Articles by Sanjay Sharma
Sociological studies of racism have explored a multitude of contexts and practices, ranging from ... more Sociological studies of racism have explored a multitude of contexts and practices, ranging from institutional sites to daily encounters. In comparison, the majority of work examining online racism have tended to dwell on visible and ‘extreme’ forms and practices. This work is significant, yet it can over look the techno-cultural materiality of social media and how this produces less visible, ‘everyday’ online racism and racialized talk. Moreover, researching everyday rather than extreme racism in social media is methodologically challenging; not only because of the contested definitions of what constitutes racist-talk, but also, due to the difficulties of identifying this in digital spaces.
This article explores everyday racialized talk on the Twitter social media platform, by focusing on discourses of racism denial as a case study. Existing sociological studies have identified racism denial in the form of disclaimers, such as “I’m not racist, but…”. These disclaimers appear symptomatic of the shifts and entanglements of non-/acceptable public expression of race-talk. The approach developed here for a digital sociology of racism foregrounds the technological affordances that may shape online racialized discourses. It conceives Twitter as a techno-cultural assemblage, and more specifically considers the hashtag as a digital device to investigate. The case study identifies the #notracist hashtag, which circulates modes of racism denial in the Twitter network. Arguably, the #notracist hashtag materializes a ‘racial paranoia’ (cf. J. Jackson), which entangles 'privatized' expressions of racism with 'public' modes of denial. An analysis of the hashtag #notracist offers an opportunity to reveal the operations of contemporary online racism, and highlights challenges for instigating anti-racist digital practices.
Full text: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303868342_notracist_Exploring_Racism_Denial_Talk_on_Twitter
tripleC, Dec 2013
"In the form of a discussion the founding editors of darkmatter journal reflect on the challenges... more "In the form of a discussion the founding editors of darkmatter journal reflect on the challenges of developing an online race project in the neoliberal context of knowledge production. The independent open access journal, operating at the borders of academia and cultural production, attempts to grasp the shifting contours of contemporary race and racism in a networked postcolonial world. Against the limitations of solely working within disciplines such as Postcolonial or Cultural Studies, darkmatter brings into dialogue a diverse range of conceptual frameworks to address the proliferation of race discourses.
Interrogating and reworking the developments in digital publishing, the project constructs a space for the exploration and dissemination of race thinking and creating relations between different fields, sites and groups. The threats posed by the info-colonialism of corporate academic publishing are transversed through the evolution of darkmatter with its experiments in techno-cultural design and innovations in autonomous working practices."
New Formations, Feb 2013
This article foregrounds how technocultural assemblages – software platforms, algorithms, digital... more This article foregrounds how technocultural assemblages – software platforms, algorithms, digital networks and affects – are constitutive of online racialized identities. Rather than being concerned with what online identities are in terms of ethno-racial representation and signification, we can explore how they are materialized via the technologies of online platforms. The article focuses on the micro-blogging site of Twitter and the viral phenomenon of racialized hashtags – dubbed as ‘Blacktags’ – for example #onlyintheghetto or #ifsantawasblack. The circulation of these racialized hashtags is analyzed as the transmission of contagious meanings and affects, such as anti/racist humour, sentiment and social commentary. Blacktags as contagious digital objects play a role in constituting the ‘Black Twitter’ identities they articulate and interact with. Beyond conceiving Black Twitter as a group of preconstituted users tweeting racialized hashtags, Blacktags are instrumental in producing networked subjects which have the capacity to multiply the possibilities of being raced online. Thus, ethno-racial collective behaviours on the Twitter social media platform are grasped as emergent aggregations, materialized through the contagious social relations produced by the networked propagation of Blacktags.
The Senses & Society, 2011
This article interrogates the possibility of developing an account of a ‘sensory multiculture’, w... more This article interrogates the possibility of developing an account of a ‘sensory multiculture’, which seeks to encounter difference outside of domination or appropriation. It invokes alternative dialogic aesthetic practices for living with difference. I explore the film Unravelling (2008, dir. Kuldip Powar and produced as part of the Noise of the Past project), as offering a fragile and speculative practice of ‘counter-memory’ and ‘fabulation’ for re-telling the story of post-colonial migrant involvement in WWII. At the heart of the film is the search for migrant experiences and memories of war that cannot be simply recuperated for buttressing nationhood. The film is replete with archival footage of war, multi-layered visual imagery, dialogic poetic exchange and an evocative textured soundscape. It creates an alter-realist aesthetic liberated from regimes of truth and racialized objectification of migrant life. The sensory multicultural aesthetic the film activates, disrupts official histories of war and memory and offers an alternative mode of post-colonial belonging.
Cultural Studies, 2010
Critical whiteness studies has produced significant analysis of the terrors of white supremacist ... more Critical whiteness studies has produced significant analysis of the terrors of white supremacist power. However, in relation to cultural-media studies pedagogy, impassioned calls for the denouncement of whiteness raise troublesome concerns and limits for productively addressing students’ racialized identities. I maintain that renouncing whiteness in anti-racist teaching does not adequately connect with commonsense and affective experiences of ‘race’ in everyday life for many students. Through a ‘materialist’ analysis of the film Crash (2005), this article opens up the question of the im/possibility of engaging whiteness from an anti-racist stance that neither condemns nor buttresses white identity. Crash, considered from a reading practice that does not simply dwell on textual meaning and interpretation, offers an opportunity to pedagogically engage with the ambivalent representations of ‘race’ which pervade contemporary culture.
South Asian Popular Culture, 2009
Talks by Sanjay Sharma
Projects by Sanjay Sharma
Twitter is known for the abundance of racialized messages posted on its platform. Eruptions of ra... more Twitter is known for the abundance of racialized messages posted on its platform. Eruptions of racist abuse occur within a contested array of Twitter discourses, e.g. racial banter, ambivalent humour, hate comments and (anti-)racist sentiments. Surprisingly, a study of everyday ‘race-talk’ on Twitter has not been undertaken, and little is known about its ambient stream of racialized expression.
This project explores how racialised messages unfold in Twitter by focusing on the hashtag #notracist. Twitter users can include this (and other related) hashtags in messages to label seemingly ‘racist’ statements (and images/videos) as 'not racist'. The practice of hashtagging as a strategy of denying racist expression or propagating the ambiguities of race talk enables an understanding of the contested racialized digital ecology of Twitter.
For full paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303868342_notracist_Exploring_Racism_Denial_Talk_on_Twitter
The project is funded by British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (Apr 2013 - May 2014). Principal Investigator: Dr Sanjay Sharma (Brunel University); Research Associate: Dr Phillip Brooker (Brunel University). ""
Books by Sanjay Sharma
“This book writes back the presence of South Asian youth into a rapidly expanding and exuberant m... more “This book writes back the presence of South Asian youth into a rapidly expanding and exuberant music scene; and celebrates this as a dynamic expression of the experience of diaspora with an urgent political consciousness. One of the first attempts to situate such production within the study of race and identity, it uncovers the crucial role that South Asian dance musics – from Hip-hop, Qawwali and Bhangra through Soul, Indie and Jungle – have played in a new urban cultural politics …”
Papers by Sanjay Sharma
Policy Futures in Education, 2006
A turn to 'cultural diversity' in the curriculum offers a multitude of opportunities for educatio... more A turn to 'cultural diversity' in the curriculum offers a multitude of opportunities for educational practitioners: questioning Eurocentric knowledge; deconstructing 'marginality'; recognising the ensuing hybridities, intercultural dialogues and encounters in a globalizing world. However, this article questions the current representational pedagogies of cultural and media studies in relation to how they address the epistemic and political grounds upon which the antagonisms of multiculture are played out. It argues that a point of departure for teaching diversity needs to acknowledge the contestations of racialized difference, and the pedagogic im/possibility of encountering otherness outside of domination. A key aim of the article is to explore the entangled politics and practice of teaching diversity, through scrutinizing the challenges of using a 'multicultural' film such as Bend it Like Beckham (dir. Gurinder Chadha, 2002). It has become increasingly common in cultural and media studies to use 'ethnically marked' texts to examine and deconstruct the dynamics of cultural-racial identity formation and representations of otherness. The article interrogates the productive possibilities and limits of such approaches.
In the globalizing world, we are being compelled to confront questions of multiculturalism: What ... more In the globalizing world, we are being compelled to confront questions of multiculturalism: What happens when 'other cultures' are encountered in everyday media? How do we teach diversity? Can pedagogies of a globalizing culture be ethical in representing the difference of others? Sanjay Sharma interrogates the hegemony of multiculturalism that too easily celebrates the diversity of 'others', while foreclosing the power of whiteness in shaping everyday life. Through an innovative analysis of popular North American, European and South Asian diasporic cinemas, ranging from The Matrix to Bend it Like Beckham, Multicultural Encounters examines the im/possibility of engaging the 'other' outside of its domination. Informed by contemporary social theory as well as an acute grasp of popular culture, this book aims to offer a radical cultural and media studies practice by weaving together questions of representation, otherness and the ethical.
The Sociological Review, 2012
Building on the range of methods available to the roaming sociological imagination, curating soci... more Building on the range of methods available to the roaming sociological imagination, curating sociology is concerned with instituting 'live' public encounters. Contending that there are practices in the history of sociology that can be considered instances of curating sociology, this article makes a case for harnessing these to inventive research processes today. The discussion in this article draws attention to recent developments in curating before excavating a selection of practices within sociology upon which we can refl exively build live methods with consideration to creative collaborations, publicness and exhibiting as research. Each of these involves a degree of mutation within the craft of sociology. By way of illustration, the fi nal section of the article explores an in-depth case study of curating sociology for the Noise of the Past project, which involved us, as sociologists, collaborating with creative practitioners and 'curating' a large-scale public event.
The Senses and Society, 2011
ABSTRACT On November 8, 2008, Coventry Cathedral became the site of a multimedia blitz, a public ... more ABSTRACT On November 8, 2008, Coventry Cathedral became the site of a multimedia blitz, a public event which included a screening of the film Unravelling directed by Kuldip Powar (with an original score by Nitin Sawhney) and a performance of Post-Colonial War Requiem composed by Francis Silkstone, that capped a day-long symposium on “War, Sound and Postcoloniality.” Curated by Nirmal Puwar and Sanjay Sharma, this occupation of the Cathedral represented the finale of the Noise of the Past project, which was dedicated to evoking the amnesia in official memory of the role of the colonies during both the First and Second World Wars. Without buttressing nationalism and militarism, Noise of the Past interrupted the accepted silences of remembrance, especially at a time when Britain continues to participate in “new” global wars and increasingly conducts nation-making via war memorialization. This special issue is devoted to documenting and exploring the implications of the Noise of the Past project.
South Asian Popular Culture, 2009
... Email: [email protected] South Asian Popular Culture Vol. 7, No. 1, April 2009, 213... more ... Email: [email protected] South Asian Popular Culture Vol. 7, No. 1, April 2009, 2135 Page 2. ... Julian Henriques maintained that Jamal's objections rest on being limited to reading My Beautiful Laundrette only in social-realist terms. ...
Theory, Culture & Society , 2000
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Articles by Sanjay Sharma
This article explores everyday racialized talk on the Twitter social media platform, by focusing on discourses of racism denial as a case study. Existing sociological studies have identified racism denial in the form of disclaimers, such as “I’m not racist, but…”. These disclaimers appear symptomatic of the shifts and entanglements of non-/acceptable public expression of race-talk. The approach developed here for a digital sociology of racism foregrounds the technological affordances that may shape online racialized discourses. It conceives Twitter as a techno-cultural assemblage, and more specifically considers the hashtag as a digital device to investigate. The case study identifies the #notracist hashtag, which circulates modes of racism denial in the Twitter network. Arguably, the #notracist hashtag materializes a ‘racial paranoia’ (cf. J. Jackson), which entangles 'privatized' expressions of racism with 'public' modes of denial. An analysis of the hashtag #notracist offers an opportunity to reveal the operations of contemporary online racism, and highlights challenges for instigating anti-racist digital practices.
Full text: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303868342_notracist_Exploring_Racism_Denial_Talk_on_Twitter
Interrogating and reworking the developments in digital publishing, the project constructs a space for the exploration and dissemination of race thinking and creating relations between different fields, sites and groups. The threats posed by the info-colonialism of corporate academic publishing are transversed through the evolution of darkmatter with its experiments in techno-cultural design and innovations in autonomous working practices."
Talks by Sanjay Sharma
Projects by Sanjay Sharma
This project explores how racialised messages unfold in Twitter by focusing on the hashtag #notracist. Twitter users can include this (and other related) hashtags in messages to label seemingly ‘racist’ statements (and images/videos) as 'not racist'. The practice of hashtagging as a strategy of denying racist expression or propagating the ambiguities of race talk enables an understanding of the contested racialized digital ecology of Twitter.
For full paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303868342_notracist_Exploring_Racism_Denial_Talk_on_Twitter
The project is funded by British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (Apr 2013 - May 2014). Principal Investigator: Dr Sanjay Sharma (Brunel University); Research Associate: Dr Phillip Brooker (Brunel University). ""
Books by Sanjay Sharma
Papers by Sanjay Sharma
This article explores everyday racialized talk on the Twitter social media platform, by focusing on discourses of racism denial as a case study. Existing sociological studies have identified racism denial in the form of disclaimers, such as “I’m not racist, but…”. These disclaimers appear symptomatic of the shifts and entanglements of non-/acceptable public expression of race-talk. The approach developed here for a digital sociology of racism foregrounds the technological affordances that may shape online racialized discourses. It conceives Twitter as a techno-cultural assemblage, and more specifically considers the hashtag as a digital device to investigate. The case study identifies the #notracist hashtag, which circulates modes of racism denial in the Twitter network. Arguably, the #notracist hashtag materializes a ‘racial paranoia’ (cf. J. Jackson), which entangles 'privatized' expressions of racism with 'public' modes of denial. An analysis of the hashtag #notracist offers an opportunity to reveal the operations of contemporary online racism, and highlights challenges for instigating anti-racist digital practices.
Full text: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303868342_notracist_Exploring_Racism_Denial_Talk_on_Twitter
Interrogating and reworking the developments in digital publishing, the project constructs a space for the exploration and dissemination of race thinking and creating relations between different fields, sites and groups. The threats posed by the info-colonialism of corporate academic publishing are transversed through the evolution of darkmatter with its experiments in techno-cultural design and innovations in autonomous working practices."
This project explores how racialised messages unfold in Twitter by focusing on the hashtag #notracist. Twitter users can include this (and other related) hashtags in messages to label seemingly ‘racist’ statements (and images/videos) as 'not racist'. The practice of hashtagging as a strategy of denying racist expression or propagating the ambiguities of race talk enables an understanding of the contested racialized digital ecology of Twitter.
For full paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303868342_notracist_Exploring_Racism_Denial_Talk_on_Twitter
The project is funded by British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (Apr 2013 - May 2014). Principal Investigator: Dr Sanjay Sharma (Brunel University); Research Associate: Dr Phillip Brooker (Brunel University). ""