Digital nomads in siliconising Cluj: Material and allegorical double dispossession/

By: Material type: ArticleArticlePublication details: Sage, 2020.Description: Vol 57, Issue 15, 2020 ( 3078–3094 p.)Online resources: In: Urban studiesSummary: This paper studies the arrival of digital nomads in Cluj, Romania. I focus upon double dispossession, in which ‘digital nomads’ allegorise technocapitalist fantasies by appropriating Roma identity on one hand, and in which Roma are evicted to make way for the arrival of Western digital nomads and tech firms on the other. While Roma are materially dispossessed as Cluj siliconises, they are doubly dispossessed by the conjuration of the deracinated digital nomad/Gypsy. As I suggest, this figure discursively drags with it onto-epistemological residues of 19th-century Orientalism – a literary genre that emerged within the heart of Western European empires. The recoding of the nomad today, I argue, indexes the imperiality of technocapitalism, or techno-imperialism. Double dispossession, as a phenomenon, illuminates that prior histories bolster, and are consumed by, globalising techno-imperialism. Postcolonial and postsocialist studies offer frameworks for understanding this update, as well as the accumulative and multifaceted dispossession that siliconisation inheres. I thus argue for a connected rather than comparative approach in understanding double dispossession, one focused upon connections across time, space and genre. A connected approach remains rooted in community organising and housing justice struggles.
Tags from this library: No tags from this library for this title. Log in to add tags.
Star ratings
    Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)
Holdings
Item type Current library Vol info Status
E-Journal E-Journal Library, SPAB Vol. 57, Issue 1-16, 2020 Available
Total holds: 0

This paper studies the arrival of digital nomads in Cluj, Romania. I focus upon double dispossession, in which ‘digital nomads’ allegorise technocapitalist fantasies by appropriating Roma identity on one hand, and in which Roma are evicted to make way for the arrival of Western digital nomads and tech firms on the other. While Roma are materially dispossessed as Cluj siliconises, they are doubly dispossessed by the conjuration of the deracinated digital nomad/Gypsy. As I suggest, this figure discursively drags with it onto-epistemological residues of 19th-century Orientalism – a literary genre that emerged within the heart of Western European empires. The recoding of the nomad today, I argue, indexes the imperiality of technocapitalism, or techno-imperialism. Double dispossession, as a phenomenon, illuminates that prior histories bolster, and are consumed by, globalising techno-imperialism. Postcolonial and postsocialist studies offer frameworks for understanding this update, as well as the accumulative and multifaceted dispossession that siliconisation inheres. I thus argue for a connected rather than comparative approach in understanding double dispossession, one focused upon connections across time, space and genre. A connected approach remains rooted in community organising and housing justice struggles.

There are no comments on this title.

to post a comment.
Share

Library, SPA Bhopal, Neelbad Road, Bhauri, Bhopal By-pass, Bhopal - 462 030 (India)
Ph No.: +91 - 755 - 2526805 | E-mail: library@spabhopal.ac.in

OPAC best viewed in Mozilla Browser in 1366X768 Resolution.
Free counter