Victoria Bernal
Biographic Data
| ID | 3587103 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Victoria Bernal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Victoria |
| FAMILY NAME | Bernal |
| SIGNATURE | BERNAL V |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Irvine |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4623-2275 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 310 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Cryptopolitics
Cryptopolitics
Hidden information, double meanings, double-crossing, and the constant processes of encoding and decoding messages have always been important techniques in negotiating social and political power dynamics. Yet these tools, "cryptopolitics," are transformed when used within digital media. Focusing on African societies, Cryptopolitics brings together empirically grounded studies of digital media toconsider public culture, sociality, and power in all…
Introduction
sponsorship: FWO|Odysseus grant, G.A005.14N
Crazy, Stupid, Lying, Traitors
This essay explores the dynamics of extreme speech online in the context of Eritrea's fraught politics. I find the public sphere that Eritreans in diaspora established on a website as constantly open to collapse and subversion, and thus requiring on-going negotiation among participants. The analysis draws on a close reading of a set of online exchanges in response to a narrative posted on a leading Eritrean news and discussion website. The operat…
Deadly serious
COVID-19 is the most mediated pandemic in history thus far. COVID-19 humour, much of it circulated online, is a global phenomenon, but it takes different forms in different settings. This Special Issue brings together articles that add to our understanding of how Africans have experienced corona pandemic conditions, as well as contributing to the scholarship on media in African contexts, while focusing on humour. I suggest that we understand humo…
Digitality and Decolonization
This article explores questions of decolonization, in part through analyzing Belgium’s Africa Museum. Bernal considers the role of academia and knowledge production, as well as the technological developments that may create new concentrations of power faster than decolonial projects can dismantle established hierarchies. She concludes that decolonization must address material questions of reparations and restitution, and that digital media have b…
The Cultural Construction of Cybersecurity
This article explores the contemporary construction of public culture around cybersecurity in the United States, using discourse analysis to critically examine the rise of militaristic rhetoric around digital threats in news reports and public statements by government officials and corporate experts. Cybersecurity has gone from being an obscure focus of tech and security experts to an issue of public concern. My approach advances theorizations of…
African Digital Diasporas
1Africans and DiasporaDiasporas have a long history. The essence of diaspora is some form of displacement coupled with relations of belonging and identification that link members of a diaspora to each other and to a shared origin (Braziel and Mannur 2007). In the case of African diasporas, their long history stems largely from the European enslavement and transport of Africans from the continent to the Americas. The term 'African diaspora', there…
Futureproof
Digital media, territory, and diaspora
Nations are generally understood to be territorial while the internet is commonly thought of as extraterritorial. The political activities of Eritreans in diaspora help to complicate both those assumptions. Exploring the diverse and shifting ways that Eritreans in diaspora have used websites to participate in national politics from outside the country sheds light on the dynamics of the space of cyberspace and its significance for politics. With r…
Diaspora and the Afterlife of Violence
This article explores the legacies of political violence, the workings of state power in mobilizing identities around collective suffering, and the effects of political culture that reside in people even after they have left the time and space of war. I interrogate the silence on Eritrean diaspora websites regarding personal suffering related to the war that produced Eritrea as an independent nation, elevated its current president and ruling part…
Nation as Network
Theorizing NGOs
Conclusion
Theorizing NGOs
Please forget democracy and justice
Parody possesses a kind of power that realist critique sometimes lacks. I explore why humor is sometimes used as a medium for addressing tragic circumstances and why parody in particular may be especially suited to communicating about dictatorship. The research presented here draws on a long-term project on Eritrean politics and on websites devoted to Eritrean politics created by Eritreans in diaspora. The core of the analysis dissects an online …
Diaspora, Digital Media, and Death Counts
This article analyses a war memorial established on a website by Eritreans in diaspora as an example of how diasporas are transforming the ways national politics are conducted and understood. Establishing a war memorial is normally the prerogative and responsibility of the state. In performing this task the Eritrean diaspora makes visible the failure of the state to make public important national information and to hold itself accountable to the …
We Are Now a Nation
Powers of the Secular Modern
Powers of the Secular Modern
Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors. David Scott and Charles Hirschkind, eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 355 pp
Diaspora, cyberspace and political imagination
In this article I analyse the Eritrean diaspora and its use of cyberspace to theorize the ways transnationalism and new media are associated with the rise of new forms of community, public spheres and sites of cultural production. The struggle for national independence coincided with the rise of the Internet and the Eritrean diaspora has been actively involved in the new state. Eritreans abroad use the Internet as a transnational public sphere wh…
Eritrea on-line
For Eritreans in diaspora, identities are deterritorialized, one's most pressing communication may be with far-flung strangers in cyberspace, and one's political engagement is centered on a distant homeland. Eritrean experiences, thus, seem to bring together various qualities that scholars have been grappling with in trying to chart the implications of the infotech revolution and life on-line, in seeking to understand processes of transnationalis…
Eritrea Goes Global
Many scholars have seen globalization and transnationalism as ushering in a postnational era. The new nation of Eritrea serves as an example suggesting that transnationalism does not only operate in opposition to nationalism but can also work to reinforce it. Eritreans in diaspora helped to liberate Eritrea from Ethiopia and continue to participate in the economics and politics of Eritrea. Official constructions of Eritrean citizenship and the na…
Arab Detroit
Book Review| January 01 2002 Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream, Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryrock. Victoria Bernal Victoria Bernal Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2002) 21 (2): 105–107. https://doi.org/10.2307/27502822 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Victoria Bernal; Arab D…
Equality to Die For
Eritrea Goes Global
Many scholars have seen globalization and transnationalism as ushering in a postnational era. The new nation of Eritrea serves as an example suggesting that transnationalism does not only operate in opposition to nationalism but can also work to reinforce it. Eritreans in diaspora helped to liberate Eritrea from Ethiopia and continue to participate in the economics and politics of Eritrea. Official constructions of Eritrean citizenship and the na…
Diaspora, cyberspace and political imagination
In this article I analyse the Eritrean diaspora and its use of cyberspace to theorize the ways transnationalism and new media are associated with the rise of new forms of community, public spheres and sites of cultural production. The struggle for national independence coincided with the rise of the Internet and the Eritrean diaspora has been actively involved in the new state. Eritreans abroad use the Internet as a transnational public sphere wh…
Eritrea on-line
For Eritreans in diaspora, identities are deterritorialized, one's most pressing communication may be with far-flung strangers in cyberspace, and one's political engagement is centered on a distant homeland. Eritrean experiences, thus, seem to bring together various qualities that scholars have been grappling with in trying to chart the implications of the infotech revolution and life on-line, in seeking to understand processes of transnationalis…
Gender, Culture, and Capitalism
Have women in third-world societies been made second-class citizens by colonialism, incorporation into the capitalist world economy, and class formation? Or are women relegated to less prestigious and less economically rewarding roles by patriarchal ideologies and practices the origins of which lie in indigenous cultures? Much of the anthropological scholarship on women can be divided between those who emphasize the relative importance of capital…
Please forget democracy and justice
Parody possesses a kind of power that realist critique sometimes lacks. I explore why humor is sometimes used as a medium for addressing tragic circumstances and why parody in particular may be especially suited to communicating about dictatorship. The research presented here draws on a long-term project on Eritrean politics and on websites devoted to Eritrean politics created by Eritreans in diaspora. The core of the analysis dissects an online …
Equality to Die For
Diaspora and the Afterlife of Violence
This article explores the legacies of political violence, the workings of state power in mobilizing identities around collective suffering, and the effects of political culture that reside in people even after they have left the time and space of war. I interrogate the silence on Eritrean diaspora websites regarding personal suffering related to the war that produced Eritrea as an independent nation, elevated its current president and ruling part…
Colonial Moral Economy and the Discipline of Development
Diaspora, Digital Media, and Death Counts
This article analyses a war memorial established on a website by Eritreans in diaspora as an example of how diasporas are transforming the ways national politics are conducted and understood. Establishing a war memorial is normally the prerogative and responsibility of the state. In performing this task the Eritrean diaspora makes visible the failure of the state to make public important national information and to hold itself accountable to the …
Peasants, Capitalism, and (Ir)rationality
This article takes as its starting point the debate over whether or not peasants operate according to capitalist rationality. I argue that neither the assumption that peasants operate according to noncapitalist principles, nor the assumption that peasant households operate like capitalist enterprises can account for the behavior of peasants. The analysis of subsistence production in a Sudanese peasant community reveals that market and nonmarket r…
Digital media, territory, and diaspora
Nations are generally understood to be territorial while the internet is commonly thought of as extraterritorial. The political activities of Eritreans in diaspora help to complicate both those assumptions. Exploring the diverse and shifting ways that Eritreans in diaspora have used websites to participate in national politics from outside the country sheds light on the dynamics of the space of cyberspace and its significance for politics. With r…
African Digital Diasporas
1Africans and DiasporaDiasporas have a long history. The essence of diaspora is some form of displacement coupled with relations of belonging and identification that link members of a diaspora to each other and to a shared origin (Braziel and Mannur 2007). In the case of African diasporas, their long history stems largely from the European enslavement and transport of Africans from the continent to the Americas. The term 'African diaspora', there…
The Politics of Research on Agricultural Development
Coercion and Incentives in African Agriculture
A dialectic running through the literature on agricultural development in Africa is between coercion and incentives, between the necessity of compelling peasants to produce certain crops or employ particular technology and the possibility of motivating peasants to opt for specific production strategies through rewards. Coercion presumes peasants lack the capacity and or will to develop agriculture and must be forced. Incentives assume peasants wi…
Cryptopolitics
Hidden information, double meanings, double-crossing, and the constant processes of encoding and decoding messages have always been important techniques in negotiating social and political power dynamics. Yet these tools, "cryptopolitics," are transformed when used within digital media. Focusing on African societies, Cryptopolitics brings together empirically grounded studies of digital media toconsider public culture, sociality, and power in all…
Powers of the Secular Modern
Coercion and Incentives in African Agriculture
A dialectic running through the literature on agricultural development in Africa is between coercion and incentives, between the necessity of compelling peasants to produce certain crops or employ particular technology and the possibility of motivating peasants to opt for specific production strategies through rewards. Coercion presumes peasants lack the capacity and or will to develop agriculture and must be forced. Incentives assume peasants wi…
The Politics of Research on Agricultural Development
Cultivating Workers
Cultivating Workers
Peasants, Capitalism, and (Ir)rationality
This article takes as its starting point the debate over whether or not peasants operate according to capitalist rationality. I argue that neither the assumption that peasants operate according to noncapitalist principles, nor the assumption that peasant households operate like capitalist enterprises can account for the behavior of peasants. The analysis of subsistence production in a Sudanese peasant community reveals that market and nonmarket r…
Cultivating Workers
Gender, Culture, and Capitalism
Have women in third-world societies been made second-class citizens by colonialism, incorporation into the capitalist world economy, and class formation? Or are women relegated to less prestigious and less economically rewarding roles by patriarchal ideologies and practices the origins of which lie in indigenous cultures? Much of the anthropological scholarship on women can be divided between those who emphasize the relative importance of capital…
Making it on the Middle Eastern Margins of the Global Capitalist Economy
Colonial Moral Economy and the Discipline of Development
Migration, Modernity and Islam in Rural Sudan
Equality to Die For
Arab Detroit
Book Review| January 01 2002 Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream, Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryrock. Victoria Bernal Victoria Bernal Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2002) 21 (2): 105–107. https://doi.org/10.2307/27502822 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Victoria Bernal; Arab D…
Eritrea Goes Global
Many scholars have seen globalization and transnationalism as ushering in a postnational era. The new nation of Eritrea serves as an example suggesting that transnationalism does not only operate in opposition to nationalism but can also work to reinforce it. Eritreans in diaspora helped to liberate Eritrea from Ethiopia and continue to participate in the economics and politics of Eritrea. Official constructions of Eritrean citizenship and the na…
Eritrea on-line
For Eritreans in diaspora, identities are deterritorialized, one's most pressing communication may be with far-flung strangers in cyberspace, and one's political engagement is centered on a distant homeland. Eritrean experiences, thus, seem to bring together various qualities that scholars have been grappling with in trying to chart the implications of the infotech revolution and life on-line, in seeking to understand processes of transnationalis…
Diaspora, cyberspace and political imagination
In this article I analyse the Eritrean diaspora and its use of cyberspace to theorize the ways transnationalism and new media are associated with the rise of new forms of community, public spheres and sites of cultural production. The struggle for national independence coincided with the rise of the Internet and the Eritrean diaspora has been actively involved in the new state. Eritreans abroad use the Internet as a transnational public sphere wh…
Powers of the Secular Modern
Powers of the Secular Modern
Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors. David Scott and Charles Hirschkind, eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 355 pp
We Are Now a Nation
Please forget democracy and justice
Parody possesses a kind of power that realist critique sometimes lacks. I explore why humor is sometimes used as a medium for addressing tragic circumstances and why parody in particular may be especially suited to communicating about dictatorship. The research presented here draws on a long-term project on Eritrean politics and on websites devoted to Eritrean politics created by Eritreans in diaspora. The core of the analysis dissects an online …
Diaspora, Digital Media, and Death Counts
This article analyses a war memorial established on a website by Eritreans in diaspora as an example of how diasporas are transforming the ways national politics are conducted and understood. Establishing a war memorial is normally the prerogative and responsibility of the state. In performing this task the Eritrean diaspora makes visible the failure of the state to make public important national information and to hold itself accountable to the …
Nation as Network
Theorizing NGOs
Conclusion
Theorizing NGOs
Diaspora and the Afterlife of Violence
This article explores the legacies of political violence, the workings of state power in mobilizing identities around collective suffering, and the effects of political culture that reside in people even after they have left the time and space of war. I interrogate the silence on Eritrean diaspora websites regarding personal suffering related to the war that produced Eritrea as an independent nation, elevated its current president and ruling part…
Political science (26 works) · Sociology (25 works) · Law (22 works) · Politics (16 works) · African history and culture analysis (15 works) · Law (15 works) · Media studies (12 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · History (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works)