Abstracts
Abstract
This article examines how everyday mobile media produce discursive and affective modes of closeness that circulate as part of the Canada-US border-making process under the Muslim ban. I contend that although the #WelcomeToCanada hashtag, which was made popular by Justin Trudeau’s tweets in response to the US travel ban, presents an inclusive, multicultural Canada that appears to contrast the white supremacist, xenophobic narrative of Donald Trump’s executive order, its performance of flexible Canadian borders actually renders ubiquitous, and therefore augments, the default whiteness of the heteropatriarchal national body imagined by liberal narratives of inclusion. I compare #WelcomeToCanada to Sikh Canadian comedian Jus Reign’s Snapchat story about the Quebec City mosque attack and suggest that his overly faced selfies reveal the violence of a colourblind state gaze that functions like so-called neutral algorithmic vision. Jus Reign’s excessive closeness to his smartphone performs an ambivalent rupture of the universalizing vision on which neoliberal multiculturalism is based, emphasizing the racist logics of facial detection technology even as he characterizes Islamophobia as a particularly US discourse.
Résumé
Dans cet article, Danielle Wong se penche sur la façon dont les médias mobiles produisent au quotidien des modes de proximité discursive et affective dans le contexte du processus d’établissement de la frontière canado-américaine sous l’interdiction musulmane. Selon Wong, il est vrai que #WelcomeToCanada, un mot-clic popularisé par une série de gazouillis publiés par Justin Trudeau suite à une interdiction de voyager aux États-Unis, présente l’image d’un Canada inclusif et multiculturel qui semble contraster d’avec le récit suprématiste et xénophobe sous-tendant le décret de Donald Trump. Cependant, la façon de représenter la souplesse des frontières canadiennes dans ce mot-clic rend en fait omniprésent, et donc augmente, le caractère blanc de l’organisme national hétéropatriarcal imaginé par les récits libéraux d’inclusion. Wong compare #WelcomeToCanada et l’histoire partagée sur Snapchat par l’humoriste canadien sikh Jus Reign au sujet de l’attentat contre la mosquée de Québec. Elle laisse ainsi entendre que les égoportraits au cadrage serré montrent la violence du regard d’un état qui se dit insensible à la couleur de la peau tout en ayant l’effet d’un algorithme soi-disant neutre. La proximité excessive de Jus Reign à la lentille de son téléphone intelligent opère une rupture ambivalente de la vision universalisante sur laquelle repose le multiculturalisme néolibéral et met en évidence les logiques racistes de la détection faciale alors même que Jus Reign dit de l’islamophobie qu’il s’agit d’un discours américain.
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Appendices
Biographical note
Danielle Wong is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia. Her research and teaching interests focus on historical and contemporary relationships between race, Empire, and “new” technologies. Her current book project examines Asian North American new media productions and performances, and traces a genealogy of “virtual Asianness” by analyzing how Asian North American racialization has, and continues to be, interwoven with shifting concepts of mediation and virtuality. She is also a faculty affiliate of the Asian Canadian and Migration Studies Program at UBC. Her published work can be found in Studies in Canadian Literature and Transformations.
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