turning these rules into universals, Whiteness ensures it perpetuates its hegemony. These hegemonic logics of Whiteness reproduce themselves within postcolonial contexts. After all, the technique of marking the other as inferior that enabled the White master to rule also serves colonial rule by postcolonial elites. These postcolonial elites are descendants of the local elite class in the colonies that collaborated with the colonizer in running the imperial projects. The god-granted privilege of these elites to rule over the popular other is intrinsically tied to their continual production of the other as inferior, lacking, backward, traditional. The figure ...

Totalitarian control thrives on the totality of power over every space of articulation. In turn, totalitarian control is intrinsic to the reproduction of absolute power. Power works through every corner of totalitarian societies, from the schools and universities in such societies, to work spaces, to neighborhoods, to homes. The effect of power is felt at the cellular level, in the everyday being of life in the regime. Totalitarian control is exercised not only through direct tools of repression, but also through various everyday norms that constitute interactions. One such form of normative control exercised in totalitarian systems is in the threat to reputation. The threat to reputation works to keep intact the practices of the regime, without questions or criticisms. Any criticism of the system and/or its corrupt processes can be controlled by attacking the reputation of the person raising the criticism. Such forms of attacks on reputation can work powerfully to silen...

Vacuous communication is communication that is empty, gutted of materiality, located in networks of symbolic references that are equally empty. Through these interpenetrating chains of vacuous symbols, power finds strategies of retaining and ensconcing itself. Vacuous communication is an essential communicative strategy of hegemonic structures.  The various combinations of otherwise disconnected words make up the formations that serve the agendas of power. In digital networks, the vacuous formations travel quickly from the elite structures of authoritarian regimes to think tanks propped up by such regimes, to the academic-business thought leadership panels of the 1% in the picturesque meeting rooms of the Swiss Alps. Vacuous communication thrives on word play. Wordsmiths, particularly credentialed academic experts, are integral to building infrastructures of vacuous communication. Vacuous communication is often a collection of words. Words that are arranged in meaning...

Academic cultures thrive on habits of scavenging. These habits of scavenging are expressed particularly at moments of crises created by the oppressive forces in the academe. When a scholar, a group of scholars, or a body of work is specifically targeted for having disrupted the structure, scavengers in various forms "scoop in" so they could profit from the crisis. Crises thus are opportunities for profiteering for the academic careerist, eating from the deaths produced by the structure. The oppressive force of the structures enables the scavengers, signaling the appropriate time, avenue, and context for scavenging. The scavengers enable the structure, recovering from the scraps salvageable publications, social impact metrics, and "measurable" outputs to be used by the structure. After having dismantled the radical sites of resistance, the structure can go back to the products put together by the scavengers from the deaths of radicalism, claiming "...