During this long absence, I finally got my act together. I discuss a lot of things in my dissertation, but one of those, and by far the most satisfactory one, remains my critical engagement with this Franco-Vietnamese novelist Linda Lê’s work entitled Voix. In French phonetics, la voix is indistinguishable from la voie. The two nouns even share the same gender. One means “voice,” and the other “way,” and in a world where one’s rights, boundaries, duty, or even one’s very existence are predicated on voice, losing one’s voice could actually lead to losing one’s way. In my work, I show how an immigrant’s poignant loss of her voice (and her way) is reflected in a postmodern figuration of exile. In tonight’s entry, I approach this semantic link from a different angle: an ethical way to navigate sociality when we are able to hear the right voices.
A friend wrote about his eye-opening, and in his own words, “transformative,” experience of watching Aljazeera English online. His is a groovy guy and I believe if we had met face to face, he would have amplified its effect by saying “awesomely transformative.” He even started a personal campaign of bringing AJE to more cable channel across the country. He is also very keen on drawing sketches, and for such an important discovery, of course he rendered it nicely on paper in figures and words (see below). His message is a simple and powerful one: AJE gives the voiceless a voice in its extensive coverage of the Egyptian revolution that ousted Mubarak. While you might dismiss AJE’s reporting in the region as enjoying an unfair “home” advantage, and all other international news organizations just cannot compete in AJE’s own backyard, I am going to give you a counter example. AJE’s journalism is consistently insightful and useful, which is remarkable considering its global reach.
AJE’s story on the construction of the High Speed Rail linking China and Hong Kong (see below) is phenomenal. I had not been heartbroken for a fairly long time as I watched all the legislators, not all the sitting ones, but the duly elected ones representing the majority of the community, find themselves increasingly helpless and turn voiceless in this monstrous political system, and eventually fail to stop what I think amounts to squandering $9 billion US dollars (that’s a billion with a B) of our money to build this white elephant. I remember shedding some tears as I see the tweets from Hong Kong implode on my computer. Hong Kong is a fairly small place, with a population of about 7 million. My share of $2000 in the government treasury is, to borrow a Cantonese saying, thrown into the high sea. Nine billion can pay for a similar project connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco, or Chicago to Detroit, yet, the benefit of building this railway in Hong Kong is, at the most, saving some passengers a mere 10 minutes of their time in a multi-hour long trip.
On collective issues, I am mostly a practical person. Therefore, I approach the question from the pecuniary perspective. Waste asides, AJE is the only one, or one of the very few, news organization(s) that trenchantly pointed out what was at stake in this whole affair. There was a human dimension to it: the unnecessary uprooting of a community (in order to avoid upsetting the People’s Liberation Army barracks). Also, there was a much large political repercussion: when true democracy would be delivered as promised and how we the people have always had grievances on how the government should be run or our monies be spent. To complicate it further, the younger generation has been at odds with the establishment for some time because they, indeed, were never ever going to enjoy the same level of social mobility their parents once took for granted. At least, they wanted to talk. AJE got all these intricate aspects spot on. I was impressed. And quite frankly, when I first watched it in January, I was quite speechless.
I guess if you consume AJE’s report on the Hong Kong railway, you get a more perceptive understanding out of that under-three-minute news clip than any other report of the same length, I dare to say. It is true that the world is more connected, and/or fucked up, than ever. If you choose to be ignorant, then good luck to you. Yet if you want to arm yourself with knowledge and information, I encourage you to check out AJE, perhaps as little as once a day or week, subscribe to AJE’s channel on youtube, or watch its streaming online. I am lucky enough to have access to news in three major world languages, and I have to say AJE stands out at this moment. The right voice is a modest guarantee that I will not lose my way easily.
On the Ridge of Pratt 