scholarly journals The Death of the Da’i: The Autonomization of Religious Messages within Cyberspace

ULUMUNA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-276
Author(s):  
Fazlul Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Roland Barthes ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Intellectual Knowledge ◽  
Professional Capacity ◽  
Death Of The Author

 This paper attempts to explore the phenomenon of Islamic propagation (dakwah) on the Internet known as "e-dakwah." It problematizes the authority of religious messages within cyberspace vis a vis Internet’s anonymity. This 'cyber ethnographic' research shows that people in cyberscape are concerned more with the messages than their authors. This study confirms the autonomic truth of the messages as it is supported by Imam ‘Alī bin Abī Ṭālib’s popular argument “listen to what has been said, not who has said that." Consequently, the truth and acceptance of it in the dakwah activities or messages within cyberspace does not depend on the preachers (dā‘ī) and their professional capacity and intellectual knowledge, but on the object of dakwah (mad‘ū). This paper proposes the term “The death of the da’i,” which is adapted from Roland Barthes' term “The death of the author” in his image-music-text,  to discuss the phenomenon.

Authorship and Autography

PMLA ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 116 (5) ◽  
pp. 1377-1385
Author(s):  
Michael North
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
The Status ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
Historical Phenomenon ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Written Word ◽  
Death Of The Author ◽  
The Way

The Single Most Influential Contemporary Statement on Authorship is Still the Obituary that Roland Barthes pronounced over thirty years ago (Burke, Death 19). Partly by the stark extremity of its title, Barthes's essay “The Death of the Author” transformed New Critical distaste for the biographical into an ontological conviction about the status of language (Burke, Death 16) and in so doing made the dead author far more influential than living authors had been for some time. If authorship is now a subject of contention in the academy rather than a vulgar embarrassment, it is largely because of the way that Barthes inflated the issue in the very act of dismissing it. Though the idea that “it is language which speaks, not the author,” seems to demote the human subject (“Death” 143), it may also promote the written word, and it has been objected from the beginning, by Michel Foucault first of all, that the notion of écriture “has merely transposed the empirical characteristics of an author to a transcendental anonymity” (Foucault 120). Many later critics have agreed, and thus there have been a series of arguments, from the theoretical (Burke, Death) to the empirical (Stillinger), to the effect that the whole post-Saussurean turn exemplified by Barthes has not so much killed off the concept of the author as raised it to a higher plane of abstraction. But it may be that, approached from another angle, Barthes's essay will turn out to have its own relation to certain social and technological developments, and that these, in their turn, will help to situate the death of the author as a historical phenomenon.

Arabic Literature Goes Digital

2019 ◽  
pp. 28-47
Author(s):  
Teresa Pepe
Keyword(s):  
Arab World ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Short History ◽  
Online Publishing ◽  
Internet Media ◽  
History Of ◽  
Publishing Houses

This chapter provides the historical context in which Egyptian blogs appeared. Drawing on ethnographic research on the Internet and in the Egyptian literary sphere, it shows that the introduction of Internet tools in the Arab world was soon accompanied by the emergence of numerous platforms for distributing and discussing Arabic literature, such as forums, literary websites, online publishing houses, the Internet Arab Writers Union, and so on. This atmosphere was conducive to the adoption of blogs as a platform for literary experimentation in Egypt. The chapter then focuses on blogging in the Arab world and in particular in Egypt, providing a short history of its development. It also addresses how Internet media have affected Arabic literature as a tool for publishing and distribution, as in the case of book-blogs.

Hurry Up and Wait: Oppositional Compliance and Networking around the State in Kuwait

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah L. Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Civic Engagement ◽  
New Media ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Internet Use ◽  
Media Use ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World

In Chapter 4, data collected through ethnographic research and structured interviews are used to argue that new media tools when used, can profoundly alter social and political practices in Kuwait. Internet use removes inhibitions, gives the public a voice, encourages people to demand access to current, transparent news and information, and enables citizens to become more engaged and active in the world. In the words of one 55 year old female Kuwaiti participant, the Internet “opens the eyes of the younger generation and because of this, they find more freedom to exercise and they can compare freedom in their countries to that in other countries” (Interview, July 2009, Kuwait City). Explanations for the increasingly volatile political and social environment in Kuwait are explored in light of new media use. The persistence of patriarchy in spite of enhanced civic engagement reveals the puzzling nature of oppositional compliance in the emirate.

The Internet of Things and Blockchain Technologies Adaptive Trade Systems in the Virtual World

2021 ◽  
pp. 118-136
Author(s):  
Vardan Mkrttchian
Keyword(s):  
Electronic Commerce ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Digital Economy ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Continuous Growth ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Intellectual Knowledge ◽  
The Internet Of Things ◽  
Similar Task

This chapter presents artificial and natural intelligence technologies. As part of the digital economy of the virtual world program, it is envisaged to increase the efficiency of electronic commerce and entrepreneurship; a similar task has been set by the leadership of the People's Republic of China. At present, thinking in the virtual world and China is radically transforming, along with methodological approaches to the development of trade policy and its tools in the digital economy. It is these circumstances that determine the relevance of the study, the results of which are presented in this chapter. Development of the fundamental foundations for improving the efficiency of electronic commerce and entrepreneurship in virtual world and China based on the virtual exchange of intellectual knowledge using blockchain technology and implementation multi-chain open source platform is the goal. An acceleration of scientific and technological progress in all areas of knowledge raises the task for ensuring the continuous growth of professional skills throughout the whole life.

Digital Ethnography in an Age of Information Warfare: Notes from the Field

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip R. Kavanaugh ◽  
R. J. Maratea
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Field Research ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Information Warfare ◽  
Digital Ethnography ◽  
Principal Objective ◽  
Media Environments ◽  
Structural Perspective

In this article we engage the nature and role of the Internet in ethnographic research and reflect on how ethnographic methodologies may be adapted when researching digital forms of communication. We further consider how recent shifts in both the production and dissemination of textual discourse in networked media environments complicates conventional approaches to digital ethnography. Drawing on examples from our field research, our principal objective is to apply a Foucauldian structural perspective to David Altheide’s ethnographic content analysis to better contextualize the study of digital communiqué in a cultural moment where discourses are increasingly surveilled, modified, censored and weaponized.

Art and Archaeology

2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-113
Author(s):  
Michael Squire
Keyword(s):  
Roland Barthes ◽  
Classical Archaeology ◽  
Greek Sculpture ◽  
Death Of The Author

‘An anonymous product of an impersonal craft’: that is how Rhys Carpenter characterized Greek sculpture in 1960, and it's an assessment that has long dominated the field. Carpenter was challenging the traditional workings of classical archaeology, not least its infatuation with individual ‘masters’. While responding to past precedent, however, his comments also looked forward in time, heralding a decidedly postmodern turn. From our perspective in 2020, six decades after his book was first published, Carpenter can be seen to anticipate what Roland Barthes would dub the ‘death of the author’: ‘the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the author’, as Barthes put it.

Death

2020 ◽  
pp. 102-116
Author(s):  
Benoît Peeters
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
Genre Conventions ◽  
Death Of The Author

Roland Barthes’s 1967 essay ‘The Death of the Author’ looms large over any attempt to argue for the renewed necessity of incorporating considerations of authorship into the study of world literature. Less than a decade after the publication of ‘Death of the Author’, however, Barthes followed up on it with an autobiography, albeit a deeply unorthodox one. In tracing the fortunes of this autobiography through subsequent editions and translations, the graphic novelist, biographer, and comics expert Benoît Peeters demonstrates how our image of an author, just like our understanding of a literary work according to Barthes’s structuralist understanding, is conditioned by unconscious and even impersonal forces. The simple decision by an editor unfamiliar with the contents of Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes to exchange a cover illustration in order to make the book more closely conform to genre conventions can have devastating consequences.

Connecting With Today’s Mothers: Breastfeeding Support Online

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara Audelo
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Generational Differences ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Breastfeeding Support ◽  
Know How ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Professional Capacity

Since the mid-1990s, women have been using the Internet to offer breastfeeding support to one another. As technology has rapidly changed, mothers have kept up with the pace and found ways to embrace the changes, using them to their advantage. It is essential for all who work with breastfeeding mothers in a professional capacity to understand the generational differences that exist, oftentimes between mothers and providers. For lactation professionals, it is valuable to know how mothers use the Internet, and the platforms they are using, for breastfeeding support. Whether it is through social media platforms or blogging, lactation professionals have more ways than ever before to help mothers by offering their expertise in online settings.

scholarly journals When Facebook Is the Internet

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-150
Author(s):  
Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Security Risks ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Social Media Engagement ◽  
The One

My social media engagement with research interlocutors is shaped by my positionality as a ‘halfie’ anthropologist based abroad who conducts ethnographic research on violence and peacemaking in the Philippines and the diaspora. On the one hand, social media connectivity facilitates certain research processes, networking, activism, and solidarity building. Yet with social media’s security issues and amid shifting political tides, such connectivity poses ethical and security risks, resulting in social media-specific ethical concerns. I demonstrate these points through an account of my engagement with Facebook, a ubiquitous platform for communicating among Filipinos. In the process, I reflect on some of the ways in which social media connectivity between researcher and interlocutors reconfigures the relationality, temporality, hierarchies, and affect of the ethnographic ‘field’.

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