About this website

This is the digital companion to Kalle Westerling's dissertation project. The idea was originally to build the companion using the software Scalar, but as the project became more advanced, it included visualizations and data analysis that would not easily be able to fit the affordances by Scalar. The site features the text of the written dissertation, but also allows the reader to access some sources, network visualizations, maps, timelines (in the future), and other types of media.

In this digital component, the aspiration is to translate Inspired by Trinh T. Minh-ha’s ethnographic ethics from her film Reassemblage—to “not to speak about / Just speak nearby”—into the dissertation process. While Reassemblage is an anthropological documentary about the labor of Senegalese people, Minh-ha uses beautiful narrative techniques—poetic moments of analysis, interwoven with images of the villagers and the labor she describes. She includes a shifting soundscape, which sometimes includes Minh-ha’s own voice, to make us reflect on the power of the filmmaker while watching the documentary by the filmmaker herself. In an attempt to translate Minh-ha’s meta-project in the construction of a digital companion to the written dissertation, the idea was to remind the reader of the power of the theorist or scholar interpreting the material. This is a way to develop a new method to engage with the historical subjects in the dissertation and further involve them in the research project. The technology can also make the project accessible to audiences outside the traditional boundaries of academia. In all, this also situates the dissertation project it in the intersection of Public and Digital Humanities, Theatre and Performance Studies, and Queer Studies.