Brian Keith Axel
Biographic Data
| ID | 81584 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brian Keith Axel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brian Keith |
| FAMILY NAME | Axel |
| SIGNATURE | AXEL B K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Swarthmore College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 180 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Diasporic sublime: Sikh martyrs, Internet mediations, and the question of the unimaginable
Forests of citation: Concluding unauthorized postscript to figured fragments of Bernard S. Cohn's `History and Anthropology: the State of Play
This text represents an exploration of the possible significance of Bernard S. Cohn's 1980 essay, `History and Anthropology: The State of Play', for understanding the present of historical anthropology and its futures. My discussion has two aims: (1) to reflect on both Bernard S. Cohn's pedagogy and mode of inquiry; and (2) to explore the complexity and nuance of citationality as a generative principle within the constitution of historical anthro…
Digital Figurings of the Unimaginable: Visual Media, Death, and Formations of the Sikh Diaspora
In this paper, I analyse how the confluence of martyrdom, terror, and computer-mediated communications has contributed to the emergence of a Sikh diasporic cultural politics. I offer an analysis of a moment of conflict that took place in June 2001 when Sikhs around the world commemorated the seventeenth anniversary of ‘Operation Bluestar’—the Indian government's code-name for a military siege on Sikhism's holiest temple that led to the deaths of …
Anthropology and the New Technologies of Communication
This article is a set of reflections on how a modern linguistic ideology of communication produces a fundamental misrecognition of the formation of the modern liberal subject as a naturally communicating subject. I explore the complex features of this misrecognition as a legacy of Cold War procedures of knowledge production about communication and technology to suggest that ethnographies of new technologies of communication unwittingly proliferat…
Diasporic sublime: Sikh martyrs, Internet mediations, and the question of the unimaginable
How are the Internet and the World Wide Web productive of new forms of cultural life? I analyse how the confluence of martyrdom, terror, and computer-mediated-communications has contributed to the emergence of a Sikh diasporic cultural politics. I argue that the centrality and force of both the Internet and the figure of the martyr for many Khalistanis prompt a rethinking of the privilege scholars often accord to the “imagination” and “experience…
Society for Psychological Anthropology: Psychoanalytic and Diasporic Analyses
The Context of Diaspora
This article brings diaspora studies into a fruitful conversation with linguistic anthropology by examining the relationships among the formation of Sikh diasporic subjects, images of tortured bodies, quotidian Internet practices, and state-sponsored terror in India. The fleeting emergence of an enunciative subject of diaspora within a single poetic performance compels an examination of the impact of violence and gender normativity for those who …
Poverty of the Imagination
The [AAA] Annual Meeting's title,"(Un)Imaginable Futures," is intended to convey a double valence appropriate to both the perils and possibilities of the present historical moment—and of earlier times of transformation. We anticipate sessions on a broad array of topics ranging from violence, warfare, surveillance and human rights discourses to the global commodity flows that link technoscience both to expressive forms ad to future markets. We wel…
From the Margins: Historical Anthropology and Its Futures
National Interruption: Diaspora Theory and Multiculturalism in the UK
This essay explores the limitations of diaspora theory by engaging the forms of knowledge production that intersect domains of diaspora studies and the modern nation-state. The murder of a Sikh community member and the ensuing debates over multiculturalism in the UK in the late 1990s illustrate the extent to which the constitution of diaspora-as-problem deflects attention from more precise analysis of the nation-state's relations to alterity. The…
From the Margins: Historical Anthropology and Its Futures
The Diasporic Imaginary
Public Culture - Volume 14, Number 2, Spring 2002
The Nation's Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh “Diaspora”
reatWhat is found at the historical beginning of things is not the inviolable identity of their origin; it is the dissension of other things.-Michel Foucault, ''Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" There is something peculiar and powerful about diasporas today.Perhaps, at least at first glance, this is because it is so difficult to comprehend a site of belonging and identification that is both spectacularly global and preeminently local.Yet who would d…
Who Fabled: Joyce and Vico on History and Constraint
Disembodiment and the total body: A response to Enwezor on contemporary South African representation
Third Sex/Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism In Culture and History
Third Sex/Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism In Culture and History. Gilbert Herdt. ed. New York: Zone Books, 1994. 614 pp., photographs, notes, contributors, Index
Time and threat: Questioning the production of the diaspora as an object of study
The Context of Diaspora
This article brings diaspora studies into a fruitful conversation with linguistic anthropology by examining the relationships among the formation of Sikh diasporic subjects, images of tortured bodies, quotidian Internet practices, and state-sponsored terror in India. The fleeting emergence of an enunciative subject of diaspora within a single poetic performance compels an examination of the impact of violence and gender normativity for those who …
The Nation's Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh “Diaspora”
reatWhat is found at the historical beginning of things is not the inviolable identity of their origin; it is the dissension of other things.-Michel Foucault, ''Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" There is something peculiar and powerful about diasporas today.Perhaps, at least at first glance, this is because it is so difficult to comprehend a site of belonging and identification that is both spectacularly global and preeminently local.Yet who would d…
The Diasporic Imaginary
Public Culture - Volume 14, Number 2, Spring 2002
Anthropology and the New Technologies of Communication
This article is a set of reflections on how a modern linguistic ideology of communication produces a fundamental misrecognition of the formation of the modern liberal subject as a naturally communicating subject. I explore the complex features of this misrecognition as a legacy of Cold War procedures of knowledge production about communication and technology to suggest that ethnographies of new technologies of communication unwittingly proliferat…
Poverty of the Imagination
The [AAA] Annual Meeting's title,"(Un)Imaginable Futures," is intended to convey a double valence appropriate to both the perils and possibilities of the present historical moment—and of earlier times of transformation. We anticipate sessions on a broad array of topics ranging from violence, warfare, surveillance and human rights discourses to the global commodity flows that link technoscience both to expressive forms ad to future markets. We wel…
Third Sex/Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism In Culture and History
Third Sex/Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism In Culture and History. Gilbert Herdt. ed. New York: Zone Books, 1994. 614 pp., photographs, notes, contributors, Index
Time and threat: Questioning the production of the diaspora as an object of study
Digital Figurings of the Unimaginable: Visual Media, Death, and Formations of the Sikh Diaspora
In this paper, I analyse how the confluence of martyrdom, terror, and computer-mediated communications has contributed to the emergence of a Sikh diasporic cultural politics. I offer an analysis of a moment of conflict that took place in June 2001 when Sikhs around the world commemorated the seventeenth anniversary of ‘Operation Bluestar’—the Indian government's code-name for a military siege on Sikhism's holiest temple that led to the deaths of …
Diasporic sublime: Sikh martyrs, Internet mediations, and the question of the unimaginable
How are the Internet and the World Wide Web productive of new forms of cultural life? I analyse how the confluence of martyrdom, terror, and computer-mediated-communications has contributed to the emergence of a Sikh diasporic cultural politics. I argue that the centrality and force of both the Internet and the figure of the martyr for many Khalistanis prompt a rethinking of the privilege scholars often accord to the “imagination” and “experience…
National Interruption: Diaspora Theory and Multiculturalism in the UK
This essay explores the limitations of diaspora theory by engaging the forms of knowledge production that intersect domains of diaspora studies and the modern nation-state. The murder of a Sikh community member and the ensuing debates over multiculturalism in the UK in the late 1990s illustrate the extent to which the constitution of diaspora-as-problem deflects attention from more precise analysis of the nation-state's relations to alterity. The…
Disembodiment and the total body: A response to Enwezor on contemporary South African representation
Time and threat: Questioning the production of the diaspora as an object of study
Disembodiment and the total body: A response to Enwezor on contemporary South African representation
Third Sex/Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism In Culture and History
Third Sex/Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism In Culture and History. Gilbert Herdt. ed. New York: Zone Books, 1994. 614 pp., photographs, notes, contributors, Index
Who Fabled: Joyce and Vico on History and Constraint
The Nation's Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh “Diaspora”
reatWhat is found at the historical beginning of things is not the inviolable identity of their origin; it is the dissension of other things.-Michel Foucault, ''Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" There is something peculiar and powerful about diasporas today.Perhaps, at least at first glance, this is because it is so difficult to comprehend a site of belonging and identification that is both spectacularly global and preeminently local.Yet who would d…
From the Margins: Historical Anthropology and Its Futures
National Interruption: Diaspora Theory and Multiculturalism in the UK
This essay explores the limitations of diaspora theory by engaging the forms of knowledge production that intersect domains of diaspora studies and the modern nation-state. The murder of a Sikh community member and the ensuing debates over multiculturalism in the UK in the late 1990s illustrate the extent to which the constitution of diaspora-as-problem deflects attention from more precise analysis of the nation-state's relations to alterity. The…
From the Margins: Historical Anthropology and Its Futures
The Diasporic Imaginary
Public Culture - Volume 14, Number 2, Spring 2002
Poverty of the Imagination
The [AAA] Annual Meeting's title,"(Un)Imaginable Futures," is intended to convey a double valence appropriate to both the perils and possibilities of the present historical moment—and of earlier times of transformation. We anticipate sessions on a broad array of topics ranging from violence, warfare, surveillance and human rights discourses to the global commodity flows that link technoscience both to expressive forms ad to future markets. We wel…
Society for Psychological Anthropology: Psychoanalytic and Diasporic Analyses
The Context of Diaspora
This article brings diaspora studies into a fruitful conversation with linguistic anthropology by examining the relationships among the formation of Sikh diasporic subjects, images of tortured bodies, quotidian Internet practices, and state-sponsored terror in India. The fleeting emergence of an enunciative subject of diaspora within a single poetic performance compels an examination of the impact of violence and gender normativity for those who …
Diasporic sublime: Sikh martyrs, Internet mediations, and the question of the unimaginable
How are the Internet and the World Wide Web productive of new forms of cultural life? I analyse how the confluence of martyrdom, terror, and computer-mediated-communications has contributed to the emergence of a Sikh diasporic cultural politics. I argue that the centrality and force of both the Internet and the figure of the martyr for many Khalistanis prompt a rethinking of the privilege scholars often accord to the “imagination” and “experience…
Anthropology and the New Technologies of Communication
This article is a set of reflections on how a modern linguistic ideology of communication produces a fundamental misrecognition of the formation of the modern liberal subject as a naturally communicating subject. I explore the complex features of this misrecognition as a legacy of Cold War procedures of knowledge production about communication and technology to suggest that ethnographies of new technologies of communication unwittingly proliferat…
Digital Figurings of the Unimaginable: Visual Media, Death, and Formations of the Sikh Diaspora
In this paper, I analyse how the confluence of martyrdom, terror, and computer-mediated communications has contributed to the emergence of a Sikh diasporic cultural politics. I offer an analysis of a moment of conflict that took place in June 2001 when Sikhs around the world commemorated the seventeenth anniversary of ‘Operation Bluestar’—the Indian government's code-name for a military siege on Sikhism's holiest temple that led to the deaths of …
Forests of citation: Concluding unauthorized postscript to figured fragments of Bernard S. Cohn's `History and Anthropology: the State of Play
This text represents an exploration of the possible significance of Bernard S. Cohn's 1980 essay, `History and Anthropology: The State of Play', for understanding the present of historical anthropology and its futures. My discussion has two aims: (1) to reflect on both Bernard S. Cohn's pedagogy and mode of inquiry; and (2) to explore the complexity and nuance of citationality as a generative principle within the constitution of historical anthro…
Diasporic sublime: Sikh martyrs, Internet mediations, and the question of the unimaginable
Sociology (11 works) · Political science (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · History (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works) · Media studies (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · South Asian Studies and Diaspora (5 works)